"Bonaparte Over the Alps", also known as "Bony over the Alps", "The Battle of Waterloo", "Bonaparte's March",
"Bonaparte's Retreat", "Napoleon Crossing the Alps", "Óró Welcome Home", "The Diamond", and "Peter Gray"
is a good example of a pentatonic Dorian mode tune.
Napoleon Bonaparte did cross the Alps with his army through the Great St. Bernard Pass in May, 1800, the year after he had seized power in France. He hoped to surprise the Austrians who had recaptured territory around Genoa. The tune is sometimes called a hornpipe. In south western Pennsylvania this version is definitely a marching tune. Another local set is Bayard Coll. No. 352, from Greene County. When the volunteers from the communities of Pine Bank and Jollytown, in that county, went to camp at the time of the Civil War, they marched to the stately music of this tune as played by a 'martial band' (drums and fifes) made up of local folk musicians. A still more specialized march form of the 'Welcome Home' version goes in Irish tradition by the name of '(Fare Thee Well) Sweet Killaloe'. Variants are found in Joyce 1909, No. 824 and O'Neill's Irish Music, No. 100. A greatly simplified dance-tune form of this 'Killaloe' version is also current in western Pennsylvania under ('floating') titles of 'Jennie Put the Kettle On' and 'Nigger in the Woodpile'. Sets are in Bayard Coll., Nos. 21, 64. The American Veteran Fifer also has a variant, No. 122 (Bayard, 1944). Bayard (1981) cites it as a member of the "Lazarus" tune family (identified in part by a subtonic cadence in the 1st and 3rd tune lines, with a tonic cadence in the 2nd and 4th tune lines; which, he says, is a feature of medieval music). It was printed in Bayard's Hill Country Tunes (1944), Cole's 1000 Fiddle Tunes (1940) (appears as "The Diamond"), Feis Ceóil Collection of Irish Airs, Hannagan and Clandillon's Londubh an Chairn, Harding's All Round Collection, Henebry's A Handbook of Irish Music (1928), Hogg's Jacobite Relics of Scotland, vol. 1 and vol. 2, Johnson's Scots Musical Museum, vol. 2 (1853), Joyce's Old Irish Folk Music and Songs (1909), Kennedy's Fiddler's Tune-Book, vol. 2, Kennedy-Fraser's From the Hebrides, Linscott's Folk Songs of Old New England, Kerr's Merry Melodies, vol. 1, O'Neill's Irish Music, O'Neill's Music of Ireland: 1850 Melodies, Perlman's The Fiddle Music of Prince Edward Island (1996), Stanford/Petrie's Complete Collection (1905), Roche's Collection of Traditional Irish Music, vol. 2 (1927), Ryan's Mammoth Collection (1883), Sharp's English Folk-Chanteys, Smith's Scottish Minstrel, vol. 1 (1821) and vol. 4 (1821) and Stokoe & Bruce's Northumbrian Minstrelsy (1886). |