Annotated index of all four volumes of the Goodman collection in the order of the manuscripts by Hugh & Lisa Shields.Colonel McBain's
Played by: Hasse Jonsson Source: Soundcloud Notes: The tune was first recorded by Galway melodeon player Peter Conlon in 1921, under the title "McBan's Reel" (thought the different spelling may be due to an error by the record company).
The reel's popularity was not confined to Scotland for we find it named 'Duke of Clarence Reel (The)' in Lavenu's New Country Dances for the Year 1798, published at London. "Colonel Mac Bean's Reel" is also contained in vol. 2 (p. 156)[1] of the large c. mid-19th century music manuscript collection of County Cork cleric and uilleann piper James Goodman, who had obtained it from a manuscript provided him by Dublin bookseller John O'Daly, according to Hugh & Lisa Shields[2] (Goodman's "Miss Westrop's Reel", in volume 1 of his mss. is cognate with "Colonel McBain's" in the first strain only).
The reel also was entered in to Goodman's contemporary, fiddler and piper Stephen Grier (c. 1824-1894) x, 1883 music manuscript collection as "Captain McBain."
A setting of this noted reel as played by the experts of the Irish Music Club of Chicago may be found on page 116 of O'Neill's Dance Music of Ireland.
In composition and fluency of rhythm the variant above presented compares very favorably with the original especially when given expression on the fiddle in the inimitable style of the genial Paddy Stack from whom the manuscript was obtained."
