Annotation:Ewe with the Crooked Horn (3) (The)
X:1 T:Ewe with the Crooked Horn [3] M:C L:1/8 R:Reel S:Stanford/Petrie (1905), No. 918 Z:AK/Fiddler's Companion K:Amin AG|EA A^G A2 AB|c2 cd cAGE|G2 GA G2 GA|BAGE GEDG| EAAB A2 AB|c2 cd c2d2|eg ^fa gedB|BAAA A2|| ag|eaaa a2 ga|baga bag c|Bd ga g2 ga|bage gedg| eaab a3b|c'bag bagd|eg ^fa gedB|BAAA A2|]
EWE WITH THE CROOKED HORN [3]. Irish, Reel. Ireland, County Cork. A Minor (O'Farrell, Cowdery): A Dorian (Stanford/Petrie). Standard tuning (fiddle). AB (Stanford/Petrie): AAB (Cowdery). A variant of the melody that appears to have a Scottish provenance, originally as a strathspey. It is, asserts Cowdery (1990), a development of that air usually set to the old Irish ballad "Boyne Water (1)." It appears in c. 1804-10 in piper O'Farrell's collection (London) and in O'Neill as "Flowers of Limerick (1) (The)," a reel. Petrie added a penciled note, "Hornpipe" in his manuscript, perhaps due to some similarity with "Groves Hornpipe (The)." However, it appears as a hornpipe in Francis O'Neill's Waifs and Strays of Gaelic Melody (1922, p. 364), set in 'G' major, but very similar to the A modal tune; in fact, they mirror each other a step apart (see "Ewe with the Crooked Horn (6)"). See also the rather large related tune family that has, as prominent members, "Galway Rambler (The)" and "Mills are Grinding (1) (The)."
"Ewe with the Crooked Horn" was among a selection of tunes from the Petrie collection set for string quartet by British composer William Alwyn (1905-1985) in his "Seven Irish Tunes" (1923), later, in 1936, rearranged for a small orchestra (the other selections "Little Red Lark of the Mountain (1)," "Country Tune," "Maiden-Ray (The)," "Gentle Maiden (The), "Sigh (The)" and a "Jig").
