The Galway Belle: A Song History

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Despite the county in its name, "The Galway Belle" is a polka from the Sliabh Luachra district of County Kerry, a 32-bar tune in E Dorian.[1][2] The Traditional Tune Archive regards it, together with the related polka settings that circulate under other names, as an Irish adaptation of "Mrs. Ramsay of Barnton," a Scottish strathspey by Duncan MacIntyre.[1] The same source credits the Galway title to Boston button accordionist Jerry O'Brien, who may have picked the tune up from Kerry fiddler Paddy Cronin during Cronin's years in that city.[1]

Painting of a young woman with long, flowing red hair, holding a hand mirror and gazing to the side, wearing a white lace blouse.

Gustave Courbet, Jo, La Belle Irlandaise, oil on canvas, 1865–66. Courbet's "beautiful Irishwoman," shown as a nod to the tune's title; the painting has no connection to the tune or to Galway.

The tune travels under a long string of other titles, several of which point to particular musicians.[1][2] "Cuz's Polka" honors concertina and accordion player Terence "Cuz" Teahan (1905–1989), of Glountane in south Kerry and of Chicago, while the title "Sixty-Ninth Street Polka" comes from New Jersey flute player Mike Rafferty, a native of Ballinakill, County Galway.[1] Printed settings include one in O'Brien's Irish Folk Dance Music (1952), Lesl Harker's 300 Tunes from Mike Rafferty (2005), and Randy Miller and Jack Perron's Irish Traditional Fiddle Music.[1][2] Frank Ferrel and Joe Derrane recorded it on Fiddledance (2004), and later recordings include those of fiddler Tony DeMarco, accordionist Martin McHugh and the Mulcahy family.[1][2] Niamh Ní Charra put it on Cuz (2012), her tribute album to Teahan, following it with a tune bearing his name.[2]

Mountain dulcimer players get a DAD-tuning arrangement of it in Aaron O'Rourke's Irish Session Tunes, Volume 2, a Fingers Of Steel book whose polkas sit alongside jigs and reels, each tune backed by a downloadable recording at both a slow and a fast tempo.[3]

Our book that contains the song "The Galway Belle"

Sources

  1. Traditional Tune Archive: "Annotation:Galway Belles".
  2. irishtune.info: "Galway Belle" (Tune ID# 443).
  3. Fingers Of Steel: "Aaron O'Rourke, Irish Session Tunes, Volume 2".
  4. Image: Gustave Courbet, Jo, La Belle Irlandaise, oil on canvas, 1865–66. The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

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