Farewell to Erin

Here is a track I recorded a little while back on guitar (okay, on electric guitar with drums too and a few other sounds for good measure) of an Irish fiddle tune that I found in a pile of my fiddle tune sheet music. In my fiddlers fakebook it is listed as an alternative title for Farewell to Ireland. But all of the recordings of Farewell to Ireland that I have heard are a different melody than this version of Farewell to Erin. At any rate they are both about bidding the green isle goodbye, as my ancestors, Bridget and Patrick Early did somewhere around the late 1840s during the height of the Irish potato famine when the made their way to America by ship sailing from Liverpool to New York City.

Farewell to Erin

Farewell to Erin Sheet Music

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Temperance Reel to Real Rock

There may be some old time/bluegrass purists out there who won’t like what I’ve done, but torpedoes be damned, I put my own soft rock type spin on this arrangement of the Temperance Reel, also known as the Teetotaler’s Reel and renamed it Temperance Reel to Real Rock.

Here’s the tune:  Temperance Reel to Real Rock

Near Beer

And…….Here’s some info on the traditional tune From Mel Bay Mandolin Sessions:

Temperance Reel is another example of a tune that has crossed geographic & musical genre boundaries, coming from Ireland to America, where it is commonly played in Celtic, Old-Time & Bluegrass repertoires. This tune is also known as (aka) the Teetotaler’s Reel. The origin of the word teetotaler is credited to Englishman Richard Turner, who, while stammering, or simply duplicating the first letter for emphasis as was commonly done, urged a temperance society in the early 1830’s to ensure “tee-total” abstinence from liquor.

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