Introduction                                                                                                                                         3

                                                                                                                            Introduction
Rhythms

      Most of the tunes in this book belong to categories used for dance patterns in which multiple
pairs of nonprofessional partners participate as a community. That gives the music several features:

1. The counts in a measure are readily distinguishable. Each count in a jig has three pulses (to use
    a term from jazz); reels, polkas, and strathspeys have two or four pulses per count.
2. The number of counts per measure is constant throughout a tune. Slip jigs have three counts per
    measure; other categories of tunes have two or four.
3. The tune is divided into distinct parts or strains, which players call A, B, etc.
4. The end of a part and the beginning of the next can be identified by some specific musical marker.
    In this book the pattern marking the end of each part is called the cadence. If the cadence is
    completed before the end of the bar, the remaining notes will belong to the following strain.
5. The parts are generally built of balanced segments (often corresponding to reversed movements
    in the dance), so the number of measures in a part is a power of 2. Most parts contain 8 bars;
    4-bar parts are also common. A 16-bar part is usually an 8-bar part with a variant ending.

      Jig

      This type of tune has been called port ( or puirt ) in Gaelic as far back as can be traced. "Jig" comes
from the Gigue, a dance of the Baroque period; for example, the one in the G suite of Handel's Water
Music (1715) could pass as a perfectly good Irish single jig.
      The slip jig has three counts in each measure (i.e., a 9/8 time signature) and is claimed by some
to be the oldest form of the Irish Jig. The single and double jigs have an even number of counts per
measure. In this book they are both notated in 6/8. The Irish Folk Club Tunebook rendered the sin-
gle jig in 12/8, but that notation is not really justified.
      The single jig and the double jig differ in their cadences. In the single jig, called a slide in the
Kerry tradition, the principal stress of the cadence in each part falls at the beginning of the last
measure, as in Nos. 32 42.
      In a double jig, on the other hand, the last measure in a part begins with a count divided into
three emphasized pulses. In a double jig or a slip jig the principal stress may fall on the last count
of the last measure, as in Nos. 1-8 or Nos. 28 and 29, but it may also be delayed until after the end
of the part, as in No. 9 or No. 25; extra notes must then be added if the tune is used to end a set.
There is no terminology to distinguish the jigs in this regard.

      Reel

      The reel is by far the most frequently composed tune type today, and its roots go back centuries.
For some reason, though, it did not acquire a single, unquestionable Gaelic name as the jig did. This
book will call a reel cor ("throw, turn, reel"), as in O'Neill's The Dance Music of Ireland: 1001 Gems
(1907), rather than rulla ("talk, speech, tumult, bustle, clatter"), as in O'Neill's Music of Ireland:
1,850 Melodies (1903), or the English loanword ril used by Breandan Breathnach and the Chieftains.
      In dancing, a reel has two counts per measure, like a double jig; hence its time signature is 2/2
rather than 4/4. A reel can have one of three kinds of cadence. The principal stress may fall on the
third quarter of the last bar of a part, in which case the part will begin on the fourth quarter, as in
No. 58. On the other hand, there may be a stress on the fourth quarter of the last bar, as in No.