Annotation:Silken Wallet (The)

Back to Silken Wallet (The)

SILKEN WALLET, THE (An tiac sioda). AKA and see "Brown Wallet," "An Sioda Ata id' Bhalluit, a Bhuachaill?" (Is It Silk that's in Your Bag My Boy?), "Cheer Up Old Hag," “Silk in the Bag,” "Wallet of Silk (The)." Irish, Double Jig (6/8 time). E Minor ('A' part) & G Major ('B' part). Standard tuning (fiddle). AABB'. Bayard (1981) identifies this as a variant of "Over the River to Charlie" (Bayard's No. 555). The title is one English rendering of "An Sioda Ata id' Bhalluit, a Bhuachaill" (Is It Silk that's in Your Bag My Boy?), with the English title printed by R.M. Levey, the music of which O'Neill seems to have substantially copied (albeit with an altered version of the English title. O'Daly (Poets and Poetry of Munster) has a song setting with the Irish title.

Paul de Grae finds that Canon James Goodman (1828-1896) has a "broadly similar setting" in his mid-19th century music manuscript collection under the title "Síoda 'thá ad Bhalluit? (An)"^[1], and also notes that George Petrie [1] (1790–1866) collected five variants: "Cheer Up Old Hag," "Blow old woman and be merry," "Ga mea Sora" and two settings of "Bídhean tú i bhfad a-muig." Two more, notes de Grae, were printed by Charles Villiers Stanford in his 1905 grand collection of Petrie's music, as "Humors of Kilkenny (1)" and "Your Bag is Handsome My Boy." O'Neill's own "Humors of Kilkenny (2)" is a close variant^[2]

Finally,

The first part of this tune appears as the air for Joyce's "Fairies' Song (The)", of which Joyce writes:

The reader will no doubt be glad to see the sample of what fairies can do in musical composition. All the other songs in this book were composed wholly by mortals; but the following air and song are the joint production of the Knockgraffon fairies, and of the little hunchback, Lusmore. [Joyce, 2, p. 21)^[3].

See also the slide “Is your wallet made of silk?”

Additional notes

Source for notated version: -

Printed sources : - Kennedy (Traditional Dance Music of Britain and Ireland: Jigs & Quicksteps, Trips & Humours), 1997; No. 169, p. 40 (appears as “Silk in the Bag”). O'Neill (Krassen), 1976; p. 39. O'Neill (Music of Ireland: 1850 Melodies), 1903; No. 891, p. 165. O'Neill (Dance Music of Ireland: 1001 Gems), 1986; No. 140, p. 38.

Recorded sources: -

See also listing at:
Alan Ng's Irishtune.info [2]

Back to Silken Wallet (The)

X:1 M: L: K: SCORE

↑ Paul de Grae, "Notes on Sources of Tunes in the O'Neill Collections", 2017.
↑ ibid.
↑ quoted in ibid

[1] Paul de Grae, "Notes on Sources of Tunes in the O'Neill Collections", 2017.

[2] .

[3] quoted in ibid

[1]

[2]

[3]