Traditional Irish Music Is Not Irish At All

 I've been doing a lot of research about traditional dance music from the celtic nations.  I've learned that most of what we think of as "traditional Irish" music is not Irish at all.  In fact, much of the music came originally to the new world (Virginia, US) by immigrants from Ulster Cty, mostly young men from Scotland unable to make a living there.  They came first to build the new communities and sent for their brides later.  They brought their music, dance and song with them, which largely  was responsible for "country music" at first and later "old timey music", which influenced Bill Monroe and gave him the impetus to start up the Blue Grass boys.

But Scotland didn't create those dance forms, they came from the Normans who sacked England in the 12th century.  The original dance form, the Carole (12/8) came from Crete in 900 BC and settled in what became Gaul, and later France.  All western dance forms evolved from the Carole: 12/8 (the slide), 9/8 (slip jig), 6/8 (single and double jig), 4/4 (reel, strathspay, hornpipe), 2/4, 3/2, etc.  The polka came from eastern Europe originally and only entered the lexicon in the 20th century.

Chief O'Neill, who is credited for collecting a myriad of melodies he called Irish, gave us the first compendium of traditional dance tunes.  But the provenance of those tunes is unclear.  Chances are they are mostly 19th century melodies largely from England and Irish-English cities such as Dublin and Cork, no doubt influenced by the keys, modes and forms from Scotland and England.

The most popular dance form that made it's way to the Americas was the hornpipe.  The dance was largely a solo dance, done by men.  In the south it was known as "buck dancing" and in the north, "clogging".  Here's an example of the style in the south: 

Many of the original "old timey" tunes became "bluegrass" tunes in the 20th century: Red Haired Boy, Hull's Victory, Boys of Bluehill, Fisher's Hornpipe, etc.  

These were all hornpipe forms.  We don't know who wrote them, which is why they can't be nailed down, but if you look closely at the melody form, you notice the 3 quarter not sequence at the end of each 8 bar section, indicating it's a hornpipe.  

Many other tunes, probably written in the 20th century, follow this rule and are included in the Bluegrass lexicon.

Traditional Irish Music Is Not Irish At All

 I've been doing a lot of research about traditional dance music from the celtic nations.  I've learned that most of what we think of as "traditional Irish" music is not Irish at all.  In fact, much of the music came originally to the new world (Virginia, US) by immigrants from Ulster Cty, mostly young men from Scotland unable to make a living there.  They came first to build the new communities and sent for their brides later.  They brought their music, dance and song with them, which largely  was responsible for "country music" at first and later "old timey music", which influenced Bill Monroe and gave him the impetus to start up the Blue Grass boys.

But Scotland didn't create those dance forms, they came from the Normans who sacked England in the 12th century.  The original dance form, the Carole (12/8) came from Crete in 900 BC and settled in what became Gaul, and later France.  All western dance forms evolved from the Carole: 12/8 (the slide), 9/8 (slip jig), 6/8 (single and double jig), 4/4 (reel, strathspay, hornpipe), 2/4, 3/2, etc.  The polka came from eastern Europe originally and only entered the lexicon in the 20th century.

Chief O'Neill, who is credited for collecting a myriad of melodies he called Irish, gave us the first compendium of traditional dance tunes.  But the provenance of those tunes is unclear.  Chances are they are mostly 19th century melodies largely from England and Irish-English cities such as Dublin and Cork, no doubt influenced by the keys, modes and forms from Scotland and England.

The most popular dance form that made it's way to the Americas was the hornpipe.  The dance was largely a solo dance, done by men.  In the south it was known as "buck dancing" and in the north, "clogging".  Here's an example of the style in the south: 

Many of the original "old timey" tunes became "bluegrass" tunes in the 20th century: Red Haired Boy, Hull's Victory, Boys of Bluehill, Fisher's Hornpipe, etc.  

These were all hornpipe forms.  We don't know who wrote them, which is why they can't be nailed down, but if you look closely at the melody form, you notice the 3 quarter not sequence at the end of each 8 bar section, indicating it's a hornpipe.  

Many other tunes, probably written in the 20th century, follow this rule and are included in the Bluegrass lexicon.

