Job Of Journey Work: A Song History
"The Job of Journeywork" is an Irish set dance in D, one of the four pieces known in Irish tradition as the Traditional Sets, together with "St. Patrick's Day," "The Blackbird" and "The Garden of Daisies."[1] Alan Ng's index of Irish recordings and tune books also files it as a set dance in D major, listing spellings such as "Job o' Journeywork."[2] In 1954 the folklorist Samuel Bayard used its name for a whole family of related melodies, and the Traditional Tune Archive observes that the tune's second strain has given rise to the most variants.[1] Merriam-Webster defines journeywork as a journeyman's work or as hackwork; the sources consulted here do not say how the word came to name the tune.[3]
Carpenter's Plane, wood, early 1600s. A carpenter's plane, a journeyman's tool, shown for the tune's title; it has no connection to the tune.
According to the Traditional Tune Archive, the tune's first printed appearance appears to be in the third volume of Glasgow publisher James Aird's Selection of Scotch, English, Irish and Foreign Airs (1788), and the manuscript book of Connecticut fifer Giles Gibb calls the melody "Stone Grinds All."[1] Robert Burns set his song "Here's His Health in Water" to the melody.[1] P. W. Joyce, who learned it from pipers and fiddlers, recalled it as a great favorite in parts of Munster twenty or thirty years before he first published his collection in 1873.[1] Francis O'Neill printed it in O'Neill's Music of Ireland (1903) and again in The Dance Music of Ireland (1907), and in 1922 he wrote that the set dance had grown from a song air.[1][2]
Recordings include Leo Rowsome's of 1925 and fiddler Michael Coleman's of 1935, and later ones came from piper Paddy Keenan and the Chieftains.[1][2] A tune titled "Job Of Journey Work" is listed among the D tunes in Phyllis Gaskins's Galax Dulcimer: A Job Of Journey Work, a Galax-style mountain dulcimer book with photos, anecdotes and historical background, published by Fingers Of Steel.[4]
