Wise Maid: A Song History
"The Wise Maid" is an Irish reel in D major, built from two eight-bar strains that are each played twice, for 32 bars in all.[1] Who wrote it is not settled: the Traditional Tune Archive links the reel with John Doherty, the Donegal fiddler, and calls him its probable composer.[2] irishtune.info credits it to "Johnny Doherty" only tentatively, with a question mark, and it lists more than a dozen other titles, among them "The Mistress," "All Around the World," and "Matt Molloy's."[1]
Alexandre-Louis-Marie Charpentier, Young Woman Reading, embossed color lithograph, 1896. Shown for its subject; it has no connection to the tune.
According to the Tune Archive, the Galway accordion player Joe Cooley did much to popularize the reel, which is why it sometimes goes by "Cooley's Reel."[2] His album Cooley, issued by Gael-Linn, opens with it under the title "An Stuaire Stuama / The Wise Maid."[3] Planxty recorded it on their album Planxty, from about 1973, where it is labeled simply "Reel."[1] The Tune Archive credits the band with helping to spread it, and it notes that Breandán Breathnach printed a version taken from Cooley as No. 158 in Ceol Rince na hÉireann 3 (1985).[2]
The Tune Archive quotes Taylor (1992), who wrote that the tune "probably ranks amongst the top twenty most widely-known Irish reels."[2] irishtune.info indexes 25 recordings of it, made between 1973 and 2018 by players ranging from Noel Hill to the Kilfenora Céili Band.[1] Mark Gilston includes it in Irish Tunes For Dulcimer, Volume 2, the second book of a two-volume set of Irish melodies arranged for solo mountain dulcimer in DAD tuning.[4]
Sources
- irishtune.info: "Wise Maid".
- Traditional Tune Archive: "Wise Maid (1) (The)".
- irishtune.info: "Cooley by Joe Cooley: Tune Identifications".
- Mark Gilston: "Irish Tunes For Dulcimer, Volume 2".
- Image: Alexandre-Louis-Marie Charpentier, Young Woman Reading, embossed color lithograph, 1896. The Cleveland Museum of Art.