There are 3 recordings of this tune.
Vallafield has been added to 10 tunebooks.
supposed to be a ‘trowie’ tune, heard in Unst, Shetland
"VALLAFIELD Traditional
This is the only trowie tune we know of from Unst. The story goes that a man heard it on his way home one evening when he stopped to have a smoke in the shelter of Gullahammer at the south end of Vallafield. The music seemed to be coming out of the face of the rock and was very eerie. Belief in those days was that cold steel fended off evil spirits, so he reached for his pocket knife. As his fingers touched the steel, the music stopped. He still retained the tune in his memory, so when he got home he could sing it over to his daughter who played the fiddle. It was she who gave the Westing a new tune called Vallafield."
- Tom Anderson and Tom Georgeson, ‘Da Mirrie Dancers’ (Lerwick 1970)
which I’m enjoying playing. Thanks for sharing it!
Yes! ~ very ‘country dance’, a la Playford. I suspect it would have had a more pronounced single jig bounce to it too, more slow-quick, or N2 N, like the first measure…
I mean on D whistle. You can do some really cool turns on those C nats. Love it. Then, it would be good to go into something appropriate in D to really confuse people. Any suggestions?
I think the natural inclination from C would be either G Major or A Dorian rather than D Major, don’t yuh think? 😉
Well, the point was, a truck driver’s gear shift like going up from C to D, on a D whistle, would be dramatic. And cheeky. I thought it would be a good joke.
What? You’re not taking this music seriously enough… 😉
Grinding gears! Think of your bicycle. What use is just one extra cog in a gear, eh? Drama, or ‘effect’, would be a leap like from that last c, either going up or down by more than a third…