Sligo Mad: A Song History

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"The Sligo Maid" is a reel in A Dorian, built from two repeated parts, and the Traditional Tune Archive describes it as a reel much played at Irish sessions.[1] Irishtune.info, which records 283 of its members as players of the tune, lists other names for it including "The Glendowan Reel," "The Sligo Maid's Lament" and the Irish "Gearrchaile Shligigh."[2] The Tune Archive considers it a reel of fairly recent origin, so close in melody to "The Rainy Day" that the two are probably related, and notes a Prince Edward Island version called "Old Peter's Reel."[1] Sources differ over "Down the Broom": irishtune.info treats it as another name for the tune, while the Tune Archive regards it as a separate reel with only a debatable resemblance.[2][1]

Old tintype portrait of a young woman with long dark curls, in a dark dress with a lace collar, seated with a small button accordion on her lap.

Unknown American photographer, Woman Holding an Accordion, tintype, late 1860s. A young woman with an accordion in the late 1860s, shown for the maid of the title; she has no connection to the reel.

Two fiddlers from south County Sligo who made their names in New York made influential recordings of the reel.[1][3][4] Michael Coleman, born at Killavil in 1891, recorded it, though the sources consulted here disagree on the date: irishtune.info places his recording around 1924, the Tune Archive in 1931.[3][2][1] Paddy Killoran, from the Ballymote area, recorded it for Decca on 8 November 1936, on a side that also carries "Malloy's Favorite," and the Tune Archive describes his version as widely imitated.[4][5][1] In print it appears in James Morrison's 1931 tutor How to Play the Globe Accordion Irish Style and in the first volume of Breandán Breathnach's Ceol Rince na hÉireann (1963).[1]

Irishtune.info indexes more than forty recordings, from the pipers Séamus Ennis in 1940 and Leo Rowsome in 1944 through the Kilfenora Céilí Band to fiddlers such as John Carty and Martin McGinley.[2] Kevin Burke, a fiddler with family ties to Sligo, recorded it in the early 1970s for Sweeney's Dream, a Folkways album of County Sligo fiddle tunes, setting it before "The Woman of the House" and "The Sailor's Bonnet."[6][2] Dulcimer players can find it in Aaron O'Rourke's Irish Session Tunes, Volume 1, a 59-page Fingers Of Steel book of 36 session tunes, all in DAD tuning and each paired with an MP3 demonstration track.[7]

Our book that contains the song "Sligo Mad"

Sources

  1. The Traditional Tune Archive: "Sligo Maid".
  2. irishtune.info: "Sligo Maid".
  3. Irish Traditional Music Archive: "Michael Coleman".
  4. Irish Traditional Music Archive, New York: "Paddy Killoran".
  5. Discography of American Historical Recordings: "Decca 12077 (78-rpm 10-in. double-faced)".
  6. Smithsonian Folkways: "Sweeney's Dream: Fiddle Tunes from County Sligo, Ireland".
  7. Fingers Of Steel: "Aaron O'Rourke, Irish Session Tunes, Volume 1".
  8. Image: Unknown American photographer, Woman Holding an Accordion, tintype, late 1860s. The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

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