Original Tunes – written and played by Aidan Crossey

Page last updated 26 May 2023

List of contents

Since I first started playing Irish music, I’ve been drawn to writing my own compositions. It’s a risky endeavour. Irish traditional music is – as the name would imply – a fairly conservative medium. The vast majority of those who play the tunes are interested in keeping “the canon” (albeit a pretty big canon!) alive. So sometimes those who write tunes in keeping with the idioms come in for a bit of criticism – the implication being that there are hundreds of tunes out there that we could be learning, instead of cluttering up the airspace with unnecessary new additions.

I have a certain amount of sympathy with that position. And yet … sometimes when I’m playing the mandolin, the germ of a tune simply comes to me unbidden and I find myself nurturing it for a bit until I’m happy that I’ve got something which is genuinely “new” (although true to the tradition) and of a reasonable quality (a tune I’d be happy to share in a simpatico session).

And so, as this site develops, I’d like to share some of those tunes with you. With some of the stories that lie behind them. If you like them, let me know. If you don’t like them, let me know. If you think they deviate too far from the acceptable boundaries of the tradition, let me know. If you think they’re too similar to tunes which are already in circulation, let me know (see, for example, my “stop press” about The Cocky Hornpipe and The Cocky March below). If you’d like to incorporate them into your repertoire, let me know…

26 May 2023. The King’s Ransom. The title of this barndance in G Major was inspired by a recent session. One of my fellow players was lamenting the cost of a hire car on a recent holiday. “I was only trying to rent the car for a few days, not buy it outright!” Mandolin tab here. Listen to me playing The King’s Ransom on my Belmuse EM-190 electric mandolin. ABC below:

22 May 2023. I wrote The March Sky many, many years ago. On finding the tune set out in ABC in an old notebook, I played it through and found that with a few tweaks to the original, it made for a passable fling. Mandolin tab here. Listen to me playing The March Sky on my Belmuse EM-190 mandolin. ABC below:

22 May 2023. A conniption is a tantrum, a fit of hysterics, a meltdown, an attack of the vapours… It’s also a funny old word which popped into my head as I was putting the final touches to this reel. The Conniption. Mandolin tab here. Listen to me playing The Conniption on my Belmuse EM-190 electric mandolin. ABC below:

3 May 2023. Philip Mathers’ Waltz is a re-working into 3/4 time of Philip Mathers’ Jig (see immediately below). Mandolin tab here. Listen to me playing Philip Mathers’ Waltz on my Belmuse EM-190 electric mandolin. ABC below:

3 May 2023. Philip Mathers is the unfortunate soul whose murder begins the strange, unsettling and very (VERY) funny story of The Third Policeman – Flann O’Brien’s tour de force. Philip Mathers’ Jig is yet another tribute to that remarkable writer. Mandolin tab here. Listen to me playing Philip Mathers’ Jig on my Belmuse EM-190 electric mandolin. ABC below:

3 May 2023. The Tuppenny Damn – something which is rarely, if ever, given. Mandolin tab here. Listen to me playing The Tuppenny Damn on my Belmuse EM-190 electric mandolin. ABC below:

30 April 2023. I’ve been an early riser for many years. This jig – Up WIth The Lark – was written back at the start of the 2000s; probably in that quiet time before daybreak. My sleeping hasn’t improved much since then! Mandolin tab here. Listen to me playing Up With The Lark on my Belmuse EM-190 electric mandolin. ABC below:

25 March 2023. I’ve been to two musical events this week which have made a big impression on me. The first, a gig at The Barbican by the amazing Lisa O’Neill. The second a classical music concert at The Queen Elizabeth Hall by The Aurora Orchestra where they rounded off their programme with Beethoven’s 7th Symphony played from memory. This name of this slip jig – Aurora O”Neill – is inspired by both. Mandolin tab here. Listen to me playing Aurora O’Neill on my Belmuse EM-190 electric mandolin. ABC below:

19 March 2023. A long time ago – when I still had some of the vigour and folly of youth about me – I kept company with a bunch of fellow reprobates. One of our number – a very talented singer-songwriter was very prone to steward’s enquiries and self-flagellation after one of our escapades had ended up very messily (as they often did). I sympathise, of course; I myself am inclined to similar soul-searching and self-loathing after being out of order. One day – after listening to my friend lay bare his worries about his bad behaviour and where it would all end, I gave him the nickname “Our Lady Of Perpetual Regret“. He appreciated that I wasn’t being harsh and, in fact, he was planning to use the name as the title – or at least a theme, an image – in one of his songs. He never wrote it! And so when this plaintive E Minor jig came my way this morning, his nickname seemed to fit the mood perfectly. Mandolin tab here. Listen to me playing Our Lady Of Perpetual Regret on my Belmuse EM-190 electric mandolin. ABC below:

18 March 2023. Sometimes, when we witness the incompetence, the scurrilousness, the venality and sheer inability to face facts of those in governments around the world, we have to conclude that we’re all just passengers on a rudderless vessel at the mercy of the wind and the tide. And so when this mazurka came to me today after a session leafing through the day’s newspaper, the title was obvious. The Ship Of Fools. Mandolin tab here. Listen to me playing The Ship Of Fools on my Belmuse EM-190 electric mandolin. ABC below:

15 March 2023. This hornpipe came to me yesterday. I called it Kitty Stobling after a poem by Patrick Kavanagh called “Come Dance With Kitty Stobling”. It’s an upside-down tune, in that the second part is lower than the first. Mandolin tab here. Listen to me playing Kitty Stobling on my Belmuse EM-190 electric mandolin. ABC below:

26 February 2023. A billy-doo is a vernacular rendering of the French term “billet doux” or love letter. The Billy-Doo is my love letter to Irish music. Mandolin tab here. Listen to me playing The Billy-Doo on my Belmuse EM-190 electric mandolin. ABC below:

21 February 2023. I’ve been corresponding over the course of the past few days with a prolific tune collector and tunesmith who has – among other things! – been schooling me in the fine details of creating abc versions of my tunes. This new jig – Zouki’s Prayer Box – is a tribute to his generosity of spirit in providing me with assistance which money couldn’t buy. The name refers to the fact that many of his tunes have been composed in hope that they will help one of his friends and acquaintances who are poorly or otherwise in need of some succour. Others are written to commemorate significant people in his life who have died. The tunes are, in fact, prayers which he stores in his “mental prayer box”. Although I’m not a believer, I appreciate the kindness and fondness and hope which inspires this approach to writing tunes and I salute yet another example of his big-heartedness. Mandolin tab here. Listen to me playing Zouki’s Prayer Box on my Belmuse EM-190 electric mandolin. ABC below:

14 February 2023. The germ of this jig occurred to me yesterday and I allowed it to percolate overnight. I spent a little bit of time with it this morning and made a tweak to one or two phrases. And then – a name? Well, it was pretty obvious what to call it. Valentine’s Day. Mandolin tab here. Listen to me playing Valentine’s Day on my Belmuse EM-190 electric mandolin. ABC below:

13 February 2023. When I was a child, we spent at least a couple of weeks every year holidaying on Achill Island, off the coast of County Mayo. My father became very friendly with many of the local fishermen, including one – Michael McGinty – who used to live on the island of Iniskea before it was forcibly evacuated after a drowning tragedy in which many of the adult men of the island lost their lives. Michael said that the peak of Slievemore was visible from Iniskea and acted as a kind of barometer for the islanders. When mist was shrouding the top of Slievemore, they would say that “the Achill Lady has got her hat on”. When I wrote this slow jig – part 1 in D Major, the second part in B Minor – the name The Achill Lady sprung immediately to mind. Mandolin tab here. Listen to me playing The Achill Lady on my Belmuse EM-190 electric mandolin. ABC below, along with a photograph of The Achill Lady…

29 January 2023. Why is this new composition called “The Maverick Jig“? Two primary reasons. Firstly, although it’s a 6/8 tune, I very much doubt that it could be danced as a jig (at least not as I conceived of it in the first instance). Secondly it contains a “maverick” d sharp in the 4th bar of the second part… Mandolin tab here. Listen to me playing The Maverick Jig on my Belmuse EM-190 mandolin. ABC below:

25 January 2023. “Sucking Diesel” is an expression used in the North of Ireland to signify that something’s going grand. (For example if you’re at a session and the roof’s damn near lifting with the sheer energy of the music, you might say “We’re sucking diesel now, boys!”). Mandolin tab here. Listen to me playing Sucking Diesel on my Belmuse EM-190 electric mandolin. ABC below:

16 January 2023. A phrase from my growing up which means, roughly, “I’m/you’re/we’re/they’re ready” or – depending on context – “I’m/you’re/we’re/they’re finished”. When I composed this slip jig in D Major, the title “That’s Us Now!” came immediately to mind. That’s us now, so it is. Mandolin tab here. Listen to me playing That’s Us Now! on my Belmuse EM-190 electric mandolin. ABC below:

9 January 2023. I have been accused (sometimes by myself – we’re invariably our own worst critics!) of taking this music a little too seriously. Occasionally I lighten up! I was noodling around on the mandolin yesterday, trying – believe it or not – to work out the opening riff of Motörhead’s song, The Ace Of Spades. However my noodling was interrupted when the germ of an idea for a new reel began to nag at me. After a time, I had a finished article and was ready to notate and record. Of course, given the provenance, I simply had to call it (with apologies to Lemmy) “The Ace Of Spuds“. I believe it’s in A Dorian but I have doubts – perhaps it’s in D Mixolydian? Or perhaps it shifts between the two? (My musical knowledge hits the buffers of self-taught quite often!) Mandolin tab here. Listen to me playing The Ace Of Spuds on my Belmuse EM-190 electric mandolin (“clean” amp version). Listen to me playing The Ace Of Spuds on my Belmuse EM-190 electric mandolin (“dirty” amp version; with layers of distortion). ABC below:

1 January 2023. I wrote the first part of this reel – in more or less its current form – quite some time ago but couldn’t find the inspiration to come up with a second part. And then, yesterday, as 2022 drew to a close, a long-time supporter of my endeavours made a generous donation. He and I know the significance of the title – and don’t worry, I haven’t gone all religious! The Augustinian Reel. Mandolin tab here. Listen to me playing The Augustinian Reel on my Belmuse EM-190 electric mandolin. ABC below.

