Key signature: Gmajor
Submitted on September 7th 2001 by Will CPT.
This tune has been added to 50 tunebooks.
Also known as Leather Britches.
Recordings of a tune by this name:
X: 1
T: Britches, The
M: 4/4
L: 1/8
R: reel
K: Gmaj
D|:GABG AGBA|GABG AGED|GABc dedB|GAGE ED D2:|
|dedB AGAB|dedB AG E2|dedB AGAB|GAGE ED D2|
|dedB AGAB|dedB AG E2|dege deBA|GAGE ED D2|
|:gabg agba|gabg ag e2|gbeg deBA|GAGE ED D2:|
|edBd edBd|edBG AG E2|edBd edBA|GAGE ED D2|
|edBd edBd|edBG AG E2|gbeg deBA|GAGE ED D2|
The Britches
This is a Martin Hayes spin on a great old tune, from his self titled cd. It goes slow and lightly, wistful, if you follow Martin's lead.
I left out the grace notes he scatters around the tune. In the first two measures of Part C, try playing |gabg a (3bag ba|. Then in the D part, Martin flicks his middle finger down to break up all those edBd's so it looks more like |(3ege dBd...|
Give a listen to the cd for the full effect, complete with tasteful piano accompaniment.
Will
# Posted on September 7th 2001 by Will CPT
Britches
It's fascinating the way so many tunes are inter-related. If you take the first two parts of this tune, tweak the rhythm a little and transpose it up to A, you get the polka, 'The Brtiches Full of Stitches'.
Looking at it another way, the whole tune is a variant of the reel, 'The Noon Lasses', which according to Cathal McConnell, is a variant of 'Lord McDonanld's'.
Had I not come across this tune - perhaps it was partly the title that prompted me - I would never have made the connection between the said polka and 'The Noon Lasses', let alone 'Lord McDonald's'.
# Posted on September 7th 2001 by granama
The original
http://www.thesession.org/tunes/display.php/1075/
# Posted on October 27th 2002 by glauber
This one's too much like the Noon Lassies for me to commit to memory.
# Posted on July 20th 2004 by Dow
Britches full of stitches
When I heard Martin Hayes play this, I just immediately took it as him applying his famous lonesome touch to the polka "The Britches Full of Stitches". It's interesting to me that this is considered a distinct tune. I guess he did move it to another key.
# Posted on September 28th 2006 by crazy_fingerz
I also subscribe to this being just an interpretation of the classic polka. The polka is in fact played in G by many (as in several tunes, it is typically A for fiddlers and G for flutes, so playing in G is unusual for a fiddler, if not done to cooperate with a flute).
# Posted on September 28th 2007 by sixholes