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Fiddle Tunes of the Old Frontier: The Henry Reed Collection
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Item Title
[Witch of the Wave Reel]
Author/Creator
Collector: Jabbour, Alan
Collector: Jabbour, Karen Singer
Performer: Reed, Henry; fiddle
Created/Published
June 18, 1966
Reed family home, Glen Lyn, Virginia (Giles County)
Notes
Henry Reed gave this tune no name. Its first strain appears often, under various names, in the nineteenth-century tunebook tradition. One such set, "Witch of the Wave Reel," is in "One Thousand Fiddle Tunes", p. 3; for similar tunes, compare "New York Reel," "One Thousand Fiddle Tunes", p. 38; "Western Gem Reel," "One Thousand Fiddle Tunes", p. 49; "St. Botolph's Hornpipe," "One Thousand Fiddle Tunes", p. 99; "Buckley's Fancy," "O'Neill's Music of Ireland", #1211; "Comely Jane Downing," "O'Neill's Music of Ireland", #1461; "The Lakeside Road," "O'Neill's Music of Ireland", #1699. The Hollow Rock String Band, having learned this tune from Henry Reed, noticed its similarity to "Witch of the Wave Reel" and began calling it that. The tune is now occasionally played by other fiddlers using that title, and the title is adopted here as a way of distinguishing it from other unnamed tunes in G. The second strain in Henry Reed's performance does not reflect any of the print sets. It is a kind of filler or extender, only half as long as the first strain, which is made up of musical elements of the last phrase of the first strain.
Title change: The title appeared in the fieldnotes as "Unnamed."
Key: G
Meter: 4/4
Strains: 2 (low-high, 4-2)
Rendition: 1r-2r-1
Phrase Structure: ABAC QC' (abac abde dqde')
Compass: 12
Stylistic features: Henry Reed was trying to play the full version of the second tune into which he had verged in his previous performance (Breakdown in G, AFS 13033b25), but instead plays yet another tune.
Spoken: [before tune]/HENRY REED: I can't think of the other one.[after tune]/ALAN JABBOUR: That's the one that you got on to while ago./HENRY REED: Yeah, I got onto it.
Recording chronology: 034
Related Tune(s): New York Reel
Related Tune(s): Western Gem Reel
Related Tune(s): St. Botolph's Hornpipe
Related Tune(s): Buckley's Fancy
Related Tune(s): Comely Jane Downing
Related Tune(s): The Lakeside Road
Duration: 45 seconds
Subject
Breakdowns
Reels
Fiddle tunes
Instrumentals--fiddle
Ethnography
Music
United States--Virginia--Giles County--Glen Lyn
Object Type
Medium
sound recording
Language
English
Call Number
AFC LWO 5031 reel 3B, AFS 13033B:26
Digital ID
afcreed 13033b26
http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.afc/afcreed.13033b26