27 December 2022. When I first started work on this jig, there was a deal more syncopation about it than in its final version and it seemed to lurch from one phrase to another – to stagger rather than to flow. Over time, I re-thought some of the phrases and it now has a more even flow to it. Nevertheless the title Staggering Home stuck with me. Mandolin tab here. Listen to me playing Staggering Home on my Belmuse EM-190 electric mandolin. ABC below:

27 December 2022. I was thinking yesterday of my sister’s good friend, Gerry Lavery, who passed away a few years ago and the album which he made prior to his death “A Walk Through O’Hanlon’s Country” which celebrated music from County Armagh alongside a few of his own compositions. The album’s sleeve notes contained a few gems about Count Redmond O’Hanlon a “raparee” (outlaw) who is reputed to have hidden out for some years in woods near Derrymacash in North Armagh where I grew up. (Indeed the local Gaelic football team – The Wolfe Tones – named their new football pitch Raparee Park in memory of that legend). This reel in A Mixolydian occurred to me at around the same time and so the title was a no-brainer. Redmond O’Hanlon’s. Mandolin tab here. Listen to me playing Redmond O’Hanlon’s on my Belmuse EM-190 electric mandolin. ABC below:

23 December 2022. I think I may have said before that I often agonise a little over the name of a tune which I’ve composed. This wasn’t the case with a hornpipe which I wrote yesterday. No sooner had I set it down in writing than I received an email from the UK National Lottery explaining that I had picked two correct numbers in the previous day’s Lotto draw and therefore I was be awarded a small consolation prize. And straightaway the hornpipe was called The Lucky Dip. Mandolin tab here. Listen to me playing The Lucky Dip on my Belmuse EM-190 electric mandolin. ABC below:

29 November 2022. Sometimes an idea occurs to me for a new tune and by the time I have worked at it for a bit, the end result is sometimes very different from the initial direction in which I was heading. Hence the title of this newly-composed jig – The False Promise. Mandolin tab here. Listen to me playing The False Promise on my Belmuse EM-190 electric mandolin. ABC below:

16 November 2022. A new reel in G Major called The Pillar. Now, in case you’re thinking it refers to the now-demolished Nelson’s Pillar or some such object, the inspiration for the name actually comes from a cloud. Hanging on the wall of the room where I work at the tunes, there are prints of two of Paul Henry’s paintings. Henry spent much time in the west coast of Ireland painting scenes of rugged rural landscapes, which tended to feature huge skies with towering clouds. In my callow and cynical youth I used to sneer at those paintings as being a little too “chocolate box”. And then an epiphany. One day, on Achill Island, I reached the crest of a hill which gives amazing views across Keel and towards Croaghaun and Achill Head. And I realised with a degree of shock that the clouds in the sky that day were exactly like the clouds in Paul Henrys paintings. Impossibly white, towering high up into the sky. Pillars, in fact. From that day onwards I’ve had a very different attitude towards Henry’s work and – indeed – towards clouds themselves. Mandolin tab here. Listen to me playing The Pillar on my Belmuse EM-190 electric mandolin. ABC below.

14 November 2022. I’ve been having an email conversation recently with Mick Doran, a musician from Dublin, and it reminded me that many years ago (2001 to be precise) I wrote a slip jig called Mick Doran’s. Not as a tribute to the Mick Doran with whom I have recently been emailing (cos that would be weird, right?) but rather as a tribute to there late Mick Doran from Kinnego, near Lurgan, Co. Armagh who was a friend of my father. Shortly before I moved to England, I bumped into Mick one afternoon in The International (Walsh’s) pub in Lurgan. I had just popped in for a quiet pint but, having met up with Mick, any thoughts of a quiet afternoon and evening were soon forgotten and we went on a spree. I was very sad to learn shortly after I left home that Mick and my cousin Séamie had gone out on the lash one Sunday afternoon and decided to take a boat trip on Lough Neagh. No-one knows the exact details but neither of them returned back to land and their bodies were found a few days later. I’m not a believer in an afterlife. But I can well imagine that if there was such a thing, then Mick and Séamie will be swallowing pints in the nearest celestial – or infernal – pub! Rest in peace, the pair of you. Mandolin tab here. Listen to me playing Mick Doran’s on my Belmuse EM-190 electric mandolin. ABC below.

13 November 2022. Like “On the Mend” below, another tune whose title is inspired by recent experiences when in poor health. I had to have numerous blood tests as well as a course of injections – one every Monday, Wednesday and Friday – for two weeks, with more to come although less regularly. I joked to my partner that after a while I felt like a pincushion. Hence the title for this polka which I wrote today. The Pincushion. In D Major. Mandolin tab here. Listen to me playing The Pincushion on my Belmuse EM-190 electric mandolin. ABC below.

10 November 2022. “Some Pup!” is an expression used in the North of Ireland to indicate that someone is very accomplished or has achieved something remarkable. (As in – “Did you see thon goal yer man scored from about 100 yards out. He’s some pup, all the same!”) Or it can be used sarcastically. (For example, let’s say the same player missed an open goal from just a few yards. “Oh aye, he’s some pup, yer man!”) The expression popped into my head when I’d written this reel (or maybe it’s a fling?). Mandolin tab here. Listen to me playing Some Pup! on my Belmuse EM-190 electric mandolin. ABC below.

10 November 2022. For some time now I’ve been experiencing poor health and have eventually started to receive pretty intensive treatment for a blood condition. Thankfully the treatment appears to be working and so when I composed this jig yesterday, the title “On The Mend” sprung immediately to mind. Long may the mending continue! Mandolin tab here. Listen to me playing On The Mend on my Belmuse EM-190 electric mandolin. ABC below.

23 October 2022. A few months ago I had an email from a mandolin player from the West Midlands by the name of John Perrins. Over the course of those few months we’ve had numerous email conversations. John’s been very complimentary about my music, for which I’m very grateful. Kind words are sweeter to my ear than the jingle of coins! 🙂

John is in the process of putting together a CD to be sold for charity which will feature tunes and songs from all 32 counties. John got in touch with me recently to ask if I would be up for the challenge of writing an original tune for said album with the title “Home To Castletownroche” which is the town in Cork where his father grew up. His email came through while I was on a bus journey and therefore not within reach of a mandolin. However a tune started to develop in my head and by the time I arrived home, it was practically “made”.

I include two versions of the tune below. The first is pretty much a straightforward jig rendition. The second is slightly more swung and slightly slower (but only just). I’m honoured that John asked me to contribute to his charity project in this way and I’m looking forward to hearing the version that appears on the eventual CD.

Mandolin tab here. Listen to me playing Home To Castletownroche (version 1) on my Revelation Jaguar electric mandolin. Listen to me playing Home To Castletownroche (version 2) on my Revelation Jaguar electric mandolin. ABC below:

29 September 2022. When we hear the title of this latest tune which I’ve composed – The Meltdown – what springs to mind. An accident in a nuclear power plant? A small child having a tantrum because they can’t have everything their own way? (I sympathise…) Or, in the case of the times in which this jig was written (a few days ago) and the place in which it was written (the UK), a collapse in the value of sterling – with who knows what repercussions to follow! – the reaction to idiotic fiscal policy drawn up on the back of an envelope by utterly incompetent politicians? Mandolin tab here.  Listen to me playing The Meltdown on my Revelation Jaguar electric mandolin. 26 May 2023.  New version.  Listen to me playing The Meltdown on my Belmuse EM-190 electric mandolin. ABC below:

5 September 2022. Back in the early 2000s I was stunned to learn that one of the tunes I had composed – Thirty Bottle Hughie – was being played regularly in a session in New York. There’s a story behind the reel… I was when down the pub one night of a Lurgan man who, on a Friday afternoon, found himself as usual in one of Lurgan’s watering holes and settled down “for the long haul”. On the afternoon in question a fight broke out in the pub and some weeks later, Hughie found himself in the witness box being asked to recount his version of events. Hughie gave a long, detailed and honest account of the battle, which showed the defendant in a very poor light. After Hughie gave his testimony, the defendant’s solicitor advised the magistrate that Hughie’s evidence should be taken with a pinch of salt because he gathered that Hughie was drunk at the time the fight took place. The magistrate took a dim view of this and peered over his glasses. “Is this correct?” Hughie was hurt by the solicitor’s remarks. “Well … I had drink taken, but I was far from what you might call drunk!” “So, how much drink would you have taken at the time?” Hughie pondered, did some mental arithmetic. “About thirty bottles.” And hence forever afterwards he was known as “Thirty Bottle Hughie”. Mandolin tab here.  Listen to me playing Thirty Bottle Hughie on my Revelation Jaguar electric mandolin. 26 May 2023.  New version.  Listen to me playing Thirty Bottle High on my Belmuse EM-190 electric mandolin. ABC below:

2 September 2022. I wrote this slip jig back in 2001. I was revisiting some of my old tunes recently – some of which I don’t rate very highly and which will likely never see the light of day. However this tune caught my attention and I thought I would resurrect it. It’s named Tom Lennon’s after my great-uncle – brother to my maternal grandmother, Lena Donnelly (born Lennon). Tom was a great lover of music and a handsome figure of a man with a thick mop of pure-white hair, tinged with a streak of yellow where the smoke from his pipe left its mark. I remember when I was very small he gave me a copy of a volume of Gibbon’s “Decline And Fall Of The Roman Empire”. Way above my head, of course, but he encouraged stretching my mind. Mandolin tab here.  Listen to me playing Tom Lennon’s on my Revelation Jaguar electric mandolin. 26 May 2023.  New version.  Listen to me playing Tom Lennon’s on my Belmuse EM-190 electric mandolin. ABC below:

29 August 2022. Traditional Irish music contains many tunes which recall the “humours” of this or that place – liberally translated as “the good times we had in place name’. I was musing when I write this tune of all the imaginary/mythical/renowned places that could have “Humours” tunes named after them. Avalon, Babylon, Xanadu, Atlantis, Utopia, Erehwon, Lilliput, Tír na n-Óg, El Dorado. And the name “The Humours Of Shangri-La” occurred to me. It had a pleasing cadence… Mandolin tab here.  Listen to me playing The Humours Of Shangri-La on my Revelation Jaguar electric mandolin. ABC below:

23 August 2022. A work-related title. In a current contract, things are not going well. I’ve attempted to get matters back on track but I’ve felt Backed Into A Corner. The only option, sadly, is to walk! Writing this tune helped to calm me down a bit… Mandolin tab here. Listen to me playing Backed Into A Corner on my Revelation Jaguar electric mandolin. ABC below:

15 August 2022. My uncle Henry was, for some years, the last of my grandfather’s seven sons to have evaded the curtain call. But his time came. And The Last Man Standing stood no more. RIP, Henry. Mandolin tab here. Listen to me playing The Last Man Standing on my Revelation Jaguar electric mandolin. 26 May 2023.  New version.  Listen to me playing The Last Man Standing on my Belmuse EM-190 electric mandolin. ABC below:

31 July 2022. The Heart’s A Wonder is a very poetic phrase from JM Synge’s classic play, The Playboy Of The Western World. I wrote this tune – an air rather than one of the many dance forms in Irish music – many years ago but I’ve hesitated to publish it here because no matter how I tried I could never get it to notate properly. I tend to use the ABC converter at mandolintab.net to convert abcs of my tunes into notation and mandolin tablature. The site also features a MIDI converter and I use this to check that I’ve written the tune out correctly. I always imagined this tune was in 3/4 time but numerous refinements failed to yield a MIDI which corresponded with some of the phrases as I play them. I was despairing a little until a few days ago when a friend suggested that perhaps, since this is an air, it doesn’t really have a time signature as such. He suggested I use the C| signifier in the rhythm header for the tune and to experiment with the note lengths for each phrase which was proving problematic. Lo and behold – after a little trial and error I managed to get the tune to notate correctly and for the MIDI to line up with my playing. I’ve included a MIDI file here. It’s rendered in GarageBand using the harp sound patch. (I always imagined, in my mind’s ear, this tune being played on harp…) Mandolin tab here. Listen to me playing The Heart’s A Wonder on my Revelation Jaguar electric mandolin. Listen to a MIDI version of The Heart’s A Wonder (harp sound patch, rendered via GarageBand). ABC below:

