Tuesday 3 April 2018
Tune of the Day: Jack Lattin With Variations
Traditional Irish reel
This reel is very popular throughout the British Isles, especially among pipers and fiddlers. The earliest appearance in print of the melody under the “Lattin” title (or variations thereof, such as “Latin” or “Layton”) appears to be in the Scottish Drummond Castle Manuscript, dated 1734. It is also said to have been published in the same year in Ireland in John Neal's 3rd Collection of Country Dances. Some sources attribute the composition of the tune to the renowned Irish piper Walker Jackson (1716–1798), but this attribution is questionable.
The present set of variations was published in O'Farrell's Collection of National Irish Music for the Union Pipes (1804).