Paddy Scanlon's: A Song History
"Paddy Scanlon's" is an Irish polka in G major, made of two strains that are each played twice.[1] It also goes by "Paddy Scanlon's Polka," "Martin Mulvihill's Polka" and "I Looked East and I Looked West."[1][2] The Scanlon of the title was a musician from the border country between County Kerry and County Limerick.[1] Where the tune itself came from is not recorded in the sources consulted here.[1][2]
Lace Handkerchief, Ireland, Limerick, linen center with a border of machine-made net embroidered in tambour work (Limerick lace), 1860–99. Limerick lace, shown for the county the polka is tied to; it has no connection to the tune.
The tune stands as polka number one in the 1986 First Collection of Martin Mulvihill (1919–1987), a native of Glin in west Limerick who became known in New York as a fiddler and teacher.[1][2] The fiddler Julia Clifford recorded it under the title "I Looked East and I Looked West" on the 1976 album The Humours of Lisheen, made with John Clifford.[1][2] Mulvihill put his own fiddle version on record around 1978 for Traditional Irish Fiddling from County Limerick, with Mick Moloney, and later recordings came from Sliabh Notes in 2002 and from Aoife Ní Chaoimh with Paudie O'Connor in 2014.[1][2] Mountain dulcimer players will find it, set in DAD tuning, among the further jigs, reels and polkas from the session repertoire that Aaron O'Rourke arranged for Irish Session Tunes, Volume 2, a 53-page Fingers Of Steel book whose download also supplies each tune as its own PDF.[3]
Sources
- Traditional Tune Archive: "Paddy Scanlon's".
- irishtune.info: "I Looked East and I Looked West".
- Fingers Of Steel: "Aaron O'Rourke, Irish Session Tunes, Volume 2".
- Image: Lace Handkerchief, Ireland, Limerick, linen center with a border of machine-made net embroidered in tambour work (Limerick lace), 1860–99. The Cleveland Museum of Art.