30 July 2022. I have recently finished reading Steve Toltz’s highly entertaining and very humane novel “Here Goes Nothing”. The female protagonist refers to herself at one stage as “The Queen Of The Apocalypse” and for some reason the phrase immediately registered with me. When I wrote this reel, the novel was still resonating with me… Mandolin tab here.  Listen to me playing The Queen Of The Apocalypse on my Revelation Jaguar electric mandolin. 26 May 2023.  New version.  Listen to me playing The Queen Of The Apocalypse on my Belmuse EM-190 electric mandolin. ABC below:

7 July 2022. “What a tangled web we weave, when first we practise to deceive.” That old proverb has certainly proved its point in UK politics in the past few days. And therefore when I wrote this hot-off-the-press polka in A Major, the name The Tangled Web simply cried out to be used… Mandolin tab here. Listen to me playing The Tangled Web on my Revelation Jaguar electric mandolin. ABC below:

7 July 2022. Many years ago, I wrote a tune called Eoin’s Welcome – a reel in A Dorian – to mark the birth of the second child of one of my best friends. It hasn’t seen the light of day until now… When I revisited the tab/notation I took the liberty of changing the occasional phrase. Mandolin tab here.  Listen to me playing Eoin’s Welcome on my Revelation Jaguar electric mandolin. 26 May 2023.  New version.  Listen to me playing Eoin’s Welcome on my Belmuse EM-190 electric mandolin. ABC below:

6 July 2022. I was out for a stroll with my partner, the lovely Fee – after whom my composition “A Tune For Fee” is named – a few days ago. I was lost in thought and she asked if I was OK – was I maybe worrying about something. (Well, we all have things to worry about from time, don’t we – and I’m quite prone to worry in any event…) I was able to put her mind at rest. I was in fact dreaming up tune names. Something I often do when alone with my thoughts – although I rarely remember any of them! However The Tipsy Bishop lodged itself in my mind and I thought I’d use it if ever I wrote a tune which seemed to fit. And then – out of the blue – this cheerful, slightly tipsy, hornpipe began to emerge this morning. By the time it was ready to be notated, tabbed and recorded the name seemed more and more apt. Mandolin tab here. Listen to me playing The Tipsy Bishop on my Revelation Jaguar electric mandolin. 26 May 2023.  New version.  Listen to me playing The Tipsy Bishop on my Belmuse EM-190 electric mandolin. ABC below:

29 June 2022. Flann O’Brien’s book “The Poor Mouth” (An Beal Bocht in Irish but my very small smattering of Irish is nowhere near enough to read it in the original), is a classic of Irish humour. It satirises the work of the “island” school of writers (principally Tomás Ó Criomhthain) – although I suspect there’s a deal of admiration concealed behind the rather merciless satire. The hero is given the name Jams O’Donnell (or at least that’s how he hears it) when he is eventually arrested, at which point he meets his father (who has also been given the name Jams O’Donnell) who is at that point being released from jail… When I wrote this irregular jig (10 bars repeated in the first part rather than the standard 8 bars repeated), Jams O’Donnell’s name came into my head. hence the new tune is called Planxty Jams O’Donnell. Mandolin tab here. Listen to me playing Planxty Jams O’Donnell on my Revelation Jaguar electric mandolin. ABC below:

14 June 2022. An expression used in the part of Ireland where I grew up , “neither hide nor hair” means that someone/something has disappeared without trace. A few days ago I stupidly deleted – and shredded! – a large number of files on my laptop and among them a fair few which I realised (way too late!) that I, in fact, needed. Could they be recovered? Could they buffalo! This tune came to me at about the same time and the title – Neither Hide Nor Hair – seemed obvious. I think of the tune as a “barnpipe” – i.e. a cross between a barndance and a hornpipe. Although, conventionally, I think the hornpipe definition would likely be most apt. Mandolin tab here.  Listen to me playing Neither Hide Nor Hair on my Revelation Jaguar electric mandolin. (The tune was recorded within moments of my having finished writing it so it’s not very well-practised. I’m sure I’ll be able to play it more fluently after a few weeks. However I wanted to get this “out into the world”…) ABC below:

6 June 2022. The Mill Quay. I wrote this hornpipe back in 2002 and originally it was a “standard” hornpipe – i.e. each part was 8 bars long, repeated. I was playing it a few weeks ago, having stumbled across it on the session.org where I posted it in October 2002, and I found it was “jarring” with me. I began messing about with it and concluded after a while that it worked much better – to my ear! – as a “single hornpipe”, i.e. with each part played as a single 8 bars section with no repeats. It seemed to flow better… The Mill Quay is a spot on the River Bann about 2 or 3 miles from where I grew up and when I was little my father used to take me there for a spot of fishing. God knows why! It was far from productive and I subsequently discovered a few more much more promising spots within a mile either side. But despite our meagre successes there, those evenings are imprinted in my memory… Mandolin tab here. Listen to me playing The Mill Quay on my Revelation Jaguar electric mandolin. ABC below.

5 April 2022. As I was writing this jig, the noise coming from the downstairs flat of my neighbour was something else! Just beneath my widows, the builders were carving out a trench through a very thick layer of concrete using an angle grinder. Hence the title – The Angle Grinder. In keeping with the “motif” that inspired me to finish this tune off, I have recorded the tune using layer upon layer of distortion. It seemed fitting! Mandolin tab here. Listen to me playing The Angle Grinder on my heavily distorted Revelation Jaguar electric mandolin. ABC below.

24 March 2022. I registered positive for COVID on Monday 14 March 2022 and during my period of illness I wrote a barndance in D Major which I intended to be a sort of celebration of my return to full health. However today, 24 March 2022 – day 11 , I remain positive (as in “for COVID” and not emotionally!) and I’m kind of pessimistic about ever taking a lateral flow test and seeing a single red line winking back at me instead of the dreaded two which have been the daily result since I started testing for the all-clear from day 6. Therefore rather than celebrating a return to The Land Of The Living, perhaps the tune serves just as well as a memory of days when I used to inhabit that place! Mandolin tab here. Listen to me playing The Land Of The Living on my Revelation Jaguar electric mandolin (clean amp setting). Listen to me playing The Land Of The Living on my my Revelation Jaguar electric mandolin – TRIGGER WARNING! – dirty, heavily distorted, amp setting. ABC below:

18 March 2022. The last of four tunes from 2001/2002. The Skinful is a jig in A Major which acknowledges the fact that alongside my early forays into Irish traditional music, one of my other keen interests at the time this tune was written was partaking of regular nights out on the lash. In fact, the two often coincided. My eagerness for the tunes has fluctuated over the years, as indeed has my interest in the gargle. Currently my interest in the tunes is at an all-time high, whereas my interest in swallowing pints has abated with each grey hair and is no longer a major issue of concern for myself or my immediate circle! Mandolin tab here. Listen to me playing The Skinful on my Revelation Jaguar electric mandolin. ABC below:

18 March 2022. The third of 4 tunes from 2001/2002. When I was growing up, the home pitch of my local GAA team – The Wolfe Tones – was far from perfectly even. In fact it was on such a slope that the joke was that the goalkeeper in the goal at the “summit” of the pitch could only guess at play around the goal at the “base” by listening and observing the reaction of spectators. When I wrote this slip jig in D Major, the name The Old Pitch came to mind… Mandolin tab here. Listen to me playing The Old Pitch on my Revelation Jaguar electric mandolin. ABC below:

18 March 2022. The second of 4 tunes from 2001/2002. Jump The Drain is a jig in A Major. The title derives from my childhood. I grew up in a fairly waterlogged part of the world, close to the shore of Lough Neagh. The fields in which we kids played were criss-crossed by drainage ditches and a regular test of our athleticism was to jump said drains. I, being less than athletic, more often than not found myself getting a bit of a soaking! Mandolin tab here. Listen to me playing Jump The Drain on my Revelation electric mandolin. ABC below:

18 March 2022. The first of 4 tunes which I have dredged up from old notebooks dating from 2001/2002, around the time I first starting playing Irish traditional music. I’ve been recovering (slowly) from COVID and leafing through these old books has been a welcome distraction. A simple – but rather charming – reel in D Major. The Heel Of The Hunt. The title refers to a phrase applied to someone who is a bit of a dawdler, a “slooterer” in North of Ireland parlance. As in “here’s yer man at long last, at the heel of the hunt as ever”. Mandolin tab here. Listen to me playing The Heel Of The Hunt on my Revelation Jaguar electric mandolin. ABC below:

20 February 2022. Two new versions of Benedict’s Rambles (see original entry here) on my Revelation Jaguar electric mandolin. Version 1 here. Version 2 with a different amp emulation here.

12 February 2022. I bought an electric mandolin a few days ago. There were couple of “prompts” which led me down that path. The first was hearing the estimable Alan Reid playing a number of tunes electrically (in both sense of the word) which opened my ears to the possibilities… Check out Alan’s YouTube channel here. The second is the fact that I live in a flat surrounded by neighbours. I’m a very poor sleeper and I’d like to make use of the some of the time when I’m awake to perhaps play a few tunes … but playing on my acoustic instruments would be too intrusive at anti-social hours. (I’ve been playing a little by inserting some foam between the strings and the soundboard of a mandolin but it’s quite unsatisfying on account of the way it also changes the feel of the strings…). An electric mandolin solves that problem.

I bought a very cheap Chinese model – a Revelation electric mandolin in sea-foam blue, modelled on the Fender Jaguar. See pic below:

I wasn’t very happy with the factory set-up. The strings were waaaaaaay too light and wouldn’t/couldn’t remain in tune for more than a few seconds at a time. I traded them up for a set of Picato nickel-coated balls-ends (34w, 22w, 15, 10) and needed to do a little bit of adjustment to the action and intonation to compensate for the heavier strings. It’s now a very playable little budget instrument…

And it allows me to make recordings at ungodly hours. I’m not yet very familiar with recording electric mandolin. The sound file which follows was made on an iPhone with the mandolin plugged in directly. I’m told that to get better quality results I should invest in a DI box – so I’m researching those at the moment. However for the time being I’m happy to unveil this first recording on my Revelation.

