The Maid in the Meadow, The Frieze Breeches, Pay the Reckoning

About this film

Irish bagpipes solo with piano, Pathe 20550. The first jig is the same melody as the reel the Green Fields of America and the song Purty Molly Brannagan. Ennis plays a couple of staccato ornaments in the first part, first time through, on the C and B; these involve the note sequence C-GFC and B-GFB, and is called backstitching. Owing to the inability of the piper to play C natural staccato at a quick pace, pipers play C# instead, giving a strange tonality to the tune. Ennis also uses the A-C#-A triplet in these jigs, which is a more common piping device. The second tune also features various approaches to C; sometimes Ennis bends the note up slightly (he also does this in the first tune), sometimes he plays C#-B-C# instead of Cnat-B-Cnat; in other places he plays a C# and adds a strong vibrato. These techniques can be heard in recordings of other older pipers such as Patsy Touhey and Dinney Delaney. The title for the final jig on one of Touhey's 78s was Jackson's Jig; Jackson's Bottle of Brandy is the more usual form. Touhey's recording of this tune climaxed with a series of backstitches on G, F, and E in the second octave; Ennis only plays the tune through once, as he was running…

Directors & creators

Tom Ennis

Subjects

Irish; Celtic; Bagpipe; Uilleann; Folk; Oldtime; 78rpm

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