Gillian's Apples: A Song History

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"Gillian's Apples" is an Irish double jig whose common title is, in the Traditional Tune Archive's words, "a mis-hearing of the name Gillan."[1] The collector Francis O'Neill, in Irish Folk Music: A Fascinating Hobby (1910), traces the jig to the manuscript collection of John Gillan, a Longford-born retired businessman whose papers had come from noted players of Longford and Leitrim.[2] There it bore the title "Apples in Winter"; since a different jig had already been published under that name, O'Neill renamed it after Gillan to prevent a mix-up.[2] He credits John Hicks with the opening pair of strains and does not say who wrote the last two, remarking only that their author clearly knew how to compose.[2] The Archive dates the renaming to 1903, the year of O'Neill's Music of Ireland, and points to a nearly identical tune printed as "Apples in Winter" in O'Farrell's Collection of National Irish Music for the Union Pipes (Dublin, 1804).[1][3]

Painting of a woman offering a basket of apples to a seated woman and children under trees, with a small dog

Pierre-Auguste Renoir, The Apple Seller, oil on fabric, c. 1890. Shown for the apples in the tune’s title; it has no connection to the tune.

The title is shared by two jigs: irishtune.info indexes a four-part tune in D major and a two-part tune in G major as separate but comparable tunes, and the Traditional Tune Archive likewise keeps two entries.[3][4][5] O'Neill's renamed jig, with its four strains, corresponds to the first of these.[2][3] That tune was recorded on concertina by William Mullaly in 1927, and later by the pipers Leo Rowsome and Séamus Ennis and by the fiddlers Andy McGann and Paddy Reynolds.[3] The two-part jig, also found under titles such as "Rise the Grouse" and "Fruit for Ladies," was recorded by the Chieftains on their 1969 album 2 and appears in Dave Mallinson's 100 Enduring Irish Session Tunes.[4][5]

Aaron O'Rourke includes a tune titled "Gillian's Apples" in Irish Session Tunes, Volume 2, a book of jigs, reels and polkas from the Irish session repertoire arranged for mountain dulcimer, published by Fingers Of Steel.[6]

Our book that contains the song "Gillian's Apples"

Sources

  1. The Traditional Tune Archive: "Annotation:Gillan's Apples (1)".
  2. Internet Archive: Francis O'Neill, "Irish Folk Music: A Fascinating Hobby" (Chicago, 1910).
  3. irishtune.info (Alan Ng): "Gillan's Apples" (Tune ID #719).
  4. irishtune.info (Alan Ng): "Gillan's Apples" (Tune ID #2368).
  5. The Traditional Tune Archive: "Annotation:Gillan's Apples (2)".
  6. Fingers Of Steel: "Aaron O'Rourke, Irish Session Tunes, Volume 2".
  7. Image: Pierre-Auguste Renoir, The Apple Seller, oil on fabric, c. 1890. The Cleveland Museum of Art.

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