The Back Of The Haggard hornpipe

This is a lovely arpeggioic (if that is a word!) hornpipe. rarely played and sometimes neglected but beautiful all the same.
there is another on the data base of ths name but is an extreme if not totally different version.
enjoy playing it!

https://thesession.org/tunes/3129

It’s the same as a hornpipe called Woodcock Hill, which is on a Patrick Street album. Lovely tune, though.

A haggard is an orchard,if I’m not mistaken.

well i asked my father and he said that his uncle used to call his dung heap a haggard….

like a big heap of sh*te piled up against a wall….

if this is the correct definition of a haggard then im lost to think why anyone would name sucha lovely tune after it….

mabye it means the back of a haggard person

This tune appears in the Roche collection under the titles “Woodcock Hill” and “Standing Abbey.”

K: D
A2 | dcdf ecAc | dBGB AFDF | EGFA GBgf | edcB AABc |
dcdf e^deg | fefg afdA | BdcB AGFE | D2 d2 d2 :|
B2 | A^GAc ecAc | edcB Adfa | gfeg fedf | (3efe (3dcB (3ABA (3GFE |\
DFAd EGBd |
FAdf afda | BdcB (3ABA (3GFE | (3DFA (3dfa d’ z :|

The Roche’s melody is fundamentally the same as the other ones given on this website… in fact they’re all rather similar, like fraternal twins moreso than cousins. I surmise that their largest differences would arise from the inherent characteristics of the instrument that O’Neill transcribed his version from (being pipes or flute).

This version might be more fiddle-friendly: notice the wonderully uplifting final bar of the B-part. A challenge for all ye 4-stringed knights of pure intonation… and yes, changing the key to G is cheating!

https://thesession.org/tunes/3129/comments

https://thesession.org/tunes/5851/details

Submitted on July 25th 2012 by ceolachan.
https://thesession.org/tunes/12086

A haggard is a large shed/small barn/outhouse near the main house. My grandfather who was a builder and blacksmith in Ballyfoyle, Kilkenny, used it as his forge and kept building materials there along with a horse’s trap. Things went on at the back of the haggard in the same way as they went on round the back of the bike sheds.

This version was recorded as ‘The Vinegar Hill ’ hornpipe by Sean Nolan and his Dublin Orchestra on a 78 record back in the 1920’s. The Ward Irish music archive very kindly uploaded it to soundcloud for me lately as I wanted to compare it to mouth organ maestro Pip Murphy’s version of ‘The Vinegar Hill’, which he played on the ‘Se mo Laoch’ TV tribute to the Murphy family that was aired recently on TG4. Wexford uilleann piper Padraig Sinnott tells me that his father, fiddler Art Sinnott from Boolavogue, played it as part of his repetoire with the neighbouring piper Sam Atkinson back in the 1920’s also. Art featured regularly as a singer on 2RN, and is credited with the popularizing of the song ‘Boolavogue’. I don’t know if the Sinnott/Atkinson duet may have also performed on early radio.

This is the setting that Pip Murphy from Ballygow played on the ‘Se mo Laoch’ TV programme. He was playing it on a G harmonica, so it’s notated in G as a result.

By the way, a ‘haggard’ is a yard that’s part of a farm building complex. It would indeed be common to have a dung heap in a haggard. Every older farmer’s place down our way would have a haggard where the tractor or farm machinery would be parked etc and it might also feature a few storage buildings or sheds around it. Apparently the word ‘haggard’ comes from the old Norse spoken by the Vikings who settled around Ireland in medieval times. It meant ‘hay yard’ in Norse. I mentioned in comments on the tune ‘Tuskar Rock’ how there are remnants of the Norse language in Wexford, particularly place names.