Lakes Of Sligo: A Song History
"The Lakes of Sligo" is an Irish tune in D major in two eight-bar strains, each played twice; irishtune.info calls it a polka, while the Traditional Tune Archive classes it as a march or polka.[1][2] According to the Archive, the polka takes its title from a song that Connie Foley recorded in Boston in the 1950s, accompanied by the trio of button accordionist Joe Derrane.[1] That account sits alongside an earlier date on irishtune.info, whose oldest listed source is a recording from about 1937 featuring the singer Jack Healy with Killorans Irish Entertainers, later issued by the Coleman Archive.[2] The tune circulates under other names too, among them "The Lass o' Gowrie" and "Tom Billy's," and irishtune.info adds "Clare's Dragoons."[1][2] In the Sliabh Luachra district, the accordion player Johnny O'Leary, who knew no title for it, recorded it as "The Ceanngulla Polka," after the townland where the fiddlers Pádraig O'Keefe and Denis Murphy used to play.[1] The Archive also cites Bayard (1981), who grouped it with tunes such as "Over the Hills to Glory" and "I'm O'er Young to Marry Yet," all of which he thought descended from a single air.[1]
Accordion, mahogany, tortoiseshell, paper, leather, ca. 1835. An early accordion, shown for the button accordionists linked with the tune; it has no connection to them.
The Kilfenora Céilí Band recorded it in the late 1950s, and later versions include Jimmy Doyle and Dan O'Leary's on Traditional Music from the Kingdom of Kerry (about 1977), Seamus Quinn and James McDonagh's The Mountain Road (1999), and John Wynne and John McEvoy's Pride of the West (2007).[1][2] In print it appears in Bulmer and Sharpley's Music from Ireland, Volume 4 (1976), from the playing of concertina player Chris Droney, and in Martin Mulvihill's First Collection (1986) and Matt Cranitch's Irish Fiddle Book (1988).[1][2]
"Lakes Of Sligo" is on the song list of Irish Tunes For Dulcimer, Volume 1, a 41-tune sheet-music book that Mark Gilston publishes himself as the first half of a two-volume set of Irish melodies.[3]
Sources
- The Traditional Tune Archive: "Lakes of Sligo (The)".
- irishtune.info: "Lakes of Sligo".
- Mark Gilston: "Irish Tunes For Dulcimer, Volume 1".
- Image: Accordion, mahogany, tortoiseshell, paper, leather, ca. 1835. The Metropolitan Museum of Art.