Harvest Home: A Song History

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"The Harvest Home" is a hornpipe in D major, usually played in two repeated parts[1][2]. It travels under several other names: Alan Ng's irishtune.info lists "Harvest Time," the Irish-language "Baile an Fhómhair," "The Cork Hornpipe" and "The Cincinnati Hornpipe"[2]. According to the Traditional Tune Archive, the Cincinnati name is the one used in Ohio and by players who learned the tune from Ryan's Mammoth Collection (1883)[1][3]. The title itself recalls a rural custom: in parts of the British Isles, the Tune Archive explains, a "harvest home" meant a community dance held once the crops were in[1].

Pieter Bruegel the Elder painting of harvesters cutting golden wheat and resting for a meal under a pear tree

Pieter Bruegel the Elder, The Harvesters, oil on wood, 1565. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Public domain (CC0). A harvest scene centuries older than the tune; it has no connection to it.

The Tune Archive traces early versions to English manuscripts, beginning with the music book of the Browne family of Troutbeck in the Lake District (c. 1825) and continuing with fiddlers' books from Northumberland and Lancashire in the 1830s; it reports the tune in North America by the 1840s[1]. The earliest dated printing among the Tune Archive's printed sources is Manson's Hamilton's Universal Tune Book, volume 2 (1846), which IMSLP also gives as its first publication[1][4]; later printings include Kerr's Merry Melodies (c. 1880)[1], and Francis O'Neill included it in Music of Ireland (1903, No. 1603)[1][2][4]. The Scottish-born fiddler William Craig recorded it for Edison in 1909, paired with "Stirling Castle"; the Tune Archive observes that the recording introduces it as a reel, though Craig keeps its hornpipe lilt[1][5]. Fiddler Michael Coleman recorded it as a violin solo with piano in New York around October 1921, issued on Columbia E7396[6].

The Tune Archive notes that it is often paired with "The Boys of Bluehill" in Irish sessions and counts as something of a beginner's tune in English ones[1]. Fiddler William "Jinky" Wells played it for the Bampton morris dancers in Oxfordshire, though the Tune Archive stresses that it is not a morris tune and is seldom used for the dance now[1]. In Quebec, accordionist Tommy Duchesne recorded it in Montreal in 1936 under the title "Reel des récoltes"[1].

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Sources

  1. Traditional Tune Archive: "Harvest Home (1)".
  2. irishtune.info (Alan Ng): "Harvest Home".
  3. Traditional Tune Archive: "Cincinnati Hornpipe (1)".
  4. IMSLP: "Harvest Home Hornpipe (Anonymous)".
  5. Raretunes: "William Craig".
  6. Discography of American Historical Recordings (UCSB): "Columbia matrix 87798. Harvest home: Hornpipe / Michael Coleman".