Little Donald in the Pigpen
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Transcription: by Darryl D. Bush
"Little Donald in the Pigpen", also known as "Little Donald in the Pig Sty" and<br> "Little Donald of the Pigpen" is a Canadian reel from Prince Edward Island in<br> A Mixolydian. The parts are played AB (Dunlay), AAB (Perlman) or AABB (Songer).<br> Dunlay & Greenberg note that the second turn of the tune sounds like some settings<br> of "Pigeon on the Gate".<br> P.E.I. fiddler Hector MacDonald believed the tune was originally a pipe march that<br> came to be played "too fast" as a reel. There are some similarities to the Irish reel<br> "The Jolly Tinker" (the second part of "Little Donald" and the third part of<br> "Jolly Tinker" are very similar).<br> MacDonald's version is distanced from other versions and the parts are reversed<br> from other versions.<br> Ken Perlman, in The Fiddle Music of Prince Edward Island (1996), writes that fiddler<br> Hector MacDonald of Bangor, Kings County, Prince Edward Island came up with the<br> name in the 1930's while performing it on the radio. This in not quite what MacDonald<br> recalled when he was interviewed for the newsletter The Island Fiddler in 1982.<br> MacDonald played for radio station broadcasts from CHCK in Charlottetown in the late<br> 1920's and was surprised at the public reaction to his playing the tune. On the air<br> he was asked how it came by its name:<br> "Well," I said, "as far as I know, Little Donald was a piper from over here and he<br> had this tune but he had no name on it. He was a short little fella himself, you know.<br> So he was coming home from a dance one night and got awful drunk. So, god, he got<br> sleepy, so he jumped over the fence and lay down and he fell asleep. So when he woke<br> up in the morning he looked all around and he was in a pigpen. So he clapped the pipes<br> on his back and he played this tune and he christened it 'Little Donald in the Pigpen'<br> ...Well, my god, I went in the next week, we were playing every week for him, and he<br> called me into the office. 'C'mere' he said. There was a stack of letters honest to<br> god that high [several feet] from everywhere: 'Play it again'. I had to play that<br> tune every night I was in there.<br> It was printed Dunlay & Greenberg's Traditional Celtic Violin Music of Cape Breton<br> (1996),<br> Dunlay and Reich's Traditional Celtic Fiddle Music of Cape Breton (1986),<br> Perlman's The Fiddle Music of Prince Edward Island (1996) and<br> Songer's Portland Collection (1997).<br> It was recorded by Winnie Chafe on Echoes (1988),<br> John Morris Rankin on Fare Thee Well Love,<br> John Morris Rankin et al. on Traditional Music from Cape Breton Island (1993) and<br> Joseph & J.P. Cormier and Velvet Arm, Golden Hand (2002). <br>
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