Annotation:Droghedy March
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DROGHEDY MARCH. AKA and see "Mummer's March (The)." Irish, March (6/8 time). Standard tuning (fiddle). ABCDEFDH. Fleischmann gives a reference for this tune in J. Brysson's A Curious Selection Of Favourite Tunes With Variations to which is added upwards of fifty favourite Irish Airs for the German Flute or Violin, with a Bass for the Harpsichord or Violoncello. Harmoniz'd by an Eminent Master (Edinburgh, c. 1790). He notes that the title of the melody probably refers to Charles Moore, 2nd Viscount Drogheda who as involved in the siege of that same town in 1642. He was killed in clashes with Owen Roe O'Neill in 1643. The title may also be a corruption of the Irish word draiocht, meaning magic (see note for "Drocketty's March").
A "Droghedy's March" from county Wexford is described by Patrick Kennedy in 1812 in his book On the Banks of the Boro:
The tune called Droghedy's March was occasionally danced to among the hornpipes, by a performer furnished with a short cudgel in each hand, which he brandished and clashed in harmony with the tune. But we had the good fortune to see it performed in a complete fashion on the borders of the barony of Bargy, in the old manor-house of Coolcul, whose young men, joined by the stout servants and labourers on the farms, were well able, in country parlance, to clear a fair. Amongst these the present chronicler was initiated into the mysteries of mumming, and was taught to bear his part in that relic of the Pyrrhic or Druidic dance, "Droghedy's March." We practiced it in one of the great parlours, and this was the style of it's execution: six men or boys stood in line, at reasonable distance apart, and six others stood opposite them, all armed as described. When the music began, feet, and arms, and sticks commenced to keep time. Each dancer, swaying his body to the right and left, described an upright figure of 8 with the fists, both of them following the same direction, the ends of the sticks following the same figure, of course. In these movements no noise was made, but at certain bars the arms moved rapidly up and down, the upper and lower halves of the right-hand stick striking the lower half of the left-hand stick in the descent of the right arm, and the upper half of it in the ascent, and vice versa. At the proper point of the march each man commenced a kind of fencing with his vis-a-vis, and the clangs of the cudgels coincided with the beats of the music and the movements of the feet. Then commenced the involutions, evolutions, interlacings and unwindings, every one striking at the person with whom the movement brought him face to face, and the sounds of the sticks supplying the hoochings in the reels....The steps, which we have forgotten, could not have been difficult, for we mastered them.....This war dance is (or was) performed to a martial tune resembling Brian Boru's march... [Pp.231-32]
Patrick Joseph McCall penned a poem called "The Mummers of Bargy," and set it to the air of "Droghedy's March":
Down a the big manor-house of Kilquaun,
Assemble the girls and the boys all of Bargy--
Wondr'ous this night in the barn and the bawn
To hear Billeen Ceól with him pipes sweetly "arguy"!
Aiden Roche, the Mummer leader,
Came with a boy o' the Neils from Sleedhair;
Dick Shomes Phoor is George the Valiant,
Charley Hayes, St. Patrick the gallant--
Oh, such a crowd of the girls is collected,
'Twill be a surprise if there's no one neglected!
They line all the walls like a headland of lilies,
Or rosies, or posies, or daffy-down-dillies!
The centre is clear, and the candles alight,
When lo, fromt he haggard there comes a louch knocking;
Soon quickly troop in twelve Mummers in white,
With feathers flying, like wild geese a-flocking.
Round the go, two circles forming,
Billeen the "Soldier's Joy" performing.
Heels keep cracking, clubs a-crashing,
Arms a-swinging, eyes a-flashing.
In and out, round about, back to their places,
Fencing and foiling, the crowd interlaces;
Now all uncoil and in single file canter,
Yet striking and timing to Billeen's old changer.
See O'Neill's "Mummer's March (The)" and Darley & McCall's "Drocketty's March" for more.
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