Drunken Landlady: A Song History
The Drunken Landlady is a two-part Irish reel, usually played in E Dorian, and it also goes by the Irish title Bean an Tí ar Meisce.[1] Séamus Ennis is the musician most often named as its source; according to the piper Néillidh Mulligan, Ennis came across it without a name in Inishnee, Connemara, in the 1940s and only later heard County Cavan players call it The Drunken Landlady.[2] Fr. John Quinn has pointed to a related melody, "Pretty Girls of Gorey," in James Goodman's mid-nineteenth-century manuscript collection.[2] Its resemblance to "Pigeon on the Gate" has often been remarked on, and the two can be confused at sessions.[1][2]
Frans Hals, Young Man and Woman in an Inn, oil on canvas, 1623. Shown for its subject; it has no connection to the song.
The tune reached commercial records only in the 1970s, and printed collections a decade later.[2] The earliest recording listed on irishtune.info is by the Bothy Band, on Out of the Wind into the Sun (1977), followed by the concertina-and-fiddle duo Noel Hill and Tony Linnane in 1978.[1] Breandán Breathnach printed it in a 1982 article on Ennis, and it soon appeared in tune books by Tommy Peoples and Martin Mulvihill.[1][2] Later recordings include those by whistle player Mary Bergin, piper Liam O'Flynn, flute player Catherine McEvoy, and the group Usher's Island, who open a set with it.[1]
It remains a session standard, included in Dave Mallinson's 100 Essential Irish Session Tunes.[1] Aaron O'Rourke includes it in Irish Session Tunes, Volume 2, a mountain dulcimer tablature book of jigs, reels and polkas commonly heard at Irish sessions, in DAD tuning, published by Fingers Of Steel.[3]
Sources
- irishtune.info: "Drunken Landlady".
- Traditional Tune Archive: "Drunken Landlady (The)".
- Fingers Of Steel: "Aaron O'Rourke, Irish Session Tunes, Volume 2".
- Image: Frans Hals, Young Man and Woman in an Inn, oil on canvas, 1623. The Metropolitan Museum of Art.