[Witch of the Wave Reel] [music transcription]

Title change: The title appears on the transcription as "Unnamed."
Meter: 4/4
Transcribed by Alan Jabbour, from a performance by Henry Reed.
Compass: 12
Key: G
Rendition: 1r-2r-1
Strains: 2 (low-high, 4-2)
Phrase Structure: ABAC QC' (abac abde dqde')
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.
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
Handwritten: Played once thru plus the 1st str. unrepeated. Slight tendency toward triplet rhythm, esp. in 2nd str.
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.