Monday 5 September 2022
Tune of the Day: My Former Wife
Traditional Irish jig
The earliest appearance of this tune is in Chicago Police officer Francis O'Neill's 1903 collection Music of Ireland. In Irish Folk Music (1910), Chief O'Neill remembers:
It was Bernard Delaney, I believe, who introduced to the Chicago pipers and fiddlers an unpublished jig of rare traditional flavor known as “An Bean Do Bhi Ceadna Agam,” or “My Former Wife.” The sudden popularity which it achieved became a source of no little embarrassment to its sponsor. It was one of the “pet” jigs which he liked to play at public entertainments. When Early and McFadden happened to be on the same programme and came on the stage ahead of Delaney, the mischievous pair never failed to play his favorite tune.