Silver Spear: A Song History

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"The Silver Spear" is an Irish reel in D major, built from two parts that are each played twice.[1][2] The Traditional Tune Archive counts it among the core tunes of the Irish session, though it notes the reel was once even more popular than it is today.[1] It travels under a long list of other names, among them "Sliabh Bána," "The Top of the Cliff," "Miss Lane's Fancy," "The Silver Tip" and "Anderson's."[1][2] According to the Tune Archive, Breandán Breathnach's Irish version of the title points to a mountain, and the piper Willie Clancy called the tune "White Mountain."[1] Both sources connect it with "The New Mown Meadows," which the Tune Archive treats as a related melody and irishtune.info files as another name for the same reel.[1][2]

A shining leaf-shaped steel spearhead with etched decoration, mounted on a dark shaft with a fringed tassel below the blade.

Parade Spear, etched steel, brass lugs, wood haft with leather straps and woolen tassel, c. 1570–1600. A parade spearhead, shown for the title; it has no connection to the tune.

The Tune Archive's earliest printed source is Giblin's Collection of Traditional Irish Dance Music of 1928, while irishtune.info's index begins with a 1949 recording by the piper Seán Seery.[1][2] The fiddlers Denis Murphy and Julia Clifford recorded it in 1952, and that performance later appeared on Topic's album Kerry Fiddles (1977), shared with Padraig O'Keeffe.[1][2] Séamus Ennis piped it on The Return from Fingal, the Liverpool Céilí Band played it on Off to Dublin (1966), and Kevin Burke included it on Promenade, his album with Mícheál Ó Domhnaill.[1][2] Session tune books such as Breathnach's Ceol Rince na hÉireann 1 and Dave Mallinson's 100 Essential Irish Session Tunes carry it, and it has reached American dance musicians too, turning up in Songer's Portland Collection (1997) and on the Lamprey River Band's Smithsonian Folkways album Choose Your Partners! (1999).[1][2]

Mountain dulcimer players will find it in Aaron O'Rourke's Irish Session Tunes, Volume 1, a 59-page Fingers Of Steel collection of 36 session jigs, reels and polkas, where "Silver Spear" is set in DAD tuning.[3]

Our book that contains the song "Silver Spear"

Sources

  1. The Traditional Tune Archive: "Silver Spear (The)".
  2. irishtune.info: "Silver Spear".
  3. Fingers Of Steel: "Aaron O'Rourke, Irish Session Tunes, Volume 1".
  4. Image: Parade Spear, etched steel, brass lugs, wood haft with leather straps and woolen tassel, c. 1570–1600. The Cleveland Museum of Art.

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