Devil's Dream: A Song History
"Devil's Dream" is a Scottish tune that crossed the Atlantic. The Traditional Tune Archive traces it to "The De'il Among the Tailors," a Scottish reel of the late 1700s, and notes that the Aberdeenshire piper John Sutherland had already written it into his manuscript as "Devil's Dream" around 1785.[1] An earlier writer, Linscott, thought the tune was Irish, but later research points to Scotland.[1] In America the "Dream" title almost always stuck, while in Britain and Ireland the tune is usually known by the tailors title.[1] An Irish tune index lists "The Devil's Dream" as an alternate title of "De'il among the Tailors," cites Francis O'Neill's collections for it, and notes variants in other keys, with a third part, or played as a hornpipe.[2]
L. Prang & Co., “Tailor,” from Prang’s Aids for Object Teaching: Trades & Occupations, color lithograph, ca. 1874. Library of Congress. No known restrictions. The tune is also known as “The De’il Among the Tailors.”
The earliest American copy the Traditional Tune Archive identifies is in the manuscript tune book of Milton Barlow, which he started about 1802; Barlow wrote it under a form of the tailors title, but the archive recognizes the melody as "Devil's Dream." A copy under the "Dream" title appears in M. E. Eames's manuscript collection of 1859.[1] In England, Thomas Hardy's novel The Return of the Native (1878) names it as a dance tune that suggests "the idea of the interminable."[1] The archive treats it chiefly as a tune of the North, though it turns up in the South now and then. Fiddlers who played it included Maine's Mellie Dunham, Henry Ford's champion fiddler of the late 1920s, Harry Daddario of Pennsylvania, and Uncle Jimmy Thompson of Texas and Tennessee.[1]
Early 78-rpm records include Joseph Samuels on Edison (1919), Uncle Steve Hubbard and His Boys on Gennett (around 1928), and Joseph Larocque on Starr (1931). Bill Monroe and the Blue Grass Boys also recorded it for Decca.[1] Most versions are in A major, though the number of parts varies from one source to the next.[1] The tune is included in Stephen Seifert's mountain dulcimer collection Join the Jam II.[3]
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