Any fans of Celtic music would have been getting their money’s worth had they been listening to this edition of John Peel’s Music. We’ve already been able to savour the brilliance of the Celtic sampled Ceilidh mix of Sul-E-Stomp by Astralasia and the Suns of Arqa. Now, courtesy of Matt Molloy the former Planxty and current flautist with The Chieftains, we get a five minute medley of three traditional Celtic tunes recorded during a session at Molloy’s pub in Westport, County Mayo.
Of the three tunes, Over the Moor to Maggie goes by a number of different titles including Over the Moor to Peggy (I hope he didn’t get them mixed up), Peggy’s Wedding (presumably because she lived closer) and The Rakes of Abbeyfale, which made me smile as I spent several happy weeks delivering basic IT classes in Abbeyfeale during 2010.
In answer to the question, “Fred Finn’s what?”, the answer appears to be either Fred Finn’s Reel or Fred Finn’s Polka. It possibly takes its name after the Sligo-born fiddle player who formed a long-standing duo with the flautist, Peter Horan.
The Hunter’s House, composed by Ed Reavy, is a tune written for post-hunt revels, at which, amongst the jigs and the reels, the Master of the Hunt could show off what they had bagged. Though, I hope they treated it first, you’d have to dance pretty fast to ignore the smell of dead pheasant.
Although played as a continuous suite of music, I reckon that the tunes can be heard from:
0:00 - Over the Moor to Maggie
2:27 - Fred Finn’s
4:03 - The Hunter’s House.
Should you also be minded to try and play any of the tunes yourself, tunearch.org provides the sheet music for The Hunter’s House, Fred Finn’s and Over the Moor to Maggie. So, to quote the punk fanzine, Sideburns, now form a band.
Video courtesy of Various Artists - Topic
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