"Kick the Pope", also known as "We’ll Kick the Pope before us", "Fair and Aisy I'll Be
Rid of Her" or "Fair and Aisy I'll Get Out of It" is an Irish and American march (6/8) or
jig in A mixolydian. The parts are played AB. This fife tune was collected in western
Pennsylvania by Samuel Bayard from fifer Hiram Horner.
The alternate titles ("Fair and Aisy ...") of this originally Irish tune were given by Scottish fifer Dick Gibson in an effort to make the "Orangemen tune" less offensive. The tune was well known and a favorite of Orange bands in the nineteenth century. Bayard (1981) believed it belongs to the same tune group as "Bung Your Eye" and to the larger "Welcome Home" tune family and the sea chantey "The Drunken Sailor" is sometimes sung to this tune. It was printed in Bayard's Dance to the Fiddle (1981) and Breathnach's Ceól Rinnce na hEireann (1969). |