The Cashel Jig: A Song History

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"The Cashel Jig" is an Irish jig in G major with two repeated parts, also known as "Lough Gill," "The Shores of Lough Gill," "The Millpond" and "Paddy Carty's."[1] Alan Ng's Irish tune index files it under "The Millpond" and also lists the Irish-language title Lochán An Mhuilinn among its names.[2] The title needs care, because the same index also records "The Cashel Jig" as one of many names for a different double jig, in D major, which it files as "East at Glendart" and which is also called "The Humours of Glendart."[3] The Traditional Tune Archive, citing Matthews (1972), traces the word cashel to the Latin castellum, a little fort.[1]

Color photochrom of Lough Gill, a lake with wooded shores and islands

[Lough Gill. County Sligo, Ireland], photochrom, between ca. 1890 and ca. 1900. Lough Gill gives the tune one of its other names; the picture has no connection to the tune.

The oldest source in Ng's index for the G-major tune is a 1941 recording by the Lough Gill Quartet, titled "Mill Pond" on the anthology Irish Dance Music, a 1995 Topic reissue of a 1973 Folkways collection of 78s.[2][4] Later recordings listed there include the accordionist Billy McComiskey's Makin' the Rounds (around 1981), a 1985 recording by the flute player Paddy Carty with the fiddler Conor Tully, and versions with Kevin Crawford (around 1995) and Mike Rafferty (around 1998) on flute.[2] The Tune Archive names Brendan Mulvihill of Baltimore as the source of its notated version and cites Martin Mulvihill's First Collection of 1986.[1] Ng also finds it in printed collections such as Dave Mallinson's 100 Evergreen Irish Session Tunes and Josephine Keegan's A Drop in the Ocean.[2]

A tune titled "The Cashel Jig" appears in Aaron O'Rourke's Irish Session Tunes, Volume 2, a book of jigs, reels and polkas common at Irish sessions, arranged for mountain dulcimer and published by Fingers Of Steel, with audio tracks at both slow and fast tempos.[5]

Our book that contains the song "The Cashel Jig"

Sources

  1. The Traditional Tune Archive: "Cashel Jig (The)".
  2. irishtune.info: "Millpond, The".
  3. irishtune.info: "East at Glendart".
  4. irishtune.info: "Album Contents: Irish Dance Music".
  5. Fingers Of Steel: "Aaron O'Rourke, Irish Session Tunes, Volume 2".
  6. Image: [Lough Gill. County Sligo, Ireland], photochrom, between ca. 1890 and ca. 1900. Library of Congress.

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