Saddle The Pony: A Song History

← Back to Browse By Song

The jig most players know as "Saddle the Pony" is a double jig in G major, built from two repeated eight-bar parts, and irishtune.info's index also finds it as "The Priest's Leap," "The Red Stockings," and under the Irish title Cuir Diallait ar an gCapaillín.[1] According to the Traditional Tune Archive, in some areas it is among the first jigs young players are taught, though it is less familiar elsewhere.[2] The Archive traces it in print to William Bradbury Ryan's Mammoth Collection (Boston, 1883), where it is called "Rough Diamond," and finds variants, many of them untitled, in R. M. Levey's second collection (1873) and in the fourth volume of Kerr's Merry Melodies.[2] The earliest printing in irishtune.info's listing is no. 912 in F. and J. O'Neill's O'Neill's Music of Ireland, which the index dates to 1903.[1]

Dark saddled horse standing in a farmyard beside a fence and trees

Winslow Homer, Saddle Horse in Farm Yard, oil on wood, ca. 1870–75. A saddled horse, shown for the title; the American painting has no connection to the Irish jig.

The tune also had a life in America: the Archive says New England contra dance bands took it up for a time, possibly through the influence of the Boston accordionists Jerry O'Brien and Joe Derrane, and it cites Martin Mulvihill as naming it a popular tune for dancing the Haymakers' Jig in New York around the middle of the twentieth century.[2] Recordings indexed by irishtune.info include O'Brien's accordion version of about 1948, the McDonaghs of Ballinafad (about 1969), flute player Seamus Tansey with fiddler Jim McKillop (about 1998), and the piper David Power (about 2005).[1] Other jigs have carried the same name: the Archive gives one in A that the O'Neills printed in 1903, and another in D, now usually called "Humors of Glendart," which researcher Conor Ward reports was titled "Saddle the Pony" in nineteenth-century musicians' manuscripts from County Longford.[3][4]

"Saddle The Pony" is listed among the contents of Mark Gilston's Irish Tunes For Dulcimer, Volume 2, a 52-page book of sheet music from his two-volume Irish set, with each piece written for a single mountain dulcimer in DAD.[5]

Our book that contains the song "Saddle The Pony"

Sources

  1. irishtune.info (Alan Ng): "Saddle the Pony".
  2. The Traditional Tune Archive: "Saddle the Pony (1)".
  3. The Traditional Tune Archive: "Saddle the Pony (5)".
  4. The Traditional Tune Archive: "Saddle the Pony (6)".
  5. Mark Gilston: "Irish Tunes For Dulcimer, Volume 2".
  6. Image: Winslow Homer, Saddle Horse in Farm Yard, oil on wood, ca. 1870–75. The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

← Back to Browse By Song