Co-written by Dr Orfhlaith Ní Bhriain and Mick McCabe, Jigs to Jacobites, explores 4000 years of Irish history through the lens of 40 traditional set dances. Set dances form a small but unique repertoire within Irish traditional music and dance. The tunes are unusually structured, making them challenging to play and to dance to. Many set dances also have associated songs and poems, making them a unique bridge between the traditional musician, dancer and singer, and between past and present.
A little break… We are taking a break from online sales for a few weeks. We will open the online store again for sales in mid-November – just in time for Christmas presents!stories…
From the Tuatha Dé Danann to Bonnie Prince
We tell a story for each tune title…
“Jockey to the Fair is a love song from the Anglo-Scottish broadside ballads of the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. It tells the story of Jockey, a young shepherd, who meets his love, Jenny…”
We illustrate an aspect of that story…
format…
We delve into the history of the tune…
“The music notation appears on its own within music collections, starting with Thompson’s Compleat Collection of 200 Favourite Country Dances, 1770-1785. The tune was still popular in England into the
We look at the dances and dancers associated with the tune…
“Jockey to the Fair features in three separate dance traditions; English country dancing, Morris dancing, and Irish step dancing. Jockey to the Fair was published in Skillern’s Twenty Four Country Dances for the Year 1780, with dance instructions…”
We provide the staff notation for the tune…
Where a song is linked to the set dance, we include its lyrics too…
“Twas on the morn of sweet May-day,
When Nature painted all things gay;
Taught birds to sing and lambs to play,
And
Young Jockey, early in the morn,
Arose and
His Sunday coat the youth put on,
For Jenny had
With Jockey, to the Fair…”
