Gusty's Frolics - Patsy Touhey

Details

Description

Gusty's Frolics, wax cylinder recording

Tune Type: Slip Jig
SP, # 813, as "Gurtys Frolic"; ON 1903, 1171, as "Gurtys Frolics"; ON 1907, 444 (with the 1903 title); PPT, # 42.

Touheys title, Gustys Frolics, clearly audible on his spoken introduction, is the correct one. O Neills erroneous title echoes that of Petrie (or of his editor) in SP. This tune is a virtuoso piece for the pipes, though it is more popular today in versions for the fiddle. O Neill reports that the tune was composed by Augustus "Gusty" Nicolls, a member of the landed gentry in Co. Leitrim who was a "gentleman piper" in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.

Touhey here plays a version of the tune with eight parts. A tune as extensive as this is rare; in fact, the cylinder runs out before Touhey can complete the second playing of the tune. The version that Touhey plays here is more extensive than the one he played on a different cylinder recording (transcribed in PPT).

View more on the Dunn Family Collection website: http://archives.irishfest.com/dunn-family-collection.htm