Rosie Finn’s Favourite slide

I learned this slide from The Bothy Band’s classic “Afterhours” album.

Matt Molloy plays it with a lot more triplets. This is a very simplified version of the tune so there’s a lot of room for experimentation.

This one is often played a fourth lower in the key of ‘D’ as well. Who was Rosie Finn?

I can see why this tune would be played lower down. It does stretch the fingers a bit.

Actually, I quite like playing this an entire octave lower - something that’s possible on the fiddle, banjo or bouzouki. Makes for a nice variation, too, to have just one person playing it lower in a session situation.

Funny you say that Jeremy, I always knock it down an octave as well when it comes up in G.

In my opinion, this is the most beautiful tune ever. And Matt Molloy’s playing of it just makes it even better. I have two live recordings of Matt playing it with the Bothy Band, one on Afterhours, and the other on Live in Concert. I learned it from Afterhours too, Jeremy. Paddy Keenan does a really nice harmony part on that album, on the low whistle.

I like to play it in the same key as Matt (G) on the whistle, I like it better that way, but it really is a stretch on the fiddle.

Has anybody ever heard anyone beside Matt play it? Anyone know where it comes from?

-Max

I have been playing my new Kerry low whistle all night, and I got to playing this tune. I think I’m going to take back what I said earlier. I don’t think I do like this tune better in G, I think it sounds great in D too. The lower sound is really cool.

Ceolachan has spotted that a tune I recently submitted is very similar to this:

Biddy the Darling https://thesession.org/tunes/7452

Although the B part is rather different, the A part is almost identical.

You beat me to it Nigel… 😀 ~

I’ll add those other takes later, rather than first sending them to you under the cover of email… Nice to see that threesome on site here…

X: 1134
T: Rosie Finn’s Favourite / Biddy The Darling
M: 12/8
L: 1/8
R: slide
K: G Major
|: gdB |
G2 B d2 g b2 g d2 B | cBc agf gfe dBA |
G2 B d2 g b2 g d2 B | cBc agf g3 :|
|: -g2 d |
g2 b c’2 b a2 e ege | faf dd/e/f gfe dB/c/d |
g2 b c’2 b a2 e ege | faf def g3 :|

X: 1134
T: Rosie Finn’s Favourite / Biddy The Darling
M: 12/8
L: 1/8
R: slide
K: D Major
|: A |
D2 F A2 d f2 d A2 F | GFG edc dcB AFE |
D2 F A2 d f2 d A2 F |GBG e>dc d3 d2 :|
|: A |
d2 f g2 f e2 B BdB | cec ABc dcB AFA |
d2 f g2 f e2 B BdB | cc/c/c ABc d3 d2 :|

I have this recorded in an old notebood of mine as a tune I learned in the early 70s. I also found it in the following book, and that close to my own notes, ‘old ABCs’, that for reference I’ll add that published version, 1974, next…

“Music From Ireland, Volume Four”
compiled by Dave Bulmer & Neil Sharpley

Page 31, tune #86

X: 86
T: Gan Ainm
S: Bulmer & Sharpley’s “Music of Ireland, Volume Four”
S: an alternate source ~ my own ABCs, early 70’s, with slight differences…
N: I have some vague memory of also seeing this in a collection or Irish music published in Australia around the same time? However, I don’t have my copy at hand to confirm that…
M: 12/8
L: 1/8
R: slide
K: G Major
|: G2 B d2 g b2 g d2 B | cBc agf gfe dBA |
G2 B d2 g b2 g d2 B | cBc agf g3 g3 :|
|: g2 b c’2 b a2 e e2 g | f2 a abg f2 d d3 |
g2 b c’2 b a2 e e2 g | faf def g3 g3 :|

Key signature: D Major
Submitted on September 11th 2007 by ceolachan.
https://thesession.org/tunes/7698

This is on track 2a of Bothy’s Live in Concert CD
https://thesession.org/recordings/5

I was sorting through my old Peter Horan recordings recently when I stumbled across this tune:
http://www.harmonyware.com/tunes/Hornpipe_Z.mp3 . Peter didn’t have a name for it, just said it was a “real old tune”. Obviously it’s “Rosie’s Finn’s”. It’s not so obvious listening to him play it that Peter thought of it as a slide -- the sort of hurky-gurky rhythm he gives it makes me wonder if he thought of it as a barndance.

Anyway, I’ve been searching around the Internet for more information on the tune, and ceolachan’s old notebook from the early 70s is the earliest mention of it I’ve found. Is it possible this tune has a Sligo source? Fred Finn’s wife was named Rose, and (assuming they called her Rosie) “Rosie Finn’s Favourite” is exactly the sort of name they would have stuck on a tune they played whose name they didn’t know. Doesn’t seem like much of a stretch to think that Matt Molloy might have learned it somewhere in the South Sligo / Roscommon area.

Anyway, that’s pure conjecture on my part. I’d be very interested in anything that could help shed some light on the mystery!

I’d always made the assumption that it came from some part of Fred Finn’s musical family, Sol. It sounds to me like Peter Horan was playing as some kind of “hop-jig” , but that’s a debate I don’t want to get into. Undoubtedly different from Matt Molloy’s version with the “Bothy Band”. I see there are only 6 recordings listed as having this tune on them, and they are all “post-Bothy Band”. Not a tune I hear played very much any more, which is a shame. I’d be interested to know more about the tune’s origins too.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5MVDG-YKo78

play video

James Murray tells me that this tune got it’s name because Rose Finn, Fred’s wife, loved it and always requested it. James and Fred often played it together.

Received a new whistle today, one of Misha’s, an MK Midgie, and this was one of two tune I found myself immediately playing. There’s a lot of old fashioned chiff in this whistle and it seems appropriate that a tune I haven’t played in some time suddenly came to it. A second coming was a Welsh air, “Dafydd Y Gareg Wen”, which doesn’t seem to be on site.

Curiously, I found a major change to the entry here. Where as in a past reincarnation of this site all the ABCs in the comments, whether complete or not, and even partials, jumped up to the entry level of dotted notation, here those had all disappeared!? So, risking it would be OK, I’ve added back in the ones above I’d made here in the comments, making sure this time they were complete transcriptions and not missing anything. Ever since that last transformation I’ve done my best to clean up entries where they’d made the rise to dots but weren’t complete. Here’s hoping all that effort wasn’t for not. If I do come across incomplete transcriptions of mine I’ll continue to make the corrections, hoping someone might find them of use, or at the least interesting…

Keep safe, keep sane, keep active - keep making music… ‘c’

@ceolachan – Nice to see you posting tunes again… but I fear you are a little out of practice 😉 . I don’t think you intended bars 5 and 7 only to have 11 beats – and you might also have intended the Cs to be in the octave above (or perhaps not).

I hope all is well with you and your new whistle.

I think there is some problem with the high c. I see an acute accent (or a prime symbol?) whereas an apostrophe is what the system wants: ’

Nice to see ‘c’ here. I’ve been worried.