The Irish Girl reel

Other names for this tune are “The Irish Girl” or “The Wild Irishman”- it goes nicely after O’Rourke’s reel “d|cBA eA fAeA| cBA ec dfed|cA AAA fd ddd|fage dfed| etc”. The tune would have been part of the repertoire of the great Sligo fiddlers Michael Coleman and James Morrison in the early part of the 20th century.

shouldn’t those be A,’s & not G,’s? in the second measure or am I thinking of another tune?

This not the Wild Irishman that I know so that doesn’t help with my quandry. I know that I have played this tune before - somewhere. It’s quite distinctive. The only differences are the g’s versus the a’s that Brad pointed.

Both James Morrison and Packie Dolan (who recorded this tune as “The Irish Girl” in the ‘20s and ‘30s) played A’s instead of G’s in the second measure. O’Neill’s “1001”, in which it is called “The Daisy Field”, also shows A’s instead of G’s, but as written out rolls.

Interestingly, Morrison and Dolan both played the tune without repeats, and this is how it is also presented in O’Neill. So in those days each half was 4 measures repeated. Perhaps it is the modern custom to double the length of these older shorter tunes and turn them into two repeated 8-measure sections - I can’t think of a good reason why.

In O’Neill, the “Wild Irishman” is known as “Boil the Breakfast Early”. Perhaps the name “Wild Irishman” applied to this tune is a spurious one-off; or possibly the result of some confusion along the line, which
could have arisen out of a (very) broad general similarity between the second parts of “Boil the Breakfast Early” and this tune.

Donegal fiddler Danny O’Donnell also playe A, and not G, ~ and without repeats. It’s a ‘single reel’, not a double reel, and it makes a damned nice highland fling too… 😉

~ to a single reel, & changing those Gs to As ~

X: 1
T: Cat On The Roof, The
M: 4/4
L: 1/8
R: reel
K: Dmaj
~F2 FE DEFD | EA,A,A, EA, A,/A,/A, | F2 FE DEFA | B/c/d ec dBAG |
~F3 E DEFD | EA,A,A, EA ~A2 | F2 FE DEFA | cdec d3 e ||
fd ~d2 dfaf | edcd efge | fddc dfaf | gfeg fd d/d/d |
fddc df ~a2 | edcd efge | dfaf ~g2 ag | faeg fd d2 |]

Submitted on April 11th 2010 by ceolachan.
https://thesession.org/tunes/10413

This is the reel Liam O’Flynn calls O’Rourtke’s on his CD The Given Note.

Here is the version published by O’Neill in Dance Music of Ireland - 1001 Gems (1907), p. 100, no. 538, as The Daisy Field.

As played by County Tyrone fiddler Tom Turkington on track 4 of “Traditional Dance Music of Ireland”, recorded by Peter Kennedy in the 1950s, I believe.

A really cool mixolydian version played by County Waterford fiddler Jimmy Power on CD 1, track 11 of “It Was Mighty”, with Patsy Goulding on piano. He plays it in an absolutely wonderful set with “The College Groves” (also in mixolydian) and “Jenny Picking Cockles”. Recorded in 1959.

Based on the Kevin Burke version.

This setting is very like ceolachan’s X:2 but the last two bars give a different way to get back to the start.
It is how Matt Cranitch plays it in this clip from RTE Archives.
https://www.rte.ie/archives/2020/1111/1177496-slides-and-reels/