Blackthorn Stick: A Song History

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“The Blackthorn Stick” is a double jig, usually in G major, with two repeated eight-bar parts, though some printed versions set it in A.[1][2] It has gathered many other names, among them “The Humours of Bantry,” “The Coach Road to Sligo,” “Boys of Rockhill,” “Billy Patterson” and “Fire on the Mountain.”[1][2] The Traditional Tune Archive cites Bayard’s 1981 verdict that it is a characteristically Irish jig, “probably of no great age.”[1] Among the earliest printings the Archive lists are Kerr’s Merry Melodies (c. 1880) and Ryan’s Mammoth Collection (1883), and the researcher Conor Ward has found it as an untitled air in P. W. Joyce’s Old Irish Folk Music and Songs (1909).[1]

Dark knobbly Irish walking stick with a round amber-colored handle

Cane, Irish, wood and metal, late 19th century. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Public domain (CC0). The museum’s record does not say what wood the stick is made of.

Francis O’Neill printed the jig, though not under this name: it is “The Humors of Bantry” in his Music of Ireland (1903, No. 711), Dance Music of Ireland (1907, No. 13) and O’Neill’s Irish Music (1915).[2][3] Two O’Neill pieces that do carry the title “The Blackthorn Stick” are different tunes, a short set dance in Dance Music of Ireland (No. 984) and a 6/8 air in Music of Ireland (No. 458).[4][5] Early recordings of the jig are likewise filed under other names: the piper Liam Walsh and fiddler J. O’Mahoney recorded it in 1926 under the Bantry title, and recordings by the Flanagan Brothers (1929) and by the fiddler Paddy Killoran (New York, 1936) are indexed as “The Coach Road to Sligo.”[2][3][6] The Tune Archive’s entry for the tune also lists a 1935 Beltona 78 by Jimmy Shand.[7]

The same entry places the tune in England, Scotland, Canada and the United States as well as Ireland, and the Archive notes that it was one of the jigs used to accompany English rapper sword dancing.[1][7] Later recordings listed there include two Saydisc releases by the McPeake Family.[1] Other tunes share the name: irishtune.info gives “The Blackthorn Stick” as one title of the jig “The Maid at the Well,” and the reel that Michael Coleman recorded around 1924, indexed under titles including “The Real Blackthorn Stick,” is a different tune in D.[8][9]

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Sources

  1. The Traditional Tune Archive: "Annotation:Blackthorn Stick (1)".
  2. irishtune.info (Alan Ng): "Coach Road to Sligo" (tune #2352).
  3. The Traditional Tune Archive: "Annotation:Humors of Bantry".
  4. The Traditional Tune Archive: "Annotation:Blackthorn Stick (2)".
  5. The Traditional Tune Archive: "Annotation:Blackthorn Stick (3) (The)".
  6. The Traditional Tune Archive: "Annotation:Coach Road to Sligo (1) (The)".
  7. The Traditional Tune Archive: "Blackthorn Stick (1)".
  8. irishtune.info (Alan Ng): "Maid at the Well" (tune #170).
  9. irishtune.info (Alan Ng): "Blackthorn Stick" (reel, tune #172).