The tune is a jig in D major called The Rendezvous. It’s quite quirky and has some unusual phrases which I haven’t encountered elsewhere. It’s great fun to play – especially on an instrument which has a very low action. The title came about because I’d been texting a friend during the week about meeting up for a drink and he came back with a reply asking “How about the below for a rendezvous?”. His use of the word dredged up a memory from childhood of a restaurant in my hometown, Lurgan, called The Rendezvous. One of those establishments which was considered “a cut above” and where my mother would occasionally treat my sister and I to Saturday lunch when we were in town “getting the messages”. Mandolin tab here. Listen to me playing The Rendezvous on my Revelation “Jaguar” electric mandolin. ABC below:

4 February 2022. A quirky jig which makes use of all four strings, The Mare’s Tail is named after a very hardy and prehistoric-looking plant which has started to colonise my mother’s garden. Practically impossible to eradicate on account of the fact that its roots extend many feet below the surface of the soil and it can regenerate from a fragment of root… I can’t help but feel impressed by its resilience. Being in D Mixolydian it’s a very “pipery” tune and hence in my recording I add a layer of Uilleann pipe drone in the repeat. Mandolin tab here. Listen to me playing The Mare’s Tail on my G&O #34 mandolin. 5 December 2022. A new version. Listen to me playing The Mare’s Tail on my Belmuse EM-190 electric mandolin. ABC below:

Added 31 January 2022. A tune written today, the last day of January 2022. Some people contend that January is the longest month… Well, today we finally turn our backs on January for another year and so when I wrote this hornpipe, the title was pretty obvious to me. Farewell To Forever. Mandolin tab here. Listen to me playing Farewell To Forever on my Paris Swing Macaferri mandolin. Listen to me playing Farewell To Forever on my Ashbury AT-40 tenor guitar. ABC below:

Added 29 January 2022. A few days ago I received an unexpected and incredibly generous donation from someone based in New York who is finding my website very useful in getting to grips with playing Irish traditional music on the mandolin. One of the elements of their address contains the word “Pacific” and as I was writing this tune, the name came to me as a fitting tribute to his generosity. The Pacific Jig. Mandolin tab here. Listen to me playing The Pacific Jig on my Paris Swing Macaferri mandolin. ABC below:

Added 23 January 2022. I was working on the embryonic version of this tune late last night when there was a sudden burst of fireworks from some eejits who live close by. Annoyed as I was at the intrusion into my peace and quiet, I am at least grateful that their lack of consideration gave rise to train of thought which eventually resulted in the title for this reel in D Major, The Catherine Wheel … Mandolin tab here. Listen to me playing The Catherine Wheel on my Paris Swing Macaferri mandolin. Listen to me playing The Catherine Wheel on my Ashbury AT-40 tenor guitar. ABC below:

Added 19 January 2022. I wrote The Humours Of Buckfast, a reel in G Major paying tribute to the national drink of my hometown of Lurgan, back in 2003 but it hasn’t seen the light of day until now… Buckfast is a fortified tonic wine with a legendary ability to convert the most mild-mannered and polite of people into raging head-the-balls. To be avoided if you’re in any way adverse to ending your evening to the accompaniment of sirens and flashing blue lights! Mandolin tab here. Listen to me playing The Humours Of Buckfast on my Paris Swing Macaferri mandolin. ABC below.

Added 15 January 2022. This morning on Twitter I praised the work of a musician who operates in a very different niche from me but is extremely prodigious (and proficient), whose output I greatly admire. I described his work as “a bottomless well”. That phrase got me to thinking and a short while later I found myself with my mandolin in hand, conjuring up a new tune to be called, of course, The Bottomless Well.

I decided to share a photo with my Twitter following of how I go about scribbling down tunes as I compose them – pen and paper, in a notebook (of which I’ve had many over the years). The first draft looked something like this:

A few hours later, after having been out with my partner to do a bit of shopping, I sat down with the first draft of the tune and decided that it could do with a few tweaks. The second – and as it happened – final draft of the tune looked something like this:

So then I was ready to tab it out and record it. Here’s the end result. Mandolin tab here. Listen to me playing The Bottomless Well on my Paris Swing Macaferri mandolin. Final ABC below…

Added 11 January 2022. I have my partner, Fee, to thank for the title of this mazurka. She introduced me to the concept of “the golden hour” – that time of the evening when, as the sun begins to approach the horizon, the light takes on a golden tinge which in turn gives the impression of soft focus… We have spent many a golden hour on holiday or at home in summer evenings winding down with a few drinks. And so, on this dank and misty morning as this sprightly tune came to me, the title The Golden Hour seemed fitting. I recorded the tune within minutes of writing it, so my playing is a bit rough and ready. I dare say I’ll revisit it as time goes by, so I’m happy to give you this version in the meantime. Mandolin tab here. Listen to me playing The Golden Hour – “double-tracked” Paris Swing Macaferri mandolin plus Uilleann pipe drone. 26 May 2023.  New version.  Listen to me playing The Golden Hour on my Belmuse EM-190 electric mandolin. ABC below…

Added 10 January 2022. I was working on a polka (hence the term polka in the ABC below) which I figured would work better at slower tempo as a 2/4 march, originally in G Major. It was tricky to play and I decided to change it down to D Major. It worked better in that key but it was still somewhat tricky to play. Is it a decent tune or not, if it doesn’t fall easily under the fingers? Hmmm… Anyway, there’s a phrase that colourfully captures the essence of a Pyrrhic victory which seemed to fit this tune perfectly. The Dog That Caught The Car. Having spent considerable time “catching the car” (i.e. writing this tune), the dog (i.e. me) doesn’t really have the ability to do a great deal with the prey! (Hence the reason that in my rendition below, I play the tune once only with no repeat… and feel thankful that I managed to get through it once without any major flubs!) Mandolin tab here. Listen to me playing The Dog That Caught The Car (no repeat) on my Paris Swing Macaferri mandolin. ABC below (NB the polka term has been superseded):

Added 10 January 2022. The Helping Hand is a jig in G Major dedicated to my friend, fellow mandolinist, arranger and cheerleader for traditional music, John Cradden of TheCelticMandolin.co.uk Go raibh math agat, John! Mandolin tab here. Listen to me playing The Helping Hand on my Paris Swing Macaferri mandolin. ABC below:

Added 16 December 2021. A new recording of Farewell To The Bay. I’ve added some mandolin (Paris Swing Macaferri) to an original recording made in 2008 to create a virtual duet. Listen to me playing Farewell To The Bay on octave mandola and mandolin with guitar backing. Original Farewell To The Bay transcription etc. here.

Added 9 December 2021. Some tunes arise through my playing of already well-known tunes. Sometimes the rhythms or particular phrases start me on an expedition and often I return with some new tune that has been inspired by that journey of discovery. Most of the time, the “source” tune is unrecognisable. However in the case of this new composition – The Hound’s Gowl – the source tune (The Eagle’s Whistle) is very clearly referenced in the first bar of each part. Thereafter the tune diverges. It came about as I was noodling on my mandolin late at night with one eye vaguely on the TV whose sound was barely audible. I played the first bar of The Eagle’s Whistle and I thought it would be a good springboard for a new phrase and so, over the space of the next 10 to 15 minutes, I worked up a new 3/4 march which I hastily recorded on my phone so that I’d remember it when I woke up today. Sometimes I write tunes and make a quick recording in this way and when I listen back after a few hours or days, the tune doesn’t click in the way it did when I was writing it. However this tune still seemed to me to have “legs” and so I went about writing it out and recording it in the three versions which follow. Given the derivation of the tune I thought I’d give it a title which referred to some other beast’s distinctive sound… A “gowl” is a Northern Ireland word derived from the English word “howl” and means – er, exactly that!, a howl or – by extension – a shout. (It can also mean a “shouty person”, e.g. “Yer man there is a right oul’ gowl, so he is.”). A hound’s gowl is a measure of approximate distance, corresponding to the distance over which a dog’s howling can carry. (For example, “The daughter’s not been within a hound’s gowl of the ma’s house since she got married to yer man.”). Anyway, I hope you enjoy it. Mandolin tab here. Listen to me playing The Hound’s Gowl on my Paris Swing Macaferri mandolin. Listen to me playing The Hound’s Gowl on my Ashbury AT-40 tenor guitar (overdubbed). Listen to me playing The Hound’s Gowl on my Ashbury AT-40 tenor guitar and Paris Swing Macaferri mandolin. 17 April 2022. I was commenting on a tune (McCahill’s/The Gowel) at thesession.org this morning and it brought this tune to mind again. So I made another recording. Listen to me playing The Hound’s Gowl on my Epiphone Mandobird VIII electric mandolin. ABC below:

Added 7 December 2021. Many years ago – late 1990s/early 200os, I can’t quite remember exactly – I made a mixtape as a Christmas present for friends which I called The Humours Of Lewisham. Some time later I got a notion to make some recordings of my own musical output and the first home-produced CD which I put together was called “The Humours Of Lewisham, Volume 2”. I followed it up afterwards with “The Humours Of Lewisham, Volume 3”. At the time I made Volume 2 I was bitten by the composing bug and was churning out a rake of tunes – many of which were fairly mediocre if I’m being perfectly honest. However one or two have remained with me over the years, including this hornpipe in D Major called – you’ve guessed it! – The Humours Of Lewisham. Now – 20+ years later – I’ve got around to recording it. Mandolin tab and sheet music here. Listen to me playing The Humours Of Lewisham on my Paris Swing Macaferri mandolin. Listen to me playing The Humours Of Lewisham on my Ashbury AT-40 tenor guitar. ABC below:

Added 22 November 2021. I was woken up a few nights ago with the bedroom flooded in an intense white light from a bright, almost-full moon. The memory came back to me as I was working on this hornpipe – my latest composition. And so it’s eventual name – The Moonbeam – suggested itself. Mandolin tab and sheet music here. Listen to me playing The Moonbeam on my Paris Swing Macaferri mandolin. Listen to me playing The Moonbeam on my Ashbury AT-40 tenor guitar. ABC below. 30 May 2022.  New version.  Listen to me playing The Moonbeam on my Revelation Jaguar electric mandolin.

Added 18 October 2021. I wrote this polka a very long time ago. It commemorates the first night of a session at The Blythe Hill Tavern, an Irish pub in South East London which has hosted sessions every Thursday night ever since (apart from the inevitable hiatus during various lockdowns). It’s called The Tight Squeeze because a lot of musicians turned up that night and it was a bit of a struggle (albeit an enjoyable one) to find a bit of elbow room. See also The Long Haul, a mazurka… Mandolin tab and sheet music here. Listen to me playing The Tight Squeeze on my Paris Swing “Macaferri” mandolin. ABC below, for those who like that sort of thing…

Added 13 October 2021. My sleep is dreadful. And so I found myself in wee small hour of this morning watching TV with the sound turned down really looooooow and with a muted mandolin in my hand. This tune emerged and I decided to call it after sheer lack of sleep, one of the banes of my life – The Nemesis. Mandolin tab and sheet music here. Listen to me playing The Nemesis on my G&O #34 mandolin. Listen to me playing The Nemesis on my Ashbury AT-40 tenor guitar. ABC below:

Added 27 September 2021. I’ve recently written The Fanciful Jig which changes key from G Major to D Major as part one gives way to part two. I don’t remember having written a jig before which features such a key change – and yet it just seemed to come perfectly naturally and perfectly fittingly… Mandolin tab and sheet music here. Listen to me playing The Fanciful Jig on my Paris Swing “Macaferri” mandolin. Listen to me playing The Fanciful Jig on my Ashbury AT-40 tenor guitar.

Added 14 September 2021. I’ve been playing a lot of jigs lately. I’ve recently picked up a few that I’ve been drilling into my head and into my fingers and it’s clearly triggered some connections in my brain. In an idle moment, the germ of this tune came to me. I call it The Bittersweet Jig because, to my ear, the second part of the tune has a melancholy feel which contrasts with the bright feel of the first part… Mandolin tab and sheet music here. Listen to me playing The Bittersweet Jig on my Falder mandolin.

Added 11 September 2021. A few months ago I wrote a reel called Dan Molloy’s (see here). The name was a portmanteau tribute to two fellow mandolinists who have been a great support to me in my musical endeavours with their kind words and warm thoughts over the past few years, Dan Forney and Lawrence Molloy. A few days ago I was “messing about” with the reel and it occurred to me that it was one of those reels which might easily transition to a jig. And so, here is Dan Molloy’s Jig. Mandolin tab and sheet music here. Listen to me playing Dan Molloy’s Jig on my Falder mandolin. Listen to me playing Dan Molloy’s Jig on my Ashbury AT-40 tenor guitar.

