Beginning Irish Mandolin

Our next three columns are going to be devoted to a set of slides that I put together recently. The first one is especially easy to play and has a catchy melody that I absolutely love. As I've stated before, most slides have several names (or no name at all!) and this one has several. In the summer of 2002, I was in my first months of learning to play the Irish button accordion. I acquired a cd by accordion player Dan Herlihy (County Kerry) and was especially drawn to the tune he called "Behind the Bush in the Garden". For nearly three years I played it exactly as Dan plays it on that cd. But in July 2005, I had the distinct pleasure of taking a week-long class from the legendary accordion player Jackie Daly. Jackie's method of teaching involved, in part, asking each pupil to play a tune of his/her own, after which Jackie would make suggestions on how we could improve it. On the first day I played Herlihy's version of this tune and asked if he'd heard it. "I have, yes", he replied, "but the turn is a little different. It goes like this". (By "the turn", Jackie meant the second part.) At that point, he played almost exactly what I've transcribed below. I didn't ask what name he used for it but I later found the tune in the well-known but unfortunately out-of-print book by Martin Mulvihill "First Book of Traditional Irish Music". There it is called "Donal De Barra's" (slide). It also appears in Breadan Breathnach's "Ceol Rince na hEireann 5". There are appended comments on the various tunes in that book and the particular paragraph describing this tune (translated from the Irish by Paul deGrae) reads:

72. Gan Ainm: Untitled. Denis Murphy played this for Breathnach, November 1970. Denis had a story about this slide, how a musician in the neighbourhood, John Mahony, had it but would not play it for Mary Darby. Mary got the tune from eavesdropping at the door of the house, and the next time they met on the street she began to lilt it, and the words she had were:

I have heard another tune,
A tune I think that's right, too;
'Twas Danny Jack that learnt me that,
Says Johnny Cock-a-Daydo!

I was thereby tempted to call it "Mary Darby's" slide but chose to stick with the name that Martin Mulvihill gave the tune. To the best of my knowledge, Donal De Barra runs a traditional music school in County Kerry, Ireland. I hope you enjoy the tune. As usual, if you have comments or suggestions, I can be reached at michael.gregory@und.edu.

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