Annotation:Heights of Alma (1) (The)

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X:1 T:Heights Off Almagh, The T:Heights of Alma [1] T:Rakes of Mallow M:2/4 L:1/8 R:Polka S:Larry Smyth music manuscript collection (Abbeylara, Co. Longford, c. 1900, No. 46) Z:Transcribed by Conor Ward K:G ge dc/B/|cd (ef)|ge dc/B/|eA A2| ge dc/B/|cB (ce)|dc BA|G2G2:| |:GB GB|GB BA/G/|FA FA |FA AG/F/| GB GB|(GB) (Bd)|ec AF|G2G2:|]

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HEIGHTS OF ALMA. AKA - "Alma (1) (The)." AKA and see "Rakes of Mallow (The)." Scottish, Irish, Old-Time (?); Quickstep March, or Polka. A Major. Standard tuning (fiddle). AABB. Well-known as the Irish dance tune "Rakes of Mallow"--the "Heights of Alma" title is perhaps some kind of corruption of the name "Rakes of Mallow." Curiously, finds researcher Conor Ward, the tune appears with the title variant "Heights off Almagh" in the c. 1900 music manuscript collection of County Longford musician Larry Smyth (with strains reversed from the way it is usually played). County Sligo-born fiddler Michael Coleman (-1893-1946) and flute player Tom Morrison recorded the tune for Columbia Records in 1925 as "Heights of Alma."

Battle of Alma, by Horace Vernet

The "Heights of Alma" is the name of an objective in the first pitched battle of the Crimean War, in 1854. Curiously, the name (as a tune or song) appears in a list of traditional Ozarks Mountains fiddle tunes compiled by musicologist/folklorist Vance Randolph, published in 1954. See also the 6/8 pipe march, "Heights of Alma (2) (The)."

"The Heights of Alma" is also a musically unrelated song written by James Maxwell, a schoolmaster at Dungiven, Scotland, set to a duple-time variant of the venerable "Haughs of Cromdale (The)." The first stanza goes:

Ye loyal Britons, pray give ear
Unto the news I bring you here,
While joy each Briton's heart doth cheer
For the vict'ry gaind at Alma.
'Twas on September the eighteenth day,
In spite of dashing salt sea spray,
We landed safe in the Crimea
Upon our route for Alma.

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