Added 4 July 2021. The title of this march in A Dorian will strike a chord with anyone who has read Flann O’Brien’s work of genius “The Third Policeman”. (And if you haven’t read it yet, I’d urge you to do so. And I’m jealous of the treat that lies in store for you.) Hot off the press – The March Of The One-Legged Men – written and recorded in 2 versions this morning. Mandolin tab and sheet music here. Listen to me playing The March Of The One-Legged Men on my G&O #34 mandolin. Listen to me playing The March Of The One-Legged Men on my Ashbury AT-40 tenor guitar. ABC below:

Added 1 July 2021. I’ve just finished reading a lovely, thought-provoking book called “The Gospel Of The Eels” by Patrik Svensson. And then this polka came to me. The title seemed obvious. The Elver. Mandolin tab and sheet music here. Listen to me playing The Elver on my G&O #34 mandolin. Listen to me playing The Elver on my Ashbury AT-40 tenor guitar. ABC below.

Added 23 May 2021. On 8 May 2021 I added a reel which I’d written, called Dan Molloy’s. The name was a mash-up of the names of two fellow mandolinists who have been very kind supporters of my musical efforts since I started this website and its complementary YouTube channel and was written as a tribute to both. One of the gents in question is Dan Forney (the “Dan” of the title) who plays mandolin and guitar. Dan emailed me shortly after receiving the tune to say that he would learn it and, true to his word, he did! He has posted two versions of his playing the tune on YouTube. Listen to Dan Forney playing Dan Molloy’s on mandolin. Listen to Dan Forney playing Dan Molloy’s on guitar. Dan Forney’s YouTube channel.

I found myself with a little free time on my hands and so, with Dan’s permission, I grabbed the audio from his guitar rendition of the tune and added some of my mandolin playing over the top. Thanks to the wonders of modern technology, musical collaborations are possible even when thousands of miles and around 80 billion billion gallons of water (thanks, Google!) separate the players! Listen to Dan Forney (guitar) and Aidan Crossey (mandolin) play Dan Molloy’s.

Added 22 May 2021.  The Hovering Dewdrop.  Picture the scene… A beautiful summer dawn, the buzz of insects as I stroll through a misty meadow.  A rose-tinted sky, the promise of warmth and the bluest of mantles to shroud the world and all its creatures.  My eyes light upon a glint in the pure crystal perfection of a drop of dew, clinging precariously to a blade of grass and the title for a tune comes to me.  Idyllic, yeah?  Sadly, I’m going to burst your bubble.  This tune was named after a parish priest when I was growing up.  A man who braved the elements when visitying his elderly parishioners and as a result often suffered the scourge of a runny nose when entering the wamth of inddors from the bitter cold of outside.  As a child I was fascinated by the dewdrop which formed at the tip of his nose and watched and waited – part-anxious, part-amused – for he and it to part company.  Mandolin tab and sheet music here.  Listen to me playing the tune on my G&O #34 mandolin.  ABC below…

Added 19 May 2021. A reel which I wrote and recorded yesterday while it was still very fresh in my mind. The Look-See Reel. A “look-see” is a phrase which people used when and where I was growing to refer to a “visual examination”… For example, “Give me a look-see at thon mandolin!” or “I can’t get my head round thon tune at all; give me a look-see at the tab to see if I can make head or tail out of it!”. Mandolin tab and sheet music here. Listen to me playing The Look-See Reel on my G&O #34 mandolin. ABC below:

Added 19 May 2021. My trawl through an archive of tunes which I wrote quite some time ago continues. If I’m being perfectly honest, a lot of tunes I wrote back at the beginning of the 2000s don’t stand the test of time. However a few still have some merit – sometimes being improved immensely by the tweak of just one phrase.

The Leaky Currach is a jig in D Major whose name was inspired by an episode when on holiday with my family in Achill Island, Co Mayo back in the mid-1970s. My father had borrowed a currach (the traditional rowing boat of the west coast of Ireland) so that we could do a spot of fishing in Dugort Bay, near to a few caves which are home to a colony of seals but also a fishing spot which tended to yield a few decent catches. However it soon became apparent that the currach wasn’t quite watertight and therefore I spent the afternoon bailing it out. So much for a quiet afternoon fishing! Mandolin tab and sheet music here. Listen to me play The Leaky Currach on my G&O #34 mandolin. ABC below:

The Distant Steeple is a jig in A Major which I was very pleasantly surprised to rediscover. It’s a bit of a workout, covering all four strings and since A Major is one of the lesser-used keys in Irish Traditional Music, you may want to take a slow run-up to this one until your fingers become used to patterns which you may not use very often… The name is inspired by the view from the window of my parents’ room when I was growing up. On the near horizon is the steeple of St Peter’s church in Lurgan. Mandolin tab and sheet music here. Listen to me play The Distant Steeple on my G&O #34 mandolin. ABC below:

The Giving Hand is a slide in D Major. The title is inspired by one of Brendan Behan’s favourite sayings, “May the giving hand never falter!”. Mandolin tab and sheet music here. Listen to me play The Giving Hand on my G&O #34 mandolin. ABC below:

Added 17 May 2021. One of the first reels I composed was named in memory of my paternal grandfather John Crossey. Granda John was the father of 12 children. 4 of his sons and one of his daughters died before him, as did his wife Josie while still a relatively young woman. The weight of grief must have been staggering and yet he bore life’s trials with a stoicism and grace that is a lesson to everyone who knew him. A great man for the music I remember the odd occasion after my father died when he would take me out for the afternoon on a Sunday to pubs just across the border and encourage me to sing a few songs. (I didn’t play the tunes at that point…) He had a heart and soul of pure, solid gold. The world was a better place for his presence; a colder and harder place when he took his leave. At times of doubt and turmoil, when hard decisions need to be made, I often ask myself “what would John Crossey do?”. There’s an old cliché – “there’ll never be his likes again”. In John Crossey’s case the cliché is spot-on.

As for the tune. Well, I almost wish I’d waited until I’d written a better tune before I gave this reel its name. There are a lot of stock phrases – in the first part in particular. However the second part is a little more inventive (and also deceptively tricky to play). I like to think that if I had been able to play the tunes while he was still alive and we had found ourselves on a random Sunday in Omeath or Carlingford or Castleblaney – escaping the dull and dry strictures of a Northern Ireland “Lord’s Day” – he’d have appreciated the tune!

Mandolin tab and sheet music here. Listen to me play John Crossey on my G&O #34 mandolin here. Listen to me play John Crossey on my Ashbury AT-40 tenor guitar here. ABC below.

Added 17 May 2021. One of the jigs I wrote in my first flush of composing tunes was a 3-parter called Beef To The Heel. The title comes from a phrase used back in Ireland to describe someone who is, shall we say, a little “sturdy”. He or she is “beef to the heel, like a Mullingar heifer”. Many years ago I ran a website called Pay The Reckoning. I was originally intending to call the site “Beef To The Heel” but was dissuaded by a friend who suggested the phrase was too obscure and wold have very little resonance outside Ireland. Hmmm. I often wish I’d followed my gut instinct on that one!

Mandolin tab and sheet music for Beef To The Heel here. Listen to me playing Beef To The Heel on my Ashbury AT-40 tenor guitar here. ABC below.

Added 17 May 2021. I’ve been revisiting some tunes which I wrote back in the early to mid-2000s and in amongst the dross (what was I thinking!) I’ve found a clutch of tunes which – to my surprise – I’ve found myself quite enjoying. I hope to set them out in tablature and record sound files for them over the course of the next little while in the hope that you, too, might get some pleasure from playing them.

The first of today’s crop is a reel in A Dorian called The Streets Of Paradise. The title comes from – of all things – a monologue at the start of a song called One By One by a band called Ruefrex, one of the many punk bands from Northern Ireland who recorded for the Good Vibrations label run by Terri Hooley during the late 1970s/early 1980s. The monologue goes (if my memory serves me right – it was a long time ago) – “Shall we sit down together for a while?/Here on the hillside/Where we can look down on the city in the sunset/So old, so sick with memories/Old women – some, they say, are damned/But you, I know, will walk the streets of paradise/The old woman said “No”.”

Mandolin tab and sheet music for The Streets Of Paradise here. Listen to me playing The Streets Of Paradise on my G&O #34 mandolin. 7 July 2022.  New version.  Listen to me playing The Streets Of Paradise on my Revelation Jaguar electric mandolin. ABC below.

Added 15 May 2021. Every small town has its legendary characters and when I was growing up, my hometown of Lurgan in County Armagh boasted several, one of whom was The Liar Kelly. He was a man not to be believed. One of his boasts was of a greyhound he once favoured. So fast was said dog that the owner had no qualms about entering her in a big race, even though she was heavily pregnant. Halfway through the race, the inevitable happened and she had to stop running in order to give birth to her litter. Four fine pups. And despite the pause, mother went on to win the race comfortably. Her litter finished second, third, fourth and fifth! This jig is written in memory of The Liar Kelly and characters like him who now seem, sadly, to be far fewer in number than in the days of my childhood… Mandolin tab and sheet music here. Listen to me playing the tune on my G&O #34 mandolin.

Added 14 May 2021. Is Bridget Mary? The title of this tune started out as an in-joke. I wrote it in 2004 at a time when I was in the first flush of getting to grips with this music and I spent a lot of time on various internet forums discussing and disputing. (I think most of us have wised up a lot since then as we’ve seen how those sorts of discussion forums can be quite toxic and so we tend to be less “controversial”, more guarded in our online interactions. Less than 20 years ago and it already seems like a more innocent time!)

In one of those discussions, I was talking about how to my mind there is a striking similarity between the death scene in the Cuchulainn myth and the death scene in the Jesus story. The aloneness at the end – Jesus deserted by his followers; Cuchulainn lured into an ambush, his powers having been depleted by having been tricked into breaking his taboos. Erect, facing outward – Jesus nailed to a cross; Cuchulainn tied to a stone so he could look his enemies in the eye. I was musing whether the Cuchulainn death scene might have had the same emotional resonance in pre-Christian times as the death scene in the New Testament? Someone weighed in with the observation that all mythologies and the stories underpinning religions have features in common and indeed “newer” religions often tend to absorb elements of previous religions in order to appear more relevant. In that case, I mused, is Bridget Mary?

One of my friends immediately said “That’s a tune title, if ever I heard one.” And having thrown down the gauntlet, I set about trying to write a tune which fitted the title. (The only time, to my memory, I’ve ever attempted to write a tune to order.) I mentioned below that when I’m writing a tune, I often hear “in my mind’s ear” the melody being played by an instrument other than my mandolin. In this case I heard this tune being played on the low whistle… I can hear it yet. Slowly and mournfully… and then picking up a little bit of pace on each repeat but never accelerating beyond a speed at which the plaintive quality of the tune is lost. And it’s interesting how an in-joke has given rise to a tune for which, after almost 20 years, I still have a fondness.

Mandolin tab and sheet music here. Listen to me playing the tune on my G&O #34 mandolin here. 23 April 2022. New version. Listen to me playing Is Bridget Mary? on my Epiphone Mandobird VIII electric mandolin.

ABC below.

Added 13 May 2021. We all have our ways of expressing our emotions and for me, they often emerge in moments when I am alone with one of my instruments.

This tune, The Innocents’ Jig, was written, on11 May 2021 when a coroner ruled that the victims of the Ballymurphy Masscare, some 50 years earlier, were in the coroner’s words and contrary to official statements which have been regurgitated ever since, “entirely innocent of wrongdoing”.

