Kiss Her An Clap Her (jig) on The Session

Great title

Another Shetland tune that they taught us at the fiddle frenzy this summer. Apparently a wedding tune, played as a cue for the groom’s party to “get to know” the bride’s party, hence the title. Don’t know of any recorded sources, but the page with the dots that they gave us says “As played by Peter Fraser”. I think it makes a neat set followed by Langstrom’s pony, although some of the similarities can make for confusion and crosstalk.

ABC style

While we’re at it ~ 4 bar lines and other conventions of consideration ~

K: A Mixolydian

Sorry, I forgot to add that… It resolves on A, not D… I guess maybe I’m not as wasted as I thought… 😎

Done

Thanks for the pointers. I have pasted your version into the ABC, ceolachan, but it won’t let me change the K: field, so I suppose that that will have to stand. Now I won’t be able to submit any more until I learn all about modes. Could be decades.

reedy grins, You change the K: field by going to the title page and clicking on “edit details”.

Done again

Thanks, Dow. I just hope that A mixolydian is right.

It is.

Speed?

How fast does this go when its doing is=ts job of introducing the two sides at a Shetland wedding?
Noel

L: 1/8 ~ N3 (=3/8) = 140 to 150 bpm approximately (144 - 152, 1930s)

“The Fiddle Tradition of the Shetland Isles”
by Peter Cooke - Senior Lecturer and head of Ethnomusicology, Edinburgh University
Cambridge Studies in Ethnomusicology
Cambridge University Press, 1986

Pages 81 - 82

Ceremonial music
1. Wedding tunes

The traditional role of the fiddler at weddings in Shetland has already been mentioned. In addition to dance music, including that for the ritually important Bride’s Reels, the fiddler was required to provide music at several other points in the rite. Peter Fraser, in his dialect account of an ‘Old Time Shetland Wedding’, a description of the last old style wedding in his parish over 50 (70) years ago (‘Shetland Folk Book’, vol. 2, 1957), mentioned five tunes that were required for the ritual in his district. As a fiddler himself, he knew all the tunes and communicated them to the Swedish researcher, Otto Andersson, in the 1930s. As a member of the Shetland Folk Society, Peter Fraser also introduced them to members of the Shetland fiddle band and recorded them for their principal collector, Tom Anderson. (“Da Mirrie Dancers”)

In his account the fiddler accompanied the groom’s party during their trek to the bride’s home, playing for some light-hearted dancing en route and striking up on arrival with the tune ‘Du’s Bon Lang Awa and A’m Tocht Lang ta See Dee’. ~ The tune was known nowhere else in Shetland. The second melody played almost immediately afterwards was a cue for the groom’s party to kiss the bridesmaids ceremonially and was called ‘Kiss Her and Clap Her’ (Fraser, 1957, p. 60). This title is reminiscent of a first line that Burns once noted for the song ‘Here Awa, There Awa, Wandering Willie’, ‘Gin ye meet my love, kiss her and clap her’, and its three verses, presumably traditional, which were collected by Herd, contained segments that make them suitable for bridal rites. The first verse runs:

Here awa, there awa, wandering Willie,
Here awa, there awa, wandering Willie,
Lang have I sought thee,
Dear have I bought thee,
Now I have gotten my Willie again…

(J.C.Dick, 1962, pp. 128 and 398-9)

Peter Fraser’s tune (basically the same as this transcription) could fit Burns’ words quite neatly but the tune bears no resemblance to any published melodies for this song. ~

The B part is very much like Mac’s Fancy.

Kiss Her An Clap Her jig

Three settings

Eleven comments