Kid On The Mountain: A Song History

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"The Kid on the Mountain" is an Irish slip jig in E minor, and sources differ on its length: irishtune.info sets it out in five eight-bar parts while noting that it also turns up in G, without its fourth part, or with an added sixth, and the Traditional Tune Archive's printed settings range from four parts in Breathnach to six in O'Neill's own collections.[1][2] In Irish it is An Mionnán ar an Sliabh (spellings vary), and it also goes by "The Bottle of Wine," the name of a song sung to the tune.[1][2] P. W. Joyce printed it without a title, labelled a "hop jig," in Old Irish Folk Music and Songs (1909).[2] Francis O'Neill had already included it in Music of Ireland (1903, No. 1155), then in The Dance Music of Ireland (1907, No. 434) and O'Neill's Irish Music (1915).[2][1]

Etching of several goats resting and standing among rocks and bushes

Johann Heinrich Roos, Goats, etching, 1665. Goats among rocks, shown for the young goat of the title; it has no connection to the tune.

The Traditional Tune Archive gives the first recording as a 1923 disc by the uilleann piper Tom Ennis and the Sligo fiddler James Morrison, with John Muller at the piano, and says Michael Coleman's recording of the 1930s became a famous one.[2] The title is older than those recordings, though: the Archive notes that it was first attached to a different melody, which the piper Dinney Delaney recorded in 1898.[2] Breandán Breathnach printed the slip jig in the second volume of Ceol Rince na hÉireann (1976), from P. O'Loughlin of Largy, Miltown Malbay, County Clare, and it is No. 301 in Terry Moylan's 1994 book Johnny O'Leary of Sliabh Luachra.[2][1]

Its 1970s recordings include Kevin Burke's on Sweeney's Dream and Planxty's, with Liam O'Flynn on pipes, on The Well Below the Valley, both from 1973, along with versions by the Chieftains, by Tommy Peoples and Paul Brady, and by the Bothy Band, who played it after "Seán Buí" on Old Hag You Have Killed Me (1976).[1][2] Dulcimer players will find it in Irish Tunes For Dulcimer, Volume 2, the second half of a two-volume set of Irish melodies that Mark Gilston compiled and published himself, where it is set for a single mountain dulcimer in DAD tuning.[3]

Our book that contains the song "Kid On The Mountain"

Sources

  1. irishtune.info: "Kid on the Mountain".
  2. The Traditional Tune Archive: "Kid on the Mountain (1) (The)".
  3. Mark Gilston: "Irish Tunes For Dulcimer, Volume 2".
  4. Image: Johann Heinrich Roos, Goats, etching, 1665. The Cleveland Museum of Art.

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