tune information, links and notation
Track 7
Space
Ceilidh
The Night We Had The
Goats (Traditional)
The Fairy Dance (Nathaniel Gow)
- The Night We Had The Goats is a popular tune amongst Inverness county fiddlers. It's difficult to say if it arrived due to the written tradition (The Athole Collection,1884) or if it came in the aural tradition via early pipers. Natalie's setting (below) uses high B notes not available to the highland pipes.
- The Fairy Dance was written by the Nathaniel Gow, the son of Niel. Basic two part settings are given in both the Skye and O'Neill's. The current multi part version evolved from Skinner's set in the Harp and Claymore. Winston Fitzgerald's setting is close the way Natalie plays it
The variation above (written outside the melody in smaller type) is typical of the way a fiddler might have fun a tune ... instead of improvising on the entire meoldy (a well constucted melody is easily spoiled) or on the chord structure (as in jazz, rock or bluegrass ... idioms with a different sense of aesthetics) one phrase might be varied subtley ... or substituted into another position within the melody.
