Mairi's Wedding - with guitar, bass & percussion

[WillFly]

Something a little different...



Mairi's Wedding (also known as Marie's Wedding, the Lewis Bridal Song, or Mairi Bhan) is a Scottish folk song originally written in Gaelic by John Roderick Bannerman (1865–1938) for Mary C. MacNiven (1905–1997) on the occasion of her winning the gold medal at the National Mòd in 1934. The correct sequence for the tune parts is a simple A-B, but I've changed it to A-A-B-B to give it some more heft, and added bass, guitar and three separate Garageband drum loops for percussion behind the lead tenor guitar - just for the hell of it. I'm playing it in A because a lot of Scottish fiddle music is in A, and it's a great key.

I'm playing single string lead on the 1st and 3rd choruses, with a little ornamentation in the 3rd, and adding 2nd and 3rd drone strings in the 2nd and 4th choruses, just to give a bit of texture to the tune.

Music, tab and chords for the A-A-B-B version is freely available at:

www.willflyguitar.com

[Marty Jacobson]

...Myrtle green and bracken brown, past the shieling through the town... Great song. Nicely done.

[billhay4]

What is the National Mod?
Nice tune.
bill

[WillFly]

It's the leading Scottish Gaelic song competition.

[HonketyHank]

Hey, I like that. Quite catchy. Thanks for the video.

I'm too lazy and too slow to translate the tabs on the fly to mandolin tabs, so I looked it up over at thesession.org and found it here: https://thesession.org/tunes/706. I believe the fourth version on that page (in D dorian) corresponds to Will's tabs for the tenor guitar. One can download the abc file right into TablEdit to get tabs for TG or mandolin or whatever.

[derbex]

I have always liked that one. Looks like we will be playing for a wedding in April so I'll try and work that in. I'll give it a crack on the guitar, but will probably end up playing it on the mandolin.

[John Kelly]

A great favourite here in Scotland, Will, and very popular at ceilidh dances. We use it a lot in dances such as The Gay Gordons.

The Royal National Mod is organised annually by an organisation called An Comunn Gàidhealach (Gaelic for The Highland Association) and was founded in Oban (in my home county of Argyll) in 1891. It is a celebration over a week of all aspects of Gaelic life and culture and is based each year in a different town or city. This coming year it is happening in Lochaber and in 2018 in Dunoon (my home town). During that week there are lots of official events and competitions, but also loads of unofficial events on the fringe (just like the Edinburgh International Festival) and plenty of great sessions and impromptu ceilidhs in all sorts of venues. A time of great fun for all!

[WillFly]

We play for the Gay Gordons at ceilidhs quite a bit - but we've never used this one. If I remember correctly we play the "Cock O' The North" and "Scotland The Brave" for that dance. I might suggest it to the band.

Presumably you do the regular A-B sequence, rather than butcher it like I've done into A-A-B-B?

[John Kelly]

I think Scotland The Brave is the most commonly played tune in any Gay Gordons set, Will. We play A-B sequence usually with Mairi's Wedding, and tend to do this with tunes which are also songs - verse and chorus equating to A/B, but as you know if there's a good steady beat for the dancers the tune is really just a side issue!

[WillFly]

Bye the bye, John - I just about remember Dunoon from a holiday we spent there in the late 1940s, when we lived in Glasgow. Was there a ferry across Holy Loch in those days? I've no idea how we got there from Glasgow because we didn't have car!

[John Kelly]

There was a ferry across the Holy Loch from Kilmun to Ardnadam (where I live), Will, but you most likely came by train from Glasgow to Gourock then ferry to Dunoon. There were more options for public travel in those days. The Clyde estuary had piers at every village and town back then - just around the Holy Loch were piers at Sandbank, Kilmun, Strone and Blairmore all serviced by passenger ferries. Today we have two ferry services to get from Dunoon to Gourock. One is a very efficient car ferry service from Hunter's Quay and the other, out of Dunoon ,is a passenger-only apology of a service we have had to endure over the past few years since the old CalMac car ferries were replaced by what are known locally as the bathtub boats, two wee passenger boats which are suspended any time there is a breeze or a slight swell on the Clyde. Such is progress!

Between 1961 and 1992 there was a huge US Navy submarine base in the Holy Loch which was home to the fleet of nuclear submarines the US operated at the time. They had a depot ship and a huge floating dock and loads of shore-based facilities. While i was teaching we had around 100 US youngsters in our school as the navy had no school facilities of its own on this base; I wonder if any of the many readers of this forum ever served in the Holy Loch? Quite a few retired here after their navy days and married local girls.
Small world!

[JEStanek]

That's a great tune. It was a frequent player for my kids when they were little (Wiggles and Dan Zanes).

Jamie

[James Rankine]

Great thread - lovely version Will. Really interesting info John. Haven't been up the west coast for a few years - soft lowlander who doesn't like the midges! Was thinking of going next month but we've opted for Ireland instead - the wife has never been.
Anyway this is what we do down here for the Leeds branch of the Scottish country dance society. Accordion, melodeon, fiddle and me droning on bouzouki.



And a simple version I recorded on banjo a few years ago

[WillFly]

I've stripped the tenor guitar lead from the arrangement and uploaded the backing track here:

http://www.willflyguitar.com/tenor-backing-tracks.html

[Francis J]

Thanks Will, Just had a couple of runs through the tune using your backing track. Heel for heel and toe for toe! I remember hearing The Alexander Brothers version many moons ago, it's a great tune.