Glad Eye: A Song History

← Back to Browse By Song

In DulciWhistle, the Fingers Of Steel songbook in which John Keane and Karen Keane pair the mountain dulcimer with the pennywhistle, "Glad Eye" is the thirteenth of fourteen tunes, second from the end of the song list.[1] The book's contents page, reproduced among the listing's images, places it on pages 28–29 and matches it with track 13 of the book's CD and with a separate instrumental track, number 25, adding that every song on that CD opens with two measures of percussion.[1] The listing describes the whole collection as original work by the two Keanes and not especially difficult, yet it names no single composer for this piece and gives no tuning.[1] The current download packages the full 33-page PDF with a separate PDF for each song and MP3 recordings of every title.[1]

Ink and wash drawing of a man embracing a woman who holds a fan beside a brick wall, as other figures approach

Giovanni Domenico Tiepolo, A Flirtation, pen and brown ink, brown wash, over black chalk, ca. 1797. Shown for its flirting couple; it has no connection to the tune.

Both Keanes hold degrees in music education from Northeast Louisiana University, now the University of Louisiana-Monroe, and their DulcimerDownloads pages say that between them they have taught for more than seven decades.[2][3] The same pages say the couple hail from Shreveport, Louisiana, and perform a range that takes in Mississippi Delta blues, bluegrass, folk, humorous novelty numbers and Louisiana traditional music, and they credit the pair with several books and CDs of their own compositions for mountain dulcimer and Native American flute.[2][3] The sources consulted here list no release of "Glad Eye" apart from the book's own audio, and they say nothing about how the tune was named.[1][2][3]

As an English expression, "glad eye" is a noun that Merriam-Webster glosses first as a warm, friendly look of welcome and, in its more common use, as a glance that signals sexual interest and invites advances.[4] Dictionary.com labels it informal, treats it as a look of friendliness or interest, flirtation in particular, and dates its first recording to 1910–15.[5] None of the sources consulted here connects either sense of the phrase to the Keanes' tune.[1][4][5]

Our book that contains the song "Glad Eye"

Sources

  1. Fingers Of Steel: "John Keane And Karen Keane, DulciWhistle".
  2. DulcimerDownloads: "John Keane".
  3. DulcimerDownloads: "Karen Keane".
  4. Merriam-Webster: "Glad eye".
  5. Dictionary.com: "Glad eye".
  6. Image: Giovanni Domenico Tiepolo, A Flirtation, pen and brown ink, brown wash, over black chalk, ca. 1797. The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

← Back to Browse By Song