Annotation:Peat Fire Flame

Back to Peat Fire Flame

---

PEAT FIRE FLAME, THE. AKA and see "Fireside Reel." Scottish; Air, Reel, March (4/4 time). E Minor. Standard tuning (fiddle). AABB. As "Fireside Reel" the tune is quite old, and appeared in David Young's Drummond Castle Manuscript (1734). It is often identified as a "traditional melody from the Hebrides," and was included by Marjory Kenney-Fraser in her Songs of the Hebrides for Schools, identified as a "tramping song" in march time, "companion to 'Road to the Isles (The)'." Words to the tune were written in 1921 by Kenneth MacLeod, "to a tune played on the chanter by Malcolm Johnson." However, other than being the vehicle for MacLeod's song, there seems to be no particular connection with the Hebrides.

The 'peat-fire flame' around which stories were told in bygone days was used as a metaphor for a book on Scottish storytelling called The peat-fire flame: folk-tales and traditions of the Highlands & Islands (1937), buy Alasdair Alpin MacGregor.

Source for notated version:

Printed sources:

Recorded sources:

See also listing at:
Jane Keefer's Folk Music Index: An Index to Recorded Sources [1]

---