The Boys Of Ballisodare reel

Well, I just learned this tune about…oh sayyyyy…4 gours ago during what was supposed to be band practice (our director eventually showed up at around 9:30). So, during that slack off time, my fiddle-playing friend taught me this tune. Right now, I’m in Study Hall in the Library with all my work done and absolutely nothing to do. Hmm…why not post a tune?!

This sounds like a version of The Boys of Ballysodare, but with some interesting little twists in it.

Source: Paddy O’Brien

one of my favourite reels.

There is also a hop-jig by this name. Listed in O’Neills 1001 and recorded by Lunasa https://thesession.org/recordings/15 as a “gan ainm”.

This is the one: https://thesession.org/tunes/1340

Also often played in the key of F.

Ballysadare is a small town in County Sligo by the way.

Well, you might hear this tune played in F by East Clare or East Galway musicians, but certainly not by Sligo musicians. Claire Keville does a beautiful version in the key on the concertina.

Yes, it’s mainly among East Clare musicians (Martin Hayes, Mary MacNamara) and Paddy Carty, Conor Tully, Padraig Mac Donnacha and Frank Hogan played it in F on Bring Down the Lamp in 1982.

Quentin Cooper and Eoin O’Neill played it in F at the session in Brogan’s I went to in January. I asked if that was the normal key, and they said it was. (What was unsaid, but clearly there between the lines, was that normal was a local term.)

Please be nice to flute players. Two East Clare fiddle legends Paddy Canny and P.J. Hayes actually recorded it in G with Peadar O’Loughlin on the concert flute.

lol, funny way you put that slainte. Paddy Carty played along with it in F like I said but that could have been an F flute

Don’t you know P. Carty played a fully-equipped Boehm flute? He was an exception.

Paddy carty played a Radcliffe system flute.

Pardon my ignorance. But it looks like another kind of “typewriter”: http://www.oldflutes.com/articles/radcliff.htm

Anyone searching for the Version of John & James Kelly beware that they actually play the Dublin Reel, transposed up to G Major.

The Dublin: https://thesession.org/tunes/384

On my infrequent encounters with other musicians I notice little differences in settings of tunes like this reel, specifically a little run in the first that goes EFGB edBG, instead of just repeating dG3~ dGeG, etc. I have about 30 different recordings of this tune, with performances on the fiddle, flute, pipes, accordion, and combinations thereof, starting with the maestro himself, Michael Coleman, from the early 1920s; and the only instances of this little snippet are from Paddy Canny (when solo, not on the All-Ireland record), Tommy Potts (private recordings, the recent RTE Rolling Wave documentary on him also has it) and Tommy Peoples on the Fiddle Stix CD. Even modern musicians like Michael O’Briain (piper) or Sligo’s own McDonagh and Quinn (on the Mountain Road CD) don’t include what we’ll refer to as the Potts Run. ;)

Does your local session consider this de facto, like mine? The musicians I usually play with are ex pats from the Bay Area of the US, so I assume it’s standard there as well. How do trends like this get started, anyway?

Hi Kevin, I am not sure how he plays it exactly, with that run or not, but Alan Morrisroe plays it, and not sure where he got it, but got most tunes from his granny up in Mayo. In fact he says at home at times, in the old days of his granny, she called it “The Falls Of Ballisodare”.

It’s on the upcoming CD we will have out shortly, but if you send me an email with your direct email address I can try and send it over as an MP3 to you to check out. Everything he does is “the old way”.

So Kevin, did Alan do the same run? How does his version compare?

At this end the older players went for the long note: dG~G2 d3 e dBGA BA ~A2

Alan’s setting is pretty much like that from other players, either Bddd eBdB or eBBB B3G. I was hoping to keep this in Discussions but Jeremey moved it over here; should’ve used a title like “Session Settings” as I only used the Boys as an example.

Here it is played by Mícheál Ó Raghallaigh and Danny O’Mahony……..last tune

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2YLo3wH8dsk

play video

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wozi-LFjZYM&feature=rec-r2

play video

Played here by Sean Og Graham,Eamon Murray, Stevie Dunn and Gerd Thompson

Yes, it does sound a lot like Boys of Ballysodare. On Brendan Mulvihill’s cd “the morning dew” he plays it with a third part which gives it a minor twist. Best version of it that i’ve heard

https://thesession.org/tunes/1354

It is called Dublin lasses in O’Neill’s 1001, in F wich sounds nice actually

These seem to go often together. Any idea about the origin of this particular set?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rV1nOMQ2y44

play video

It’s also in Ryan’s collection, in D minor, as Dublin lasses. I like it in this key too and would sound good going from the Dm to E minor (or F to G, whichever it is).

Niall Ó Murchú that is ^

Piping version

Often played in F in East Clare, but avoiding the B flat.

I’ve put this on in D mix (one sharp, tonic D) and there’s still seven accidental C’s. I tried changing the key signature to D major (ie two sharps) and … there are seven different accidental C’s. So, it might be D mix with accidentals, or D major with accidentals - take your choice! Taken from ‘A Fine Selection of Over 200 Irish Traditional Tunes for Sessions’, compiled by David Speers with a Forward by Matt Cranitch.

Dmix→G. D isn’t the tonal centre.

Martin Wynne playing it in 1948: https://www.itma.ie/digital-library/sound/miss-roddy-wynne.

Here’s a setting in F that I copied down from the playing of Paddy Carty on youtube. Some interesting variations to the other versions here.