Boy In The Boat: A Song History
The Boy in the Boat is an Irish reel, usually played in D major as a 32-bar tune of two eight-bar strains, each repeated.[1] Breandán Breathnach's printed setting is classed as D Mixolydian, and the tune is also played in G.[1][2] In Irish it is An Buachaill sa mBád, and it is sometimes called The Little Boy in the Boat.[1]
Winslow Homer, "Dad's Coming!" (from Harper's Weekly, Vol. XVII), wood engraving, November 1, 1873. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Public domain (CC0). An American seaside scene, shown for its subject; it has no connection to the tune.
Two nineteenth-century manuscripts preserve it without a name: Canon James Goodman's Cork collection, compiled around the middle of the century, and Book 2 of the Leitrim musician Stephen Grier's collection of about 1883.[2] A related version, titled "Jenny Picking Cockles," turns up in the Gunn family manuscript from County Fermanagh, dated around 1865.[2] The uilleann piper Leo Rowsome recorded the reel on a Decca 78 in 1948, and Breathnach published it as No. 173 in the first volume of Ceol Rince na hÉireann in 1963.[2]
Fiddler Jimmy Power recorded it in 1965, and piper Joe Shannon played it with Johnny McGreevy on The Noonday Feast.[1] Later recordings come from Lúnasa, Téada, and Peter Carberry with piper Pádraig McGovern.[1] On several recordings it is paired with another reel, The Boy in the Gap, which may come either before or after it.[1]
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