Killavil: A Song History

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Killavil is a parish in the south of County Sligo, and the Traditional Tune Archive notes that the fiddler Michael Coleman was born there.[1] The Irish Traditional Music Archive gives the date as 31 January 1891 and the townland as Knockgrania.[2] Several Irish tunes are named for the place, and the main subject here is a double jig in E Dorian that also goes by "Trip to Killavil," "Around Killaville" and "Port Shligigh."[1][3]

Watercolor sketch of a cabin interior with a spinning wheel, a ladder and hanging cloth

David Wilkie, study for The Peep-O'-Day Boys' Cabin, in the West of Ireland, watercolor and gouache, 1835. A cabin interior in the west of Ireland, the region where Killavil lies; it has no connection to the tune.

The oldest source irishtune.info lists for the jig dates from 1963, and the earliest of the books it cites is Breandán Breathnach's Ceol Rince na hÉireann, Volume 1.[3] Larry and Michael Joe McDonagh played it with the fiddler Paddy Ryan on an album of Sligo music from about 1969, and the flute player Seamus Tansey recorded it soon after.[3] Matt Molloy's flute setting, made with Tommy Peoples and Paul Brady, was recorded in 1977 and appears on a Green Linnet album the Traditional Tune Archive dates to 1978, following "Scotsman Over the Border."[3][1] It is occasionally paired with "The Lilting Banshee," a combination the Traditional Tune Archive links to recordings by the Castle Céilí Band and others, and Dervish opened a Killavil set with it on two albums in the 1990s.[1][3]

"The Killavil Fancy" is a separate tune, a G-major reel also called "The Ten Pound Float" and "Éilís Ní Bhrógáin," which the Traditional Tune Archive describes as Sligo in origin and which Willie Clancy recorded on whistle around 1967.[4][5] Two further jigs carry the name: the archive's D-major "Killavil Jig (2)," also known as "Limerick Roses" and first recorded by the fiddler Hugh Gillespie, and a G-major "Killavil Jig" that irishtune.info knows from a recording by the flute player Peter Horan.[6][7] Aaron O'Rourke's Fingers Of Steel book Irish Session Tunes, Volume 1 gathers 36 reels, jigs and polkas from the Irish session repertoire, every one set in DAD tuning for mountain dulcimer, and its contents page places "Killavil" in the jig section without saying which tune of that name it is.[8]

Our book that contains the song "Killavil"

Sources

  1. The Traditional Tune Archive: "Killavil Jig (1)".
  2. Irish Traditional Music Archive: "Michael Coleman".
  3. irishtune.info: "Killavil Jig".
  4. The Traditional Tune Archive: "Killavil Fancy".
  5. irishtune.info: "Killavil Fancy".
  6. The Traditional Tune Archive: "Killavil Jig (2)".
  7. irishtune.info: "Killavil Jig" (Tansey's Fancy).
  8. Fingers Of Steel: "Aaron O'Rourke, Irish Session Tunes, Volume 1".
  9. Image: David Wilkie, study for The Peep-O'-Day Boys' Cabin, in the West of Ireland, watercolor and gouache, 1835. The Cleveland Museum of Art.

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