Buckley's Fancy
BUCKLEY'S FANCY (Roga Ui Buacalla). AKA - "Buckley's Favourite (1)." AKA and see "After the Sun Goes Down," "Albany Beef," "Lord St. Clair's Reel." O'Neill's "After the Sun Goes Down" is a related reel, fairly close in melodic contour, as is Roche's "Lord St. Clair's Reel." "Albany Beef" shares a part with "Buckley's Fancy." Some similarities to "Atlantic Wave." American, Irish, Canadian; Reel. G Major. Standard tuning (fiddle). AABB.
It may be that the tune name is a nod to the Buckley family of black-face minstrel entertainers (see note for "Dar's Sugar in the Gourd"). The minstrel connection is shown by the fact that when Dan Emmett's "I Wish I Was in Dixie's Land" ("Written and Composed expressly for Bryant's Minstrels") was published in 1860 (Firth, Pond & Co., New York, and P.P. Werlein, New Orleans), the sheet music ("arranged for the pianoforte by W.L. Hobbs") included the melody of the first part of "Buckley's Fancy" as a concluding tag for dancing. That part is virtually identical to the second part of "Albany Beef," a tune included in the 1862 fife tutor that Emmett co-authored with George Bruce ("Albany beef," incidentally, meant sturgeon, once commonly consumed along the upper Hudson River). The first publication under the "Buckley's" name was in Elias Howe's 1000 Jigs and Reels (c. 1867), which included contra-dance directions along with the tune. "Buckley's" may have entered the minstrel repertoire from an Irish source but is possibly an example of reverse migration from America to Ireland. O'Neill, in his 1903 collection, credited "Buckley's" to Mayo-born fiddler John McFadden, whose setting is quite similar to those in Howe's earlier books. Buckley is, however, a common Irish name. James Buckley, for example, was a Limerick piper mentioned in O'Neill's Irish Minstrels and Musicians (1913) who was P.W. Joyce's source for several tunes in his Old Irish Folk Music and Songs (1909)."
Sources for notated versions: Lorin Simmons (Prince Edward Island, collected in 1930's) [Bayard]; Joseph Doucette (b. 1910, West Prince County, Prince Edward Island) [Perlman]; fiddler Fred Finn (1919-1986, Kiltycreen, Kilavil, County Sligo, Ireland) [Flaherty]; New Jersey flute player Mike Rafferty, born in Ballinakill, Co. Galway, in 1926 [Harker].
Printed sources: Bayard (Dance to the Fiddle), 1981; Appendix No. 10, p. 576. Cole (1000 Fiddle Tunes), 1940; p. 14 (appears as "Buckley's Favorite"). Flaherty (Trip to Sligo), 1990; p. 80. Harker (300 Tunes from Mike Rafferty), 2005; No. 82, p. 26. Howe (1000 Jigs and Reels), c. 1867; p. 90 (appears as "Buckley's Favorite Reel"). O'Neill (Krassen), 1976; p. 97. O'Neill (Music of Ireland: 1850 Melodies), 1903; No. 1211, p. 228. O'Neill (Dance Music of Ireland: 1001 Gems), 1907; No. 487, p. 93. O'Neill (O'Neill's Irish Music), 1915; No. 283, p. 143. Ryan's Mammoth Collection, 1883; p. 43. White's Unique Collection, 1896; No. 83, p. 15.
Recorded sources:
See also listings at:
Jane Keefer's Folk Music Index: An Index to Recorded Sources [1]
\Alan Ng's Irishtune.info [2]
X:1 T:Buckley's Fancy M:C| L:1/8 R:Reel S:O'Neill - Dance Music of Ireland: 1001 Gems (1907), No. 487 Z:AK/Fiddler's Companion K:G D2 | G2 BG dGBG | ABcd (3efg dB | G2 BG dGBG | ABAG FDEF | G2 BG dGBG | ABcd e2g2|(3bag (3agf gedB | GBAF G2 || ef | gfga gede | gabg ageg|agab agef | gabg e2 de | gfga gede | gabg agef | gfga gedB | GBAF G2 ||
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