There will be lots of words spoken and written about this verdict in the days and weeks to come and many of them by people who are wiser and more eloquent than myself. So, I’ll let the music do the talking for me and I’ll talk a little bit about the music below.

When I’m writing tunes, I sometimes have the sound of another instrument in my head as I write. In this case, I could hear in my mind’s ear this tune being carried by a piper – at maybe three quarters of the speed at which I play it in this video, to allow some of the longer notes to sound to best effect. My recording is a mere sketch. I don’t have access to sophisticated recording and mixing equipment and wouldn’t know what to do with it anyway… but I hope that the small bit of layering in the repeat shows that the tune is one which can be built on by accommodating a range of instrumental voices and that, hopefully, it’s a worthy tribute to the innocent people who died in this horrific spree. And indeed to all innocent people everywhere who have lost their lives in violent ends.

Mandolin tab and sheet music here. Listen to me playing the tune on my Ashbury AT-40 tenor guitar with uilleann pipe drone and my G&O #34 layered above at the repeat. 23 April 2022. New version. Listen to me playing The Inncocents’ Jig on my Epiphone Mandobird VIII electric mandolin.

ABC below.

Added 13 May 2021. A small little tiny wee thing of a reel and yet it’s been 20 years in the making. I first wrote this tune back in 2001 in the key of D Major. I picked it up from an old notebook today and started to play it and found it rather too “squeaky” for my present-day ear. And so I wondered what it would sound like moved down to G. Much better! The Kesh Hill is one of the two hills that rise up from an otherwise fairly level road that runs from Lurgan through to Derrymacash where I was born. (“The Kesh” or “The Cash” is a nickname for Derrymacash. The other hill is commonly known as Wolf’s Island Hill.) Mandolin tab and sheet music available here. Listen to me playing the tune on my G&O #34 mandolin here. 22 April 2022. New version. Listen to me playing The Kesh Hill on my Epiphone Mandobird VIII electric mandolin.

ABC below.

Added 8 May 2021. I wrote, tabbed and recorded this tune this morning as a tribute to two fellow mandolinists who have been incredibly supportive of my mandolinery both at this website and at my YouTube channel. I’ll not name them to spare their blushes but the title of this reel in A Dorian – Dan Molloy’s – is a mash-up of their monikers… So, many thanks, fellows. Your warm words and many kindnesses are much appreciated. Mandolin tab and sheet music available here. Listen to me playing the tune with a repeat on my G&O #34 mandolin. Listen to me playing the tune (no repeat) on my Kentucky KM1000 mandolin. Listen to me playing the tune (no repeat) on my Ashbury AT-40 Tenor Guitar. 18 April 2022. New version. I was playing this tune again yesterday when I realised that I could tweak bars 6 and 7 of each part to become more playable on mandolin without altering the gist of the tune. Mandolin tablature for this updated version here. Listen to me playing the updated version of Dan Molloy’s on my Epiphone Mandobird VIII electric mandolin.

ABC of the original version of the tune and the tweaked version below.

Added 6 May 2021. A few weeks ago I was building a “structure” in my back garden – basically four upright two-metre high fence posts to allow me to drape some camouflage netting on top to create some dappled shade in the seating area. (Last year we had some fierce warm days and there was nowhere to escape from the sun. As luck would have it, the past month has been “foundering” and although the weather has been dry and quite sunny, the temperature has remained stubbornly at the “brrrrrrr” end of the thermometer.) Anyway, as I was erecting said structure, enjoying a moment of appearing to know what I’m doing with a selection of power tools and big lumps of wood (sorry, it’s a primal urge with we middle-aged men!), a neighbour observed my labours and asked, “Are you building a pagoda?”. She meant “pergola”, of course. But although her malapropism was fairly obvious, the question still tickled (tickles) me. I was working on a reel at the time which was still unfinished and “gan ainm”. When I eventually finished the tune, the name was inevitable. So here it is. The Pagoda. Mandolin tab and sheet music here. Listen to me playing the tune on my G&O #34 mandolin here. 22 April 2022. New version. Listen to me playing The Pagoda on my Epiphone Mandobird VIII electric mandolin.   6 July 2022.  New version.  Listen to me playing The Pagoda with a great deal of distortion on my Revelation Jaguar electric mandolin.

ABC below.

Added 5 May 2021. I’m surfing a creative wave at the moment. It’s been brought on by acquiring a new tenor guitar and somehow the difference and difficulty in navigating the bigger scale of what I jokingly call “an maindilín mór” (literally “the big mandolin”) has opened up possibilities that I may have glossed over in the past. Well, that and the fact that I have a lot of time on my hands and I rarely have a moment when I’m not playing one of my instruments. The following tune suggested itself last night while I was busying myself with my tenor guitar. I’d had a bit of an unsettling moment a little while earlier and I was a bit agitated. I often find that I’m at my most creative when there’s a disturbance in the force. This took me some time to get to the point where I was happy to say that it was finished and I believe that it may be among the most satisfying tunes I have written to date. (Certainly by the time I had finished it my earlier agitation had gone…)

That’s a lot of preamble. Sorry! The tune is a hornpipe in G Major called The Seven Derries. It sounds very traditional but I’ve searched all over the internet to make sure that I’m not plagiarising something which has already been written (see my notes on The Cocky Hornpipe/The Cocky March below) and I’m pleased to say that apart from one or two stock phrases which effectively define the tune as a hornpipe, most of the phrases are pretty unique.

As for the title. It refers to the area on the southern shores of Lough Neagh where I grew up, also known as The Montiaighs or The Montiaghs. (Pronouned “mon-chees” and an anglicisation of the original Irish name “Mona Tí”, literally “home of the peat”.) The Montiaghs comprises a number of “townlands” which are named after the oak forests which used to cover this part of County Armagh (“doire” in Irish, which becomes “derry” when anglicised is the term for an oak wood). So, I lived in Derrymacash (“McCash’s Oak Wood”) just up the way from Derryadd (“High Oak Wood”) and a few miles from Derrytrasna (“The Oak Wood At The Crossroads”) and so on… Derryloiste, Derrycrow, Derryinver and Derrytagh make up the remainder of Seven Derries.

So, here’s the tune. I hope you find it as worthy of inclusion here as I do. The playing is a little bit clunky – I recorded this very quickly after writing it and I find it takes time for a tune to become fluent. I may post later versions here in due course; for the moment I’m simply excited to get this tune “out there”! Mandolin tab and sheet music here. Listen to me playing the tune on my Ashbury AT-40 tenor guitar here. Listen to me playing the tune on my G&O #34 mandolin here. Added 11 May 2021. For a bit of fun I recorded the tune on my 1950’s Ukrainian 4-string domra. Listen to me playing The Seven Derries on my 1950’s Ukrainian 4-string domra. 22 April 2022. New version. Listen to me playing The Seven Derries on my Epiphone Mandobird VIII electric mandolin.

ABC below:

Added 2 May 2021. Out of the same burst of creativity which gave birth to The Kindness Of Strangers (see below), came this new jig. I have to say that it’s one of those tunes whose first few bars just “wrote themselves” and I then spent a pleasant/frustrating (delete as appropriate) half hour or so using that as a foundation for the remainder of the tune. I drafted two or three separate versions before deciding that the version here is the keeper. Named Miss Benson’s Fancy as a tribute to my partner’s long-time best friend who is one of the most warm-hearted, funny, immensely likeable people I’ve had the pleasure of knowing. She’s incredibly supportive of my efforts as well and this tune is a way of saying thanks to her for her warm words about my musical endeavours. Mandolin tab and sheet music here. Listen to me playing the tune on my G&O #34 mandolin. Added 11 May 2021. Listen to the tune on my 1950s Ukrainian 4-string domra. 18 April 2022. New version. Listen to me playing Miss Benson’s Fancy on my Epiphone Mandobird VIII electric mandolin. Mandolin tab here.  28 June 2022.  New version, recorded 26 June 2022 in honour of Miss Benson’s birthday.  Listen to me playing a HEAVILY DISTORTED version of Miss Benson’s Fancy on my Revelation Jaguar electric mandolin.

ABC below.

Added 2 May 2021. A new mazurka. I have a great fondness for cinderella tune forms such as the mazurka and during the course of an idle hour yesterday, this tune started to form itself out of phrases which I was toying with. Immediately I started to work on structuring them, transcribing and – eventually – recording my playing of the tune. The mazurka is called The Kindness Of Strangers in tribute to the many people who have been in contact with me since I began work on this website and the accompanying Twitter page, YouTube channel, etc. So much goodwill and support! It’s been genuinely quite touching. So, this one’s for you… Mandolin tab and sheet music here. Listen to me playing the tune on my G&O #34 mandolin. Added 11 May 2021. Listen to the tune on my 1950s Ukrainian 4-string domra. 22 April 2022. New version. Listen to me playing The Kindness Of Strangers on my Epiphone Mandobird VIII electric mandolin.

ABC below.

Added 23 April 2021. A hornpipe which I wrote a few years ago. Called The Leap Of Faith. It’s been a while since I played this and I was pleasantly surprised to find that I still got a kick out of it. Mandolin tab and sheet music here. Listen to me playing the tune on my G&O #34 mandolin. 22 April 2022. New version. Listen to me playing The Leap Of Faith on my Epiphone Mandobird VIII electric mandolin.

Added 9 April 2021. I came across a jig I wrote many years ago which I had completely forgotten about. I called it The Accidental Jig because I didn’t set out deliberately to write a tune. It just emerged as I was playing around aimlessly. As, indeed, do most of the tunes I’ve composed so I suppose they could all be called “accidental”. Mandolin tab and sheet music here. Listen to me playing the tune on my Kentucky KM1000 mandolin… 22 April 2022. New version. Listen to me playing The Accidental Jig on my Epiphone Mandobird VIII electric mandolin.

Added 26 March 2021. I was a little surprised a few days ago to receive an email out of the blue from a contact who tells me that one of my jigs – The Singing Cement Mixer – is regularly played at his local session in The States. (Or rather was played as the session, like virtually all sessions worldwide, is now on pause awaiting the return to “normal life”.) Someone picked it up from tablature that I posted at The Mandolin Cafe very very many years ago and it kind of became a fixture there. He asked what the title means. Well… When I was growing up a local lad was wheeled out to sing at church events and social functions. He was a hefty lump of a fellow (you wouldn’t want him on your knee for long!). He had a great soprano voice, to be fair to him, but his choice of material was a bit on the “tura lura” spectrum and, kids being kids, on account of his build and his tendency to warble in public he earned the nickname “The Singing Cement Mixer”. I;d forgotten all about him until a conversation with a friend reminded me and we had a good laugh about the aptness and yet surrealism of his alias. It was too good an image to remain confined simply to local kids’ folklore from the distant past so when I wrote this jig, I felt the urge to “immortalise” the nickname…. Mandolin tab and sheet music here. Listen to me playing the tune on my Kentucky KM1000 mandolin. 22 April 2022. New version. Listen to me playing The Singing Cement Mixer on my Epiphone Mandobird VIII electric mandolin.

