Father Kelly’s reel

Another Father Kelley’s, this one from John Carty’s "I Will If I Can" album. He plays countless variations, but this is the way he taught it at a workshop and is about as stripped down of a version as I could get.

This isn’t the Father Kelly’s that I’m familiar with but it is a very good tune all the same…

John Carty is apparently mistaken. He mixed Father Kelly up with Paddy Kelly, the East Galway fiddle player. This, coincidently, has happened on another one of Paddy’s tunes. In any case, Paddy Kelly wrote this and called it "The Daisy Field" according to the sleeve notes on Tim Collins’ album "Dancing on Silver." Aside from John Carty and Tim Collins, the only other recording I have of the tune is a recorded session tape of Padraic Mac Donnacha, Conor Tully and Frank Hogan which was recently uploaded to the internet. However, Tim got the tune from a recording of Joe Burke so it is in good circulation, so it seems.

Paddy Canny also recorded the tune on his solo album "Irish Music from a Legendary East Clare fiddler." He called it The Daisy Field also. It’s pretty clear that Paddy Kelly did compose a tune called the Daisy Field because Mike Rafferty apparently notes it on one of his albums but, he didn’t play this tune, it was a different tune. I’ve only read this up so don’t have the album at hand to check but I did come across some ABCs of the tune which Mike calls "The Daisy Field" and attributes to Paddy Kelly but it’s not this one. I also came across sheetmusic to "Paddy Kelly’s 4-Part" and that was named "The Daisy Field". Maybe its time to head down to the archive.

This is not what Mike Rafferty recorded as The Daisy Field.

Is Mike Rafferty’s tune in C (2-part) and very different? If so, its the ABCs I came across on the net. But I still think this is The Daisy Field.

This *is* like the Paddy Kelly reel which Mike and Willie play on the Road from Ballinakill, but here it is in Gminor - whereas Mike and Willie play it in G major. In Martin Mulvihill’s book it is listed as "Father Kelly’s" also (in G major, no natural F’s) but it does seem to actually be Paddy Kelly’s.

The other thread "Paddy Kelly’s reel" has this same tune in G major.

It looks to me like another of Paddy Kelly’s compositions is also known as the Daisy Field. Its mentioned on this web page
http://www.cranfordpub.com/tunes/Irish/PaddyKelly.htm
and that is the one I associate with Paddy Carty. there’s a sound file there of Mary McNamara playing it.

Hope that helps.

Gminor is a nice key for this, especially on fiddle, but its too tough for me on the banjo.
The only loss is the nice drop G’s in the 2nd part that Carty does. So I started with original
poster’s notes, abc2abc -t 2’d them, then tweaked some of the notes. Sometime I’ll tweak
them more to match John Carty’s gnarly.

Go here for better transcriptions and more info on this tune https://thesession.org/tunes/2125