Tar Road To Sligo: A Song History

← Back to Browse By Song

"Tar Road to Sligo," known in Irish as An Bóthar Mór go Sligeach, is an Irish double jig in 6/8 time built from two repeated parts.[1][2] The Traditional Tune Archive hears its first part in B minor and its second in D major, while irishtune.info files the whole tune under D major.[1][2] Both databases attach a cluster of other names to it, including "The Coach Road to Sligo," "The High Road to Sligo," "Jackson's Jig" and "Fasten the Leg in Her," though the Archive cautions that some of them, "Jackson's Jig" and "Fasten the Leg in Her" among them, usually belong to other tunes and have not become firmly attached to this one.[1][2] Each site also points to a kinship between its opening strain and the jig "The Races at Carrick."[1][2]

Workmen repairing a road beneath huge yellow-leaved plane trees in a French town street, with piles of paving stones in the foreground

Vincent van Gogh, The Large Plane Trees (Road Menders at Saint-Rémy), oil on fabric, 1889. Workmen mending a country road, shown for the tune's title; the painting shows Saint-Rémy in France and has no connection to the tune.

The oldest source irishtune.info indexes is Francis and James O'Neill's O'Neill's Music of Ireland (Chicago, 1903), where it is tune no. 836.[2][3] On record, Peter J. Conlon cut it in 1917 under the name "The Humors of the Whiskey," and the Sligo-born fiddler Michael Coleman returned to it several times, calling it "Jackson's" in a 1924 medley with "The Humors of Kesh" and folding it into a 1927 New York medley led by "Tobin's Fancy."[1][2] The name most players use today was settled, in the Archive's account, by the Bothy Band's 1975 debut album, and later recordings listed by irishtune.info include ones by Joe Derrane, Joanie Madden, John Whelan and Charlie Lennon.[1][2] It has since been printed in tune collections such as Breandán Breathnach's Ceol Rince na hÉireann 1, Tommy Peoples's Fifty Irish Fiddle Tunes and Dave Mallinson's 100 Essential Irish Session Tunes.[1][2]

Dulcimer players can find it in Mark Gilston's self-published Irish Tunes For Dulcimer, Volume 1, a sheet-music book that begins his two-volume set of Irish melodies and whose contents list "Trip to Sligo" as a separate entry.[4]

Our book that contains the song "Tar Road To Sligo"

Sources

  1. The Traditional Tune Archive: "Tar Road to Sligo".
  2. irishtune.info: "Tar Road to Sligo".
  3. irishtune.info: "Bibliography".
  4. Mark Gilston: "Irish Tunes For Dulcimer, Volume 1".
  5. Image: Vincent van Gogh, The Large Plane Trees (Road Menders at Saint-Rémy), oil on fabric, 1889. The Cleveland Museum of Art.

← Back to Browse By Song