Added 10 February 2021. Finalised and recorded today, 10 February 2021. The Carousel Hornpipe. I’m indebted to John Cradden of thecelticmandolin.co.uk for helping me to come up with the title for this. I sent John a copy of the hornpipe in its “working title” format and he suggested it had a fairground feel. That got my mind racing and the “carousel” moniker came to me in a flash. I think it really suits this quite complex hornpipe. Interesting to compare just how much my compositions have developed by contrasting this tune with Gerry Crossey’s hornpipe below which is a much simpler tune (but no less of a “keeper” for that). Mandolin tab and sheet music here. Listen to me playing the tune on my G&O #34 mandolin.

Added 10 February 2021. Gerry Crossey’s Hornpipe. This was probably the first tune I ever wrote and I dedicated it to my late father, Gerry Crossey. It’s an incredibly simple tune but I find it very catchy and it’s been embedded in my tune memory ever since I wrote it. I recorded it in February 2021 on my G&O #34 mandolin. It’s interesting to compare it with the most recent tune I wrote – The Carousel Hornpipe – which I will also post here today. Mandolin tab and sheet music here. Listen to me playing the tune on my G&O #34 mandolin. 22 April 2022. New version. Listen to me playing Gerry Crossey’s Hornpipe on my Epiphone Mandobird VIII electric mandolin.

Added 7 February 2021. The Orchard County Polka. This came to me today out of the blue. It’s named The Orchard County after my home county of Armagh. Mandolin tab and sheet music here. Listen to me playing the tune on my G&O #34 mandolin. 20 April 2022. New version. Listen to me playing The Orchard County Polka on my Epiphone Mandobird VIII electric mandolin.

STOP PRESS: 16 April 2021. An email from an acquaintance suggested that I have a listen to a barndance called “If There Weren’t Any Women In The World” as part 1 of that tune sounds very like my “cocky” tune. He was absolutely right… In my defence, “If There Weren’t Any Women In The World” is not a tune which I was familiar with and which (at the time of writing) I don’t consider to be part of my repertoire. However it’s quite possible that I have heard it at some stage and subconsciously the tune seeped into my mind. It just goes to show that “writing” tunes in traditional styles is a perilous business. I’m going to let The Cocky March and The Cocky Hornpipe stand because I think the second part is sufficiently different from “If There Weren’t Any Women In The World” to create clear blue water between the tunes. However as penance I will learn, tab and record “If There Weren’t…” and I’ll not be playing the cocky tune in either its hornpipe or march versions in public from this point onwards.

Added 5 February 2021. The Cocky Hornpipe. In G Major. This is one of those tunes which I can’t be sure I actually composed or whether, in fact, it’s a tune I’ve dredged up from my memory and haven’t been able to place. It arrived with me one night as I was sitting around noodling and took very little time to “fall into place”. It has quite a Scottish feel to me (and in fact I first thought of it as fling – but it seems to slot quite well into sets with other hornpipes which I play). And why “cocky”? Well, there’s a certain swagger to this tune, in particular to the cheeky sharp “c” in the 4th bar of the 1st and 2nd parts. It’s also got a structure which I quite like in that the last 4 bars of the 2nd part mirror the last 4 bars of the 1st part; there’s something about the symmetry of tunes like which appeals to me. (Or maybe I’m just lazy – fewer phrases to learn! 🙂 ). Mandolin tab and sheet music here. Listen to me playing the tune on my G&O #34 mandolin.

Added 5 February 2021. The Cocky March. A 4/4 march in G Major. Some hornpipes lend themselves very readily to being converted to 4/4 marches. (On the “learn some tunes” page, I’ve posted an example of The Showman’s Fancy played as a march.) The Cocky Hornpipe is one of those tunes which, with a slightly different accentuation, transitions to a march very easily. The only real change, apart from the stress on individual notes is to change the last bar of each part. In the hornpipe version the final bar of each part would read in abc as G2FG G2; in the march version I’ve notated/tabbed the final bar of each part as G2GG G2. In my playing I don’t stress quite as many of the phrases as in the notation – I’ll leave it up to you, if you like the tune, to decide just how far you want to accentuate every one of the phrases in march rhythm… Mandolin tab and sheet music available here. Listen to me playing the tune on my Eastman MD304 mandolin.

Added 26 January 2021. The Dabchick – a jig in G Major. A tune I wrote in the early 2000s. “Dabchick” is a colloquial name for the small waterfowl called the little grebe. I grew up not far from Lough Neagh and dabchicks were a common sight during my childhood. Mandolin and sheet music available here. Listen to me playing the tune in January 2021 on my G&O #34 mandolin. 20 April 2022. New version. Listen to me playing The Dabchick on my Epiphone Mandobird VIII electric mandolin.

Added 19 January 2021. The Top Of The Tree – a reel in A Major. Another “rescued” tune which I came across in an old notebook as I was clearing out. I tweaked a few of the phrases but essentially the heart of the tune remains as it was when I wrote it. I keep thinking as I play it that it’s quite close to a slide… Who knows what was going through my head when I wrote it and what I was listening to which may have unconsciously inspired it? Mandolin tab and sheet music available here. Listen to me playing the tune in January 2021 on my G&O #34 mandolin. 20 April 2022. New version. Listen to me playing The Top Of The Tree on my Epiphone Mandobird VIII electric mandolin.

ABC file below.

Added 17 January 2021. Another of the tunes which I’ve “rescued” from a pile that I was convinced would no longer be worth playing. Bat Fowling is a jig in D Major whose name refers to the practice carried out by a small handful of people in the part of the world in which I grew up of capturing live birds at night in their nests or roosts by means of startling them with a torch. A tad non-green and yet it developed in those who practised the art a deep feeling and knowledge of birds’ habits, etc. After 1969, when it would not have been safe to be creeping about the fields at night with a torch for fear of running into an army patrol, the practice just about died out… Mandolin tab and sheet music available here. Listen to me playing the tune in January 2021 on my G&O #34 here. 20 April 2022. New version. Listen to me playing Bat Fowling on my Epiphone Mandobird VIII electric mandolin.

ABC file below.

Added 12 January 2021. The Minaun Jig. Another tune which I have resurrected from the pile of tunes that I composed in the early 2000s. I originally wrote this in A and when I started playing it through after many years I found that I liked the melody but the fingering was a little tricky in places. So I dropped the tune down into G as an experiment and I believe it works a lot better. Certainly the fingering on mandolin is a lot less challenging. The jig’s named after a beautiful hill and cliffs in Achill Island – The Minaun Heights/Minaun Cliffs – which formed the backdrop to many a visit there over the years. A picture of said vista follows – proof, if proof is needed, that they are indeed a magnificent sight. Mandolin tab and sheet music available here. Listen to me playing the tune here. 20 April 2022. New version. Listen to me playing The Minaun Jig on my Epiphone Mandobird VIII electric mandolin.

The abc file follows:

Added 11 January 2021. Farewell To The White Horse. Yet another tune which I’ve trawled up from those that I wrote over the years. This was written in 2006 and commemorates the passing of the great sessions that used to be held at The White Horse in Bethnal Green, East London. As is so often tragically the case, this boozer has now closed its doors. But in the early 2000s it hosted some great all-night sessions on a Wednesday through to daylight on Thursday where I learned many a new tune and made many a good friend. Glory days, indeed! Mandolin tab and sheet music available here. Listen to me playing the tune in 2021 on my G&O #34 mandolin. 20 April 2022. New version. Listen to me playing Farewell To The White Horse on my Epiphone Mandobird VIII electric mandolin.

The abc file follows:

Added 7 January 2021. The Crabbit Childer. I’m continuing my trawl through tunes I have composed over the years and this is one which surprised me. In my opinion it’s worth saving – hence today’s recording. I can’t remember what exactly was going on in my life on the day in 2001 when I named this jig. However it’s a safe bet to say that I was exasperated by either my own son and his friends or perhaps by the offspring of family or friends because the title is dialect from my part of Northern Ireland for “bad-tempered children”. When playing it through I have decided to change bar 2 of the second part from “efe efe” to “efA efA” – it seemed to me to be better and more logical fit. As always, I’m very interested to hear what people think of these self-composed tunes so don’t hesitate to get in touch via the contact me page. Listen to me playing the tune on my G&O #34 mandolin. Mandolin tablature and sheet music available here. 20 April 2022. New version. Listen to me playing The Crabbit Children on my Epiphone Mandobird VIII electric mandolin.

Added 6 January 2021. Arthur John Donnelly. Way back when – 1999?, 2000? – I was busily writing tune after tune. I have been revisiting some of them in recent days and while a lot of the tunes are a bit “meh”, I’ve found myself thinking that one or two are worth recording. One of these is the jig Arthur John Donnelly – named after my maternal grandfather. It’s a jig in the “Kitty Lie Over” family. Incidentally, Josephine Keegan of South Armagh – a renowned composer, musician, accompanist and tune collector – published this tune in her book “A Drop In The Ocean”. So I suppose it has the imprimatur of one of the giants of the tradition. Listen to me playing the tune here on the G&O #34 mandolin which has been kindly gifted to me by Michael Gregory. Mandolin tablature and sheet music available here. 20 April 2022. New version. Listen to me playing Arthur John Donnelly on my Epiphone Mandobird VIII electric mandolin.

Added 29 November 2020. The Tiny Butler. My little nephew, Louis, now 6 years old has always been very independently-minded and loves to be “busy”. To the extent that if there’s a job to be done, Louis is quick to volunteer. Anyone need a cup of tea? A few biscuits? Plates need clearing away and stacking the dishwasher? Ferrying cooked food from the barbecue back into the house and raw food from the house out to the barbecue? Louis’s the man for the job. Hence the affectionate nickname, “The Tiny Butler”. This polka in D Major is a tribute to his energy, his competence beyond his years and his funny little ways! Listen to me playing the tune here. Mandolin tablature and sheet music available here. ABC available here. Added 11 May 2021. Listen to me playing the tune on my 1950s Ukrainian 4-string domra. 19 April 2022. New version. Listen to me playing The Tiny Butler on my Epiphone Mandobird VIII electric mandolin.

Added 28 October 2020. One Tree Hill. The “nucleus” of this tune occurred to me after a damp, autumnal walk around One Tree Hill not far from where I live in South East London. Hence the name of this little reel. On a fine, sunny day the views across to the city are amazing. One of my friends raves about this tune (and coincidentally One Tree Hill happens to be one of his favourite spots for a stroll). (I was thinking of renaming the tune Gerard’s Favourite in his honour…) He’s a bodhrán player and looking forward to some sort of re-opening so that he and I and a few others can manage a few tunes together again. In the meantime, I recorded the tune again today on tenor guitar with “bodhrán metronome” set at 80 bpm. I’ve paired it with a lovely mesmeric reel, Lilies Of The Field, which was brought to my attention by Michael Gregory. Listen to me playing One Tree Hill/The Lilies Of The Field on my Ashbury AT-40 with bodhrán metronome backing here. 6 June 2021. I’ve re-recorded the tune in two separate versions – mandolin and tenor guitar – and I’ve corrected a slight error in the tablature. Mandolin tablature available here. Listen to me playing One Tree Hill on my G&O #34 mandolin. Listen to me playing the tune on my Ashbury AT-40 tenor guitar. 16 April 2022. New version. Listen to me playing One Tree Hill on my Epiphone Mandobird VIII electric mandolin.