Scotland's Irish Origins

Scotland's Irish Origins Volume 54 Number 4, July/August 2001

by Dean R. Snow

Tracking the migration of Gaelic speakers who crossed the Irish Sea 1,700 years ago and became the Scots

Ireland in the Early Christian period (A.D. 400-1177) was made up of at least 120 chiefdoms, usually described in surviving documents as petty kingdoms, typically having about 700 warriors. One of these petty kingdoms was Dál Riata, which occupied a corner of County Antrim, the island's northeasternmost part. Around A.D. 400, people from Dál Riata began to settle across the Irish Sea along the Scottish coast in County Argyll. Other Irish migrants were also establishing footholds along the coast farther south, as far as Wales and even Cornwall, but the migrants from Dál Riata were especially noteworthy because they were known to the Romans as "Scotti" and they would eventually give their Gaelic language and their name to all of what is now known as Scotland.

So far as we know, the only people already living in Scotland in A.D. 400 were the Picts, who were first mentioned by Roman writers in A.D. 297. This was in connection with an attack along Hadrian's Wall, in which the Picts had the help of Irish (Scotti) allies, so connections across the Irish Sea must have already been strong. Roman sources predictably describe their Pictish adversaries as barbarians and mention their use of blue paint, which some historians later interpreted perhaps too literally (Mel Gibson and his friends show up in the film Braveheart slathered with gallons of it). More likely the Picts were heavily tattooed.

The Picts lived mainly in eastern Scotland, north of modern Edinburgh. We know their homeland both from the distributions of Pictish place-names (which typically begin with "Pett" or "Pit") and the distribution of Pictish symbol stones, which were Pictish equivalents of a medieval coat of arms, each typically bearing the crest of a petty king and that of his father. The rugged west coast was only lightly occupied by Picts or some other Celtic-speaking people. Settlers from Dál Riata apparently established themselves along the west coast without much opposition. By A.D. 490 the population of Scotti was large enough that the head of the little kingdom moved the family seat across from Ireland. The Scotti alternately cooperated with and fought against the Picts for the next few centuries until the two were unified into a single kingdom under Cináed (Kenneth) mac Ailp'n in A.D. 844. After that the Pictish language disappeared, along with the symbol stones and other archaeological traits that had distinguished them from the Scotti.

What the Scottish case and others like it tells us is that migrations by relatively small dominant societies are much more common in human history than many archaeologists have been willing to admit (much less assume), particularly in North America. Typically, the signatures of it have been explained away too easily as evolutionary change in place. There are so many good examples of change associated with the migration of whole societies or dominant subsets of them, that any major change over time that can be observed archaeologically is likely to have involved migration in one of its many forms, however minor. We should be assuming population movement as a first principle rather than denying it.

Take your Pict

From A.D. 400 to 1000 , northern Great Britain saw the withdrawal of Roman forces, arrival of the Scotti from northeastern Ireland, disappearance of the Picts, formation of a united kingdom of Scotland, and colonization by the Norse.

A.D. 400. Settlers from the Irish petty kingdom of Dál Riata were beginning to establishing themselves in what would later be called Scotland. Picts were well established north of other Celtic speakers except perhaps on the west coast and in the Hebrides.

A.D. 500. Departure of Roman legions in A.D. 407 left Britain to Picts, other Celtic speakers, and growing numbers of Irish settlers. Enough Scotti were in place by A.D. 490 to allow them to move the seat of Dál Riata from across the Irish Sea.

A.D. 600. Colum Cille left Ireland and established a monastery on Iona in 563. From this time on expansion of the Irish Scotti was assisted in part by the spread of Christianity.

A.D. 700. As the Scottish presence in Britain grew, so did that of the Angles and Saxons, many the descendants of Roman mercenaries. Angle settlements expanded south and east of Scottish territory.

A.D. 800. As both Angle and Scottish communities grew, small Norse settlements began to appear in the islands of Orkney and the Outer Hebrides.

A.D. 900. Competition from the Norse and Angles probably contributed to the unification of Scots and Picts into a single kingdom in 844. Pictish language and culture disappeared. Norse raids forced the abandonment of Iona by 878.

