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"The Pure Drop", in Gaelic "An Braon Glan", also known as "The Drogheda Lasses",
"The Drogheda Reel", "The Dangerous Reel", "Hand Me Down the Tackle",
"The Hielanman's Kneebuckle", "Reidy Johnson's", "The Road to Drogheda" or "Tom(m) Steele"
is an Irish reel in D Major. The parts are played AB.
There is another tune titled "Pure Drop" but it is unrelated to this one. The tune was usually recorded as "Tom Steele" or "Hand Me Down the Tackle" in the 78 RPM era. Piper Séamus Ennis was the first to use the name "Pure Drop" for the reel on his recordings in the mid-20th century. "Pure Drop" is another term for poitín, the Irish version of moonshine whiskey. The source for notated version was Chicago fiddler and composer Edward Cronin, originally from County Tipperary, who was also a weaver and a machinist. O’Neill said of him: "…he would play for hours at a time such tunes as memory presented, his features while so engaged remaining as set and impassive as a sphinx… it was his open boast that he never forgot nor forgave an injury…"It was printed in O'Neill's Music of Ireland: 1850 Melodies (1903) (as "Tom Steele"). It was recorded by Tony MacMahon & Noel Hill on I gCnoc na Graí (In Knocknagree) (1985), Seamus Ennis on Strains on Winds Once Blown, Irish Pipe Music (1972), Michael Coleman (78RPM) (1921), Seamus and Manus McGuire on The Humours of Lissadell (1980), Séamus Walshe on Traditional Music of Ireland on Button Accordion (1981), Frankie Gavin and Paul Brock on Ómós do Joe Cooley (A Tribute to Joe Cooley) (1986), Frankie Gavin on Frankie Goes to Town (1989), The Céilí Bandits on Hangin' at the Crossroads (1999), Brian Conway on First through the Gate (2002) and Joe Burke, Brian Conway and Felix Dolan on A Tribute to Andy McGann (2006). |