Added 13 October 2020. The Perils Of Wisdom. A barndance in G. A little knowledge, they say, is a dangerous thing. Hence pearls of wisdom can become perils of wisdom. Mandolin tablature and sheet music available here. ABC available here. 12 June 2021. Improved sound files added. Listen to me playing The Perils Of Wisdom on my G&O #34 mandolin. Listen to me playing The Perils Of Wisdom on my Ashbury AT-40 tenor guitar. 14 April 2022. New version. Listen to me playing The Perils Of Wisdom on my Epiphone Mandobird VIII electric mandolin.

Added 11 October 2020. The Girls Of Hackney. This jig is dedicated to Cathy (fiddle) and Mary (flute) Gillard, who I first met many years ago in the company of their brother John (fiddle) at the late-lamented sessions at The White Horse in Bethnal Green. Through the years we’ve shared many a tune and many an hour’s crack. When the world comes out of its current state of paralysis and we’ve managed to live more easily with the coronavirus pandemic, Cathy and Mary are among the first people I hanker to play a tune or two with. Mandolin tablature available here. Sheet music available here. ABC available here. 12 June 2021. Improved sound files added. Listen to me playing The Girls Of Hackney on my G&O #34 mandolin. Listen to me playing The Girls Of Hackney on my Ashbury AT-40 tenor guitar.

Added 9 August 2020. The Parakeet. There’s a piece in the “random thoughts” section of this site about how I came to name this reel. I’ve since tinkered with the tune and I now play the last bar slightly differently to the way I first composed it. Listen to me playing the tune here. Mandolin tablature and sheet music available here. ABC available here. 20 July 2021. Alternate recordings made in July 2021. Listen to me playing The Parakeet on my G&O #34 mandolin. Listen to me playing The Parakeet on my Ashbury AT-40 tenor guitar. 19 April 2022. New version. Listen to me playing The Parakeet on my Epiphone Mandobird VIII electric mandolin. 5 July 2022. New version. Listen to me playing Jim Donoghue’s/The Parakeet on my Revelation Jaguar electric mandolin.

Added 27 June 2020. Benedict’s Rambles. I composed this jig in 2001 when my son, Benedict, was 2 years old. At the time I said that although he hadn’t rambled far yet, I hoped he would experience the world once he became independent. It’s fair to say that he has, indeed, rambled a fair bit already and hopefully many more rambles lie ahead! Listen to me playing the tune here. Mandolin tablature available here. ABC file available here. Updated sound file, January 2021, played on my G&O #34 mandolin. 20 July 2021. New sound files added. I’ve been playing around with this tune lately and some of the phrases I now play differ from those in the version that I originally composed. Listen to me playing Benedict’s Rambles on my G&O #34 mandolin in July 2021. Listen to me playing Benedict’s Rambles on my Kentucky KM-1000 mandolin in July 2021. Revised mandolin tablature, July 2021. 21 October 2021. Benedict’s 22nd birthday took place on 19 October 2021 (and hence the 20th birthday of this jig!) and I recorded a version to mark the occasion. Listen to me playing Benedict’s Ramble on my Paris Swing “Macaferri” mandolin. 14 April 2022. Additional version. Listen to me playing Benedict’s Rambles on my Epiphone Mandobird VIII electric mandolin. 12 June 2022. A version which I recorded yesterday to mark Benedict having completed his final exam for his 4-year MPhys course in Theoretical Physics at The University of Manchester. A real milestone event! Listen to me playing Benedict’s Rambles on my Revelation Jaguar electric mandolin. 22 October 2022. A new version recorded to mark Benedict’s 23rd birthday. Listen to me playing Benedict’s Rambles on my Revelation Jaguar electric mandolin.

Added 26 June 2020. Michael Gregory’s. I named this tune in honour of Michael Gregory, of Grand Forks, North Dakota, who has been a good friend, a contributor to this website and one of its loudest cheerleaders. Michael and I were emailing each other about various matters when this tune “materialised”. It’s got a lot in common with A Tune For Fee – below – transposed into D. But after the first few bars it goes off in another direction. Like A Tune For Fee, I’m not sure which genre of tunes it fits into. Again I’ve called it a slow reel but I wouldn’t bet the farm on that particular classification! I hope you enjoy it and when you listen to it – or when you play it yourself – think fond thoughts of a fellow mandolin player from North Dakota who has nurtured an abiding love for “the tunes” and has given many mandolin players – myself included – unstinting, generous support! Listen to me playing the tune on octave mandola here. Mandolin tablature and sheet music available here. A midi version of the bare bones of the tune here. Listen to me playing the tune on my Ashbury AT-40 Tenor Guitar here (recorded 27 April 2021).

Added 18th April 2020. A Tune For Fee (slow reel). Well, I call this a slow reel. It’s a slowish tune in 4/4 and it’s not a hornpipe, strathspey or a barndance. So, I suppose by process of elimination, that it’s a reel! This tune arrived pretty much perfectly-formed and I named it after my partner, Fee, because it shares many of her qualities. Gentle, beautiful, calming and – as I said above – perfectly formed. She is and will forever be the centre of my universe and since I reckon this may be the best tune I have ever written and probably the best I’ll ever write, it’s fitting that I named it in her honour. Listen to me playing the tune on octave mandola here. Mandolin tablature available here. It’s set out in sheet music here. An early recording of this tune played on a heavily distorted electric guitar tuned DGGDAE. A midi-to-mp3 version of the bare bones of the tune can be found here. Yet another version of this tune – this time with my G&O #34 taking the melody and my KM1000 playing a countermelody, recorded 6 March 2021. On 26 April 2021 I got my hands on an Ashbury AT-40 tenor guitar. It’s pretty much the bottom of the range as far as Asbury’s tenor guitars go but it has some features which recommend it. Firstly it’s been built with GDAE tuning in mind – most tenor guitars have been built to handle CGDA tuning as standard and therefore they often require some modifications to the nut and sometimes the bridge and the neck to accommodate the heavier strings required for GDAE tuning. Secondly, it’s very affordable. List price, new – £199. I’ve had more expensive tenor guitars before (I’ve had more expensive nights out!) and I’m not sure that I’m a good enough player to warrant a premier league instrument. And finally the finish is absolutely impeccable. Often the finish on budget instruments can be very rough – in this case the attention to detail is quite remarkable. Negative points? Well, the neck is a lot chunkier than most tenor guitars. Not so chunky as to be unplayable but playing jigs and reels at session speed might pose a challenge. (That said, I’m more and more inclined these days to play tunes at quite a slow pace, so perhaps this won’t be such a challenge after all.) And the other big negative that I’ve noticed so far is that the “e” string is much louder than its neighbours. This could be because the guitar comes strung with a “13” as standard. When I change the strings, I’ll aim for a set which contains an “11” and see how that pans out. Anyway – one of the first tunes I play on any new instrument is “A Tune For Fee” and here’s a new version recorded on the AT-40 this morning, 27 April 2021. Listen to A Tune For Fee on Aidan’s Ashbury AT-40. Update 4 March 2022. Two new “electronic” and “electric” versions of the tune. The first uses a version of the tune which I recorded electronically as my alter-ego “Mildew Lisa” as a base for some electric mandolin overlays. The second features multiple layers of clean and progressively more processed electric mandolin tracks. The eponymous Fee prefers the second of these! Listen to me playing A Tune For Fee using the Mildew Lisa version of the tune as a base… Listen to me playing an “electric mandolin overload” version of A Tune For Fee. 21 May 2022. A new version which I recorded a few days ago to mark Fee’s birthday. Listen to me playing A Tune For Fee on 18 May 2022.

Added 9th January 2020. Farewell To The Bay (waltz). I named this waltz in recognition of my mother’s and her parent’s move from The Bay area of Derryveen to Derrymacash in the 1960s. Although only a few miles, the move marked a big change in their lives. Listen to me playing the tune here. Mandolin tablature available here. The tune is set out in abc format here. Sheet music available here. 19 April 2022. New version. Listen to me playing Farewell To The Bay on my Epiphone Mandobird VIII electric mandolin.

Added 9th January 2020. The Spoils Of Victory (hornpipe). I wrote this hornpipe in 2002, to celebrate Armagh (my home county) winning the All-Ireland Gaelic Football Championship. I originally posted the abc to thesession.org website. I revisited the tune a few days ago and I was unhappy with the triplets I’d written in the first instance (X:1 in the link which follows). So I tweaked bar 4 in the first and second parts (X:2) and I think the end result is far more pleasing to the ear. (Well – to my ear, in any event.) Listen to me playing the tune. Mandolin tablature available here. The tune is set in abc format (X:2) here. Sheet music available here.

Update 22 November 2020 – I’ve been playing around with The Spoils Of Victory for a while now and I have come up with a new setting for the second part which I think works really well. Mandolin tablature for the new setting. Hear me play the new setting on my G&O #34. 19 April 2022. New version. Listen to me playing The Spoils Of Victory on my Epiphone Mandobird VIII electric mandolin.

Added 8th January 2020. The Long Haul (mazurka). I wrote this mazurka back in 2003/2004. A long time ago. It was named after an inaugural session in a local pub which started early and went on into the wee hours of the following day. All good crack – but a long haul. Listen to me playing the tune. Mandolin tablature available here. The tune is set out in abc format here. Sheet music available here. Updated sound file, January 2021, played on my G&O #34 mandolin. 19 April 2022. New version. Listen to me playing The Long Haul on my Epiphone Mandobird VIII electric mandolin.

Added 7th January 2020. The Hooded Man (jig). This tune is dedicated to my uncle who passed away recently. A solid man. Listen to me playing the tune. Mandolin tablature available here. The tune is set out in abc format here. Sheet music available here. 26 July 2021. A new sound file; listen to me playing the tune on my G&O #34 mandolin.

Added 7th January 2020. Joe Crilly’s Jig. Joe Crilly – actor, playwright and social catalyst – grew up in Derryadd, close to where I, too, grew up. He moved to London a few years before I did and we were close friends for many years, sharing many an adventure and misadventure along the way. Tragically, Joe took his life some years back and I feel his loss constantly. This jig is a tribute to a much-missed companion. Listen to me playing the tune. Mandolin tablature available here. The tune is set out in abc format here. Sheet music available here. Listen to a new version recorded January 2021 on my G&O #34 using a Zoom H1n digital recorder. 19 April 2022. New version. Listen to me playing Joe Crilly’s Jig on my Epiphone Mandobird VIII electric mandolin.

Added 7th January 2020. McQuillan’s Hill (barndance). One of Joe Crilly’s (see above) most acclaimed plays was “On McQuillan’s Hill”. I wrote this barndance shortly after Joe died and named it “McQuillan’s Hill” as a further tribute. The jaunty nature of the piece is a mirror opposite of the grief I was feeling at the time at the loss of a great friend and a force of nature. Listen to me playing the tune. Mandolin tablature available here. The tune is set out in abc format here. Sheet music available here. Listen to a new version recorded January 2021 on my G&O #34 using a Zoom H1n digital recorder. 19 April 2022. New version. Listen to me playing McQuillan’s Hill on my Epiphone Mandobird VIII electric mandolin.

Added 7th January 2020. Cardiac Hill (jig). My mother owns a mobile home in Downings, County Donegal. The site commands great views but there’s a price to pay for those views in the form of a very steep section on the way in from Downings town. One of my relatives named this stretch of road “Cardiac Hill” and I thought the name was appropriate for this jig in A Major. Listen to me playing the tune. Mandolin tablature available here. The tune is set out in abc format here. Sheet music available here. Listen to a new version recorded January 2021 on my G&O #34 using a Zoom H1n digital recorder.