"Old Molly Hare", also known as "Blue Eagle Rag", "Fisher Laddie,", "Grandma Blair", "Molly Hare", "Lady of the Lake", "Largo's Fairy Dance", "Old Granny Blair", "Rustic Dance", "The Fairy Reel" is an American, Reel in 4/4 or cut time in G Major (Brody) or D Major (most versions). The parts are played AB (Silberberg), AABB (Brody, Ford, Krassen, Phillips), ABBA'BCA"B' (Reiner & Anick).
It is usually played in standard tuning but Clayton McMichen played it in ADae fiddle tuning.
"Old Molly Hare" is a widespread American descendant of Scottish fiddler-composer Nathaniel Gow's (1763–1831) reel "Largo's Fairy Dance" composed for the Fife Hunt Ball in 1802. It is known as "Fisher Laddie" in northern England, where it appears in a collection of Northern English sword dance tunes by Cecil Sharp. The tune is known as "The Fairy Reel" in Ireland and "Da Faery Reel" in Shetland.
The "Old Molly Hare" song and title appears to be strictly American in origin. Musicologist Charles Wolfe (1991) believed it to have been a minstrel piece that went into oral tradition among both blacks and whites.
The lyrics are the usual type of "floater" verses sung to dance tunes.
It was printed in Brody's Fiddler's Fakebook (1983), S. Johnson's Kitchen Musician No. 4: Fine Tunes (1983) (revised 1991, 2001), Kaufman's Beginning Old Time Fiddle (1977), Krassen's Appalachian Fiddle (1973), Phillips' Fiddle Case Tunebook: Old Time Southern (1989), Reiner & Anick's Old Time Fiddling Across America (1989) and Silberberg's Fiddle Tunes I Learned at the Tractor Tavern (2002).
It was recorded by The Crockett Family (1928), Riley Puckett & Clayton McMichen (1928), Clayton McMichen on Old Time Fiddle Classics, Vol. II, New Lost City Ramblers on Vol. 5, Fiddlin' Cowan Powers (1928), Haywood Blevins on Old Originals, vol. II, Art Galbraith on James River Fiddler: Dixie Blossoms (2007, extended reissue of 1981 LP) and W.A. Bledsoe (Meridian, Mississippi) for the Library of Congress (1939).
Old Molly Hare
Barbara Cooney's illustration of Old Molly Hare for Ruth Crawford Seeger's American folk songs for children in home, school and nursery school: a book for children, parents and teachers (1948) is probably based on the verse:
  Old Molly Hare, whatcha doin' thar,
Sittin' in the corner, smoking a cigar.