THE WAY Irish fiddle tunes acquire their titles is, so far as I can judge, completely arbitrary. Some are named after a person particularly identified with them, eg: Paddy Taylor's Reel or Miss McCloud's. Others evoke scenes from nature – eg The Gooseberry Bush– or places: The Whinny Hills of Leitrim. Only a few titles suggest the hand of the archivist, like a tune I heard played at the Grand Concert in Drumshanbo on Thursday night: O'Dowd's No 9, writes FRANK MCNALLY
Presumably there are at least eight other O'Dowd's, just as precisely labelled. But despite the countless thousands of tunes in the traditional repertoire, identifying numbers are generally avoided. This is in contrast with other areas of the arts, especially classical music and painting, where it is the norm to reduce creative works to such clinical terms as Opus No 42 in E Minor, or Untitled No 7: Oil on Acrylic.
One of the reasons many visual artists avoid titles is that they don’t want to interject anything between the viewer and the view. It’s a point of pride with some painters never to explain themselves, at least not in language other people can understand. But if books can be read without pictures, I suppose it’s only fair that paintings, sculptures, and the things that win the Turner prize should be experienced without text.
When visiting galleries, therefore, I often make a conscious effort to study the pictures before looking at the identifying plaques. Yet it always is an effort. I blame the fact that I was born into a country with more of a story-telling tradition than a visual one. In any case, no matter how beautiful a painting is, those little blocks of text exercise a magnetic pull. And no matter how little information they have, it does tend to colour your subsequent viewing of the art.
Say a painting is identified only as " Untitled Nude, c 1907, by Jean-Baptiste Flaubert (1872-1908)". You'll read that, then look at the picture again. And now, instead of just admiring the nude, you'll be thinking: "Only 36. I wonder what he died of? And he painted that the year before. Did he know about his condition at the time? Or was it something that hit him suddenly – a train, maybe? It was probably syphilis, come to think of it. That would have been common then. I wonder what happened her, so. I hope for her sake she wasn't sleeping with him." And so on. Of course, this is just the sort of thing many artists hate. Hence the tendency towards abstraction in titles. Which, much as I understand it, always leaves me feeling cheated.
There is no such problem with traditional music. Pending the development of an avant garde branch of the art, which might feature such works as “No 52. Rosined horsehair on metal, with tapping foot”, personalised and colourful tune titles remain de rigueur. Thus, even in a musical form where there are often no lyrics, you still usually have a story to play with in your head while listening.
The relationship between the tune and its name may be meaningless. Consider, for example, a reel called Johnny’s Gone to France. You cannot listen to this without wondering if there was a real-life Johnny; if it was the Napoleonic wars he went to, or just a language course in Montpellier; if it was a lover who lamented his departure; and if he ever came back. None of which questions may have concerned the composer. Maybe the same air is played elsewhere under a different name.
On the other hand, there are tunes like Bean Pháidín, which also featured at the Drumshanbo concert. It was performed by the great concertina player Noel Hill who, with what he called “artistic licence”, had arranged it into a double jig. But you didn’t even have to wonder about the story of Páidín’s Wife, because the tune is also a song: as which it has been recorded by – among many others – Lasarfhíona Ní Chonaola.
Even in her version, the music is cheerful and lilting. So much so that, if you didn’t know any Irish, you might assume the lyrics are a celebration of love. On the contrary. Closer examination reveals the narrator to be a stalker, lusting after the said Páidín while thinking evil thoughts about the woman who currently enjoys him.
In one verse, the singer dreams about following the pair home and staring at her usurper through the window. In another, she fantasises about breaking her rival’s legs and other unspecified bones. Perhaps there is also a lost verse somewhere, in which she enters the house while the couple are out and boils the pet rabbit.
Either way, it is because of the like of this that, whether they have any significance or not, traditional tune titles remain a vital part of the listening experience. Even when they tend to distract from the music: as in the popular jig: I Buried My Wife and Danced on Top of Her.
There are so many questions raised by this title that it hard to know where to start. How did the marriage go so wrong? Were they ever in love to begin with? Did the wife die of natural causes? Or – perish the thought – was she actually dead when he buried her? Whatever about being able to listen to the music while grappling with these issues, you would definitely struggle to dance to it. In such circumstances, only a monster could maintain the rhythm necessary to perform a jig.