The Braes Of Tulliement: A Song History
"The Braes of Tullymet" is a Scottish strathspey, in most versions in G minor or G Dorian, and the place name is also spelled Tulliemet, Tullimet and Tulimet.[1] The title refers to hillsides (braes) in Perthshire, near Pitlochry, where Tulliemet House stands on the Atholl Estate.[1] The tune is often attributed to the Perthshire fiddler Robert Petrie (1767–1830), yet according to the Traditional Tune Archive he did not present it as his own in his fourth collection (Edinburgh, around 1805), and Alburger's 1983 book Scottish Fiddlers and Their Music doubts the attribution.[1] The archive also reports that Glen, writing in 1891, traced the tune's first appearance in print to Neil Stewart's collection of 1761, before Petrie was born.[1]
Loch Tummel, Queen's View, Scotland, photochrom, between ca. 1890 and ca. 1900. A Perthshire view near Pitlochry, shown for its setting; it has no connection to the tune.
Later eighteenth-century printings include McGlashan's strathspey collection of about 1780, Joshua Campbell's of 1789 and Gow's Complete Repository of 1799, and in the nineteenth century it appeared in Angus MacKay's bagpipe books and in Kerr's Merry Melodies.[1] Petrie's fourth collection also gives "D. Dick's Favourite" as another name, and the archive notes that the Dick family had bought Tulliemet in 1802.[1] A Scottish country dance from Selkirkshire also bears the name, and the tune travelled as far as the Nova Scotia manuscript of the fiddler James Barry (1819–1906), who wrote it down as "Biniebouzle, or the Braes of Tullemett."[1] Recordings include one by the fiddler John "Dancie" Reid (1869–1942) on the Greentrax anthology Scottish Tradition 9: The Fiddler and His Art (1993).[1] Alan Snyder's index of Cape Breton fiddle recordings lists 24 recordings of it, among them versions by Winston Fitzgerald, Jerry Holland, Natalie MacMaster and Wendy MacIsaac.[2]
Dulcimer players have taken it up too: John Rea recorded it on his 1979 Topic album of hammered dulcimer music, and a setting by Steve Eulberg appeared in Dulcimer Players News in 2010.[3] Eulberg includes it, spelled "The Braes Of Tulliement," in DAD tuning in Another Jig Will Do: Songs And Tunes Of The Angles And The Celts, a book for both mountain and hammered dulcimer, published by Steve Eulberg, that comes with his own recordings of each song.[4]
Sources
- The Traditional Tune Archive: "Braes of Tullymet (1) (The)".
- Alan Snyder's Cape Breton Fiddle Recording Index: "The Braes of Tullimet".
- Jane Keefer's Folk Music Index: "The Braes of Tulimet/Tulliemet".
- Fingers Of Steel: "Steve Eulberg, Another Jig Will Do: Songs And Tunes Of The Angles And The Celts".
- Image: Loch Tummel, Queen's View, Scotland, photochrom, between ca. 1890 and ca. 1900. Library of Congress.