The Hare's Paw: A Song History

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"The Hare's Paw" is an Irish reel in E minor whose composer goes unnamed in the tune archives consulted here.[1][2] It has gathered a long list of other names, turning up as "The Hare's Foot," "The Silvermines," "The Lowlands of Scotland," "The Bundle of Straw" and "Tralee Lasses," and in Irish as "Cois an Ghiorria."[1][2] An untitled version appears in R. M. Levey's mid-nineteenth-century collection of Irish dance music, although the sources consulted here date that collection differently, to 1856 or 1858.[1][3] Fr. John Quinn and Conor Ward also found an untitled setting among the manuscripts compiled around 1883 by Stephen Grier, who played fiddle and pipes in County Leitrim.[1]

Small white glazed stoneware figure of a crouching hare on a mound.

Hare, salt-glazed stoneware, ca. 1750–60. A crouching hare, the animal named in the reel's title; the figure has no connection to the tune.

Francis O'Neill printed the reel as "Jim Kennedy's Favorite" in Music of Ireland (1903) and again in Dance Music of Ireland (1907).[3] That title probably honors James Kennedy, a Chicago fiddler and park policeman whose playing O'Neill admired, though another story holds that it was named for a traveling fiddler who taught the tune to Bill "The Weaver" Murphy, father of the fiddler Denis Murphy.[3] Several early recordings come from musicians of Sliabh Luachra, on the Cork–Kerry border: Denis Murphy recorded it in 1949 and again for Kerry Fiddles in 1952, Pádraig O'Keeffe's recording is dated 1948, and a closely related reel called "Kennedy's Favourite" was noted from the Sliabh Luachra accordion player Johnny O'Leary.[2][4] The oldest recording in irishtune.info's discography is flute player John McKenna's, dated 1925, and the list runs past thirty releases to 2019.[2]

Writing in Treoir, Paddy Ryan called it a "céilí band favourite,"[1] and the banjo player Gerry O'Connor played it at Comhaltas headquarters in Dublin in February 2003.[5] On mountain dulcimer, "The Hare's Paw" is among the session tunes Aaron O'Rourke arranges in DAD tuning for Irish Session Tunes, Volume 2, a Fingers Of Steel sequel that includes a short introduction to playing in an Irish session and comes with free recordings of every tune played slowly and up to tempo.[6]

Our book that contains the song "The Hare's Paw"

Sources

  1. Traditional Tune Archive: "Annotation: Hare's Paw (1) (The)".
  2. irishtune.info: "Hare's Paw".
  3. Traditional Tune Archive: "Annotation: Jim Kennedy's Favorite".
  4. Traditional Tune Archive: "Annotation: Kennedy's Favourite".
  5. Comhaltas Ceoltóirí Éireann: "ComhaltasLive 354-1: Gerry O'Connor".
  6. Fingers Of Steel: "Aaron O'Rourke, Irish Session Tunes, Volume 2".
  7. Image: Hare, salt-glazed stoneware, ca. 1750–60. The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

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