September Tunes - 2025

All of these tunes will be making an appearance in the upcoming season’s Concert Sets

Robertson’s Reel, a fine Shetland reel in A major, was composed in 1938 by Tom Anderson (1910 - 1991). Titled in honor of Scottish fiddler Arthur S. Robertson (1911 - 2000) who was taught by both Peter Milne and ‘old’ Willie Hunter.

This setting is from the Portland Collection of contra dance tunes (Vol 1, p.168)

Listen here (at 1.43) to mandolin great, David Surette, playing it on his CD “The Green Mandolin”.

The next two tunes are slow reels by contemporary composers, in the key of E, but without a lot of D# notes so don’t freak out!

The Farley Bridge, by Duncan Chisholm (from Inverness), was originally recorded on the ‘Farrar’ album. The bridge that inspired the tune was built on an old track leading to a bothy at Farley, near Beauly in the Highlands of Scotland. Listen here to Duncan playing the tune with an orchestra.

I first learned the tune ‘The Hills of Kaitoke’ from Catherine Fraser who taught at the Boston Harbor School of Scottish Fiddling in 2007. Read more about the tune here.

Kaitoke Regional Park was home for 10 years to the Southern Hemisphere International School of Scottish Fiddle (SHISSF) run by Catherine Fraser and held annually in New Zealand. 

In 2013, during a visit to my antipodean cousins,  I attended the last SHISSF at Camp Kaitoke in Upper Hutt, about 90 minutes north-east of Wellington.

Listen here to both E major tunes being played by the Kitchen Jam Band on the Unfurled CD

Rivendell

Rivendell is notable for being where the home of Elves in Lord of the Rings was filmed by Peter Jackson who lived in Wellington.

Lastly - a sweet, Gaelic sounding, lullaby waltz in D major - The Highland Cradle Song. (played here on mandolin)

But, according to the TuneArch.org wiki, it isn’t originally from the Highlands at all:
 Originally a waltz written in 1847 by Louis Antoine Jullien, a French bandleader and composer living in London, in honor of Olga, Grand Duchess of Russia and Crown Princess of Wurtemberg. It became immensely popular, and when Jullien died in 1860, Punch magazine wrote "...the marriages effected through his lovely 'Olga Waltz' must have occasioned a considerable effect upon the census." In the 1850's, E. Hodges of London published an abolitionist song sheet "Why Did My Master Sell Me" to be sung of the tune of "Olga Waltz," which also became very popular. William Booth, co-founder of the Salvation Army, wrote religious words to the same melody. And when the London Zoo sold Jumbo the Elephant to P.T. Barnum in 1882, Punch magazine published a cartoon and a satirical song "Air - Why Did My Master Sell Me -- Jumbo's Lament." The tune appears as "Why Did My Massa Sell Me" in Kerr's Merry Melodies Vol. 3 (c. 1880's) and as "Olga Waltz" in Honeyman's Violin Tutor

We will play it in a set of Ceilidh Waltzes.