Saturday 28 January 2023
Tune of the Day: Ballyhooley
Traditional Irish jig
In its present form, this jig first appeared in Francis O'Neill's Music of Ireland, published in Chicago in 1903. It is probably named after Ballyhooly, a small village in north County Cork, Ireland. The first strain of the melody was however borrowed from a Scottish song, “The Drucken Wife o' Gallowa'”, which first appeared in a collection published in Edinburgh in 1751. The tune is apparently older still, with scholars tracing it back to the air of “To horse, brave boys of Newmarket, to horse”, a song that was printed by Thomas D'Urfey in Pills to Purge Melancholy (1719).