Paddy Whack: A Song History
"Paddy Whack" is a double jig, usually played in G major, that also served as a quick march and turns up in Irish, Scottish, English and American sources.[1] Its name comes from a song of the same title.[1] Thomas Moore fitted new words to the melody: his "While History's Muse," which the Traditional Tune Archive describes as an ode in praise of Wellington, appears in his Irish Melodies with the air named as "Paddy Whack."[1][2]
Daniel Burnap, Eight-Day Tall Case Clock with Musical Movement, cherry, pine, brass, glass, 1790–95. A New England musical tall clock of the 1790s; a few such clocks play the tune, but nothing shows that this one does.
The tune appears in Rutherford's country dance collection of about 1756 and in the third volume of Charles and Samuel Thompson's country dances in 1773, while John Glen (1891) placed its earliest Scottish printing in Robert Ross's collection of 1780.[1] It was often included in instrumental tutors, most of them for fife, in Britain and America, among them Joshua Cushing's Fifer's Companion No. 1 (Salem, Massachusetts, 1805), and a few surviving New England musical clocks from the late eighteenth century play it.[1] In the 1930s it was reported to be a regular at country dances in Orange County, New York.[1] Larry Conger arranges it in DAD tuning in Flat-Picked Fiddle Tunes, a Fingers Of Steel collection of fiddle tunes that its listing offers as a change from the "same old" songs in many books.[3]
Sources
- Traditional Tune Archive: "Paddy Whack (1)".
- Library Ireland: "While History's Muse. Air: Paddy Whack" (Moore's Irish Melodies).
- Fingers Of Steel: "Larry Conger, Flat-Picked Fiddle Tunes".
- Image: Daniel Burnap, Eight-Day Tall Case Clock with Musical Movement, cherry, pine, brass, glass, 1790–95. The Metropolitan Museum of Art.