Annotation:Tullaghan Lassies
TULLAGHAN LASSIES. Irish, Reel (cut time). Ireland, County Donegal. A Dorian. Standard tuning (fiddle). AABB. See also the variants "Lough Island Castle" and "Seán sa Cheo/Ceo." Caoimhin Mac Aoidh (1994) identifies the parent of all these tunes to be the Scottish reel "Sleepy Maggy/Maggie," and relates that Simon (Ballinamore) Doherty (of the great musical Doherty family of Donegal) remarked that the melody came from the piping tradition of the many members of his family. Mac Aoidh finds further evidence for the tune's piping sources in Brendan Breathnach's 1965 field recording of other members of the Doherty family, fiddlers John and Mickey, in which Mickey droned an accompaniment employing double stops and trills while John played the melody; an imitation of the pipe sound. This style was repeated in the playing of the tune by Donegal fiddlers Francie Dearg and Mickey Ban O'Byrne, while fiddler Neillidh Boyle confirmed that the piece had piping origins.