A.D. 1000. By 1,000 years ago the Picts were a memory and the united kingdom of Scotland was caught between Germanic Norse and Angle settlers.

Dean R. Snow, a professor of anthropology at the Pennsylvania State University, has studied Iroquoian archaeology since 1969. His work in Northern Ireland and Scotland was supported by the British Council.

-----

© 2001 by the Archaeological Institute of America

archive.archaeology.org/0107/abstracts/scotland.html

Seven Celtic Nations - 6 Scotland

Royal Arms of Scotland

The recorded history of Scotland begins with the arrival of the Roman Empire in the 1st century, when the province of Britannia reached as far north as the Antonine Wall. North of this was Caledonia, inhabited by the Picti, whose uprisings forced Rome's legions back to Hadrian's Wall. As Rome finally withdrew from Britain, Gaelic raiders called the Scoti began colonising Western Scotland and Wales. Prior to Roman times, prehistoric Scotland entered the Neolithic Era about 4000 BC, the Bronze Age about 2000 BC, and the Iron Age around 700 BC.

The Gaelic kingdom of Dál Riata was founded on the west coast of Scotland in the 6th century. In the following century, Irish missionaries introduced the previously pagan Picts to Celtic Christianity. Following England's Gregorian mission, the Pictish king Nechtan chose to abolish most Celtic practices in favour of the Roman rite, restricting Gaelic influence on his kingdom and avoiding war with Anglian Northumbria.[1] Towards the end of the 8th century, the Viking invasions began, forcing the Picts and Gaels to cease their historic hostility to each other and to unite in the 9th century, forming the Kingdom of Scotland.

The Kingdom of Scotland was united under the House of Alpin, whose members fought among each other during frequent disputed successions. The last Alpin king, Malcolm II, died without issue in the early 11th century and the kingdom passed through his daughter's son to the House of Dunkeld or Canmore. The last Dunkeld king, Alexander III, died in 1286. He left only his infant granddaughter Margaret, Maid of Norway as heir, who died herself four years later. England, under Edward I, would take advantage of this questioned succession to launch a series of conquests, resulting in the Wars of Scottish Independence, as Scotland passed back and forth between the House of Balliol and the House of Bruce. Scotland's ultimate victory confirmed Scotland as a fully independent and sovereign kingdom.

When King David II died without issue, his nephew Robert II established the House of Stuart, which would rule Scotland uncontested for the next three centuries. James VI, Stuart king of Scotland, also inherited the throne of England in 1603, and the Stuart kings and queens ruled both independent kingdoms until the Act of Union in 1707 merged the two kingdoms into a new state, the Kingdom of Great Britain.[2][3][4] Ruling until 1714, Queen Anne was the last Stuart monarch. Since 1714, the succession of the British monarchs of the houses of Hanover and Saxe-Coburg and Gotha (Windsor) has been due to their descent from James VI and I of the House of Stuart.

During the Scottish Enlightenment and Industrial Revolution, Scotland became one of the commercial, intellectual and industrial powerhouses of Europe. Later, its industrial decline following the Second World War was particularly acute. In recent decades Scotland has enjoyed something of a cultural and economic renaissance, fuelled in part by a resurgent financial services sector and the proceeds of North Sea oil and gas. Since the 1950s, nationalism has become a strong political topic, with serious debates on Scottish independence, and a referendum in 2014 about leaving the British Union.

Lots more about the history of Scotland on Wikipedia:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Scotland

Going Back To My Roots, To Discover My Musical Heritage

The Sweets were Tories during the Revolutionary War.  They fled to Newfoundland and Nova Scotia during the conflict.  They became ship captains, ship builders, carpenters and later bone setters and doctors.  Their music would have been the Maritime music of Cape Breton and Newfoundland.

•  Here's an example of what that music might have sounded like

The Merry Family was strictly Protestant.  The only music they enjoyed was devotional and that was strictly controlled.  They basically had no music other than what was allowed in church.

The Kieltys were Scotts-Irish, originally from western Scotland, the land settled by the Gaels in pre-colonial times.  Their music would have been the music of the Celts using bagpipes, fiddles, fifes and drums for war and good times.

• Here's an example of what that music might have sounded like