Rambling Pitchfork: A Song History

← Back to Browse By Song

"The Rambling Pitchfork" is an Irish double jig, usually played in D major, with two eight-bar parts that are each repeated.[1] The Traditional Tune Archive reads the title as a name for a wandering farm labourer, called after the implement he worked with.[2] Over time it has picked up a long string of other names, among them "The Fisherman's Widow," "Baxter's Jig," "Roland's Return," "The Friendly Neighbour" and, in Irish, "An Píce Fánach."[1][2]

An etched hayfield where one labourer swings a scythe, two more work in the distance, and another sits in the foreground sharpening his blade.

Charles-François Daubigny, Hay-making, cliché-verre, 1862 (printed 1921). Mowers in a French hayfield, shown for the farm labourer of the title; it has no connection to the tune.

Related settings appear in nineteenth-century print: George Petrie's Ancient Music of Ireland (1855) has a version called "Pipe on the Hob," which he had from P.W. Joyce, and R.M. Levey published the jig in London in 1858, adding in 1873 a setting closer to the one heard in sessions now.[2] Frank Roche included it as "Roland's Return" in his 1912 collection.[2] The fiddler Michael Coleman recorded it in 1921, and irishtune.info lists several more recordings from that decade, among them a 1926 disc by Edward Mullaney and Patrick Stack.[1][2] The Tune Archive also passes on a recollection that the Milltown Malbay piper Willie Clancy loved to dance to it, lilting the tune as he stepped.[2]

On their 1978 album Doublin', Paddy Glackin and Paddy Keenan set it beside "The Sporting Pitchfork," a pairing known as "The Pitchforks."[2] The recordings gathered by irishtune.info run as late as 2014.[1] Aaron O'Rourke arranges it in DAD tuning for Irish Session Tunes, Volume 1, a Fingers Of Steel collection of 36 jigs, reels and polkas for mountain dulcimer that also introduces session playing and Irish ornamentation.[3]

Our book that contains the song "Rambling Pitchfork"

Sources

  1. irishtune.info: "Rambling Pitchfork".
  2. The Traditional Tune Archive: "Rambling Pitchfork (The)".
  3. Fingers Of Steel: "Aaron O'Rourke, Irish Session Tunes, Volume 1".
  4. Image: Charles-François Daubigny, Hay-making, cliché-verre, 1862 (printed 1921). The Cleveland Museum of Art.

← Back to Browse By Song