Annotation:Prime's Hornpipe
X:1 T:Prime's Hornpipe M:C L:1/8 R:Hornpipe S:Joyce – Old Irish Folk Music and Songs (1909) Z:AK/Fiddler’s Companion K:G dc|BdGG G2 AG|FADD D2 dc|BdGG G2 Bd|egfa gedc| BdGG G2 AG|FADD D2 dc|BcdB ecAF|G2 GG G2:| |:ga|b2 ba bgeg|abaf gfed|defg abag|f2 dd d2 ga| b2ba bgeg|abaf gfed|egfa gedc|B2 GG G2:| |:Bc|dBBA GB B2| dBBA GB B2|cAAG FAA2|cAAG FA A2| dBBG eccA|egfa gfga|bgaf gedc|B2 GG G2:|
PRIME'S HORNPIPE. AKA and see "Durrock's Hornpipe," "Dwyer's Hornpipe (2)," "Gasúr Mor (An)," "Muddy Water (1)," "Nelson's Victory (3)," "O'Dwyer's Hornpipe (1)," "Rock's Hornpipe," "Waterford Hornpipe." Irish, Hornpipe. G Major. Standard tuning (fiddle). AABBCC. Francis O'Neill, the Chicago police chief and collector, knew the tune as "O'Dwyer's" from his boyhood days in the latter 1800's Co. Cork and printed a four-part version in his Music of Ireland (1903). The Rev. Luke Donnellan collected a similar version in County Louth in 1909 under the similar title "Dwyer's Hornpipe (2)." O'Neill remarked in Irish Folk Music: A Fascinating Hobby (1910, pp. 117-118):
When quite young I heard an indifferent fiddler named Crowley, at Drimoleauge, in West Cork, play a tune which he called "O'Dwyer's Hornpipe," the tones and triplets of which haunted me more or less distinctly through life. The third strain seems to have come to me by intuition, for it is not one of the three which Crowley played. This hornpipe is and old traditional tune in Munster, but wellnigh forgotten in this generation. Somewhere, years ago, a poor and limited version of it was seen in a piano pamphlet, disguised as "De Wier's Hornpipe."
Patrick Weston Joyce [1] (1827-1914) was himself from Limerick, raised in the 1830's and '40's; his three-part version is nearly identical to "Waterford Hornpipe" printed in the first decade of the 19th century in London by uilleann piper O'Farrell. Donegal fiddler John Doherty recorded the tune as "Gasúr Mor (An)" (The Big Young Boy).
The distinctive motif in the opening measures of the first strain was absorbed into North American tradition in the several tune variants collected by Prof. Samuel Bayard (see "Muddy Water (1)," "Durrock's Hornpipe," "Rock's Hornpipe"). In Québec a tune using the motif was recorded by Manitoba fiddler Maurice Ferland as "Breakdown de minuit" on Bluebird B-4886-A (78 RPM).
