Beare Island

reel

Key signature: Edorian

Submitted on May 23rd 2002 by Will CPT.

This tune has been added to 173 tunebooks.

Also known as Barra Island, Bear Island, B�ara, Beara Island, The Beara Island, Beare Haven, The Beare Island , The Beare Island, The Bearhaven Lassies, B�ara, Finbar Dwyer's Fancy, Finbarr Dwyer's Fancy, R'il Bheara, Ril Bheara, Ril Bhearra.

Recordings of a tune by this name:

Accordion Music From The Soul by Finbarr Dwyer
Against The Storm by John And Phil Cunningham
Celtic Cafe by Karen Ashbrook And Paul Oorts
Cora Smyth And Breda Smyth by Cora Smyth And Breda Smyth
Hungry Grass by Hungry Grass
In Good Company - The Very Best Of by Kevin Burke
Irish Piping, Flutes And Whistles by Various Artists
Kevin Burke In Concert by Kevin Burke
Live Recordings From The William Kennedy Piping Festival by Various Artists
Mapless Journey by Kathy Buys
Natural Progression by Sam Proctor
Nine Fine Irishmen's Sin E Ri-Ra by Sin E Ri-Ra
Out Of The Blue by Alan Kelly
Portland by Kevin Burke And Mícheál O'Domhnaill
Selkie by Mick Conneely
Step Into The Beat: Modern Irish Dance Music by Ellery Klein And Ryan Lacey
Sundry by Shane Cook
The Nervous Man by Mícheál O' Raghallaigh
The Traditional Album by The Barra MacNeils
Traditional Irish Music From Boston by The Magic Square
Tuned In by Johnny Murphy
Tunnel Vision by Christel Rice
Up Against The Flatirons by Eliot Grasso
Up In The Air by Jonny Hardie And Gavin Marwick With Davy Cattanach
Wet Your Whistle by Wet Your Whistle
Wild And Beautiful by Silly Wizard

Details ABC Sheetmusic Comments

Beare Island Reel

This setting is basee on Kevin Burke's playing. On another thread, we had a brief side bar about whether tunes should be posted here in their bare bones settings or "as played" by some credible player. I can see reasons for going either way. Beare Island Reel, though, is a quirky tune and is interpreted very differently by various players. So even a bare bones sketch would lean toward one approach or the other.

On the 2nd measure in the B Part, Burke slides that B2 downhill almost a half tone. He also puts a triplet (3BBB in there on occasion.

In the 5th measure of the B part, you can also play:
|edBc d2 dc|BcdB
or
|edBc dedc|BcdB

Also, the cut notes f{a}f in the 2nd to last measure in the A part and E{G}E in the last measure of the B part can be left out in favor of just single bowing the shoulder notes, but the cuts allow you to play long bows here, keeping that flowy sinuous sound Burke goes for (and I happen to like too on this tune in particular).

# Posted on May 23rd 2002 by Will CPT

Thanks, Will!

Here, for your delectation, is a box version (that Will calls "unneccesarily complicated") of the tune, as played by the Bradley brothers on one of their dance CDs. After playing through this one, a fiddler could probably start voting for "bare bones" after all.

(3EEE) ||: EB ^GBAG Ec | dBcA be ee | d2 ed AdFd | GE FD EDB,D |
EB,EF G3 A | BAGA Be ef | geaf gfec | dBAF E z (3EEE):||
e e^d ||: eBef geed | (3Bcd) Ad Fd Dd | Beef geed |(3efe) ^df eBef |
edBc dBcd | BcdB AdFA | GB (3BBB) AGFA | (3GFE) ^DF Ee e^d :||

Zina

# Posted on May 23rd 2002 by Zina Lee

Well, complicated for a fiddler...too many string crossings for my taste. But many a good box player goes looking for chord-related notes (for example |eBef...| and |...AdFdDd|). That low D# at the end gave it away too....

# Posted on May 23rd 2002 by Will CPT

P.S. I think it adds a lot to see different settings posted here in the comments to a tune. A great way to pick up variations or a whole 'nother mind set to a tune. Thanks, Zina!

# Posted on May 23rd 2002 by Will CPT

Other Title

I learned this tune as Regan's Reel, but never heard anyone else call it that. I believe it could be a corruption of Bearhaven Lasses which might be the original title. I have seen it attributed to Dale Russ, but, excellent fiddler/ composer that Dale is, surely this is one of Finbar Dwyer's? And the box version may thus be closer to the original.

# Posted on May 23rd 2002 by LongNote

Finnbar Dwyer

According to Kevin Burke this is definitely one of Finnbar Dwyer's tunes; BTW just like Kylebrack Rambler (source: Brenda Stubbert's tune book).

# Posted on May 23rd 2002 by Henk Bos

Those isolated G#s in the first bar really make this tune - a ghostly outline of the sun showing through the clouds on an overcast day/.

# Posted on May 23rd 2002 by granama

B�ara

I fell in love with this tune the first instant i heard it on M�che�l � Ralghallaigh CD, The Nervous Man, where it is listed as "B�ara." Definitely a quirky tune. and i agree, David, the g# in the first bar really make the tune especially cool. � Ralghallaigh confirms the claim that it was composed by Finnbar Dwyer.

# Posted on December 19th 2002 by Brendan

Richard Dwyer's

I'm listening to Kevin Burke playing this tune live on Clare fm right now and he just said he believes it was Richard Dwyer that wrote this one.

# Posted on June 14th 2004 by Phantom Button

I first heard it played by Dale Russ beautifully, but he laid no claim to it...

# Posted on July 23rd 2005 by ceolachan

I'll see if I can find out any more...

# Posted on July 23rd 2005 by ceolachan

"Ríl Bheara" / "Beare Island Reel" - Finbar Dwyer

C: Finbar Dwyer, one of the musically gifted Dwyer brothers from Castletownbeare or Beare Island, Southwest Cork.

http://www.ibiblio.org/fiddlers/RI_RJ.htm
http://www.ibiblio.org/folkindex/b04.htm
http://www.fiddletech.com/music/abcproj.abc
http://finawake.com/new_cd.htm

Unfortunately for us all, as far as I have been able to assess, none of Finbar's LPs reached the CD state, though it would be nice if Outlet, who released them in the 70s, would at least consider a compilation:

"Ireland's Own Traditional Accordionist" ~ Outlet
"Irish Traditional Accordionist" ~ Outlet
"The Best of Irish Traditional Accordion" ~ Outlet

# Posted on July 24th 2005 by ceolachan

This tune is by Richard Dwyer, written for Finbarr Dwyer. It's called Finbarr Dwyer's Fancy. Kevin Burke learned it from someone else initially and misnamed it on his album, and the name took off. It's been Beare Island ever since.

# Posted on November 29th 2005 by heth

never underestimate the encyclopaedic knowledge of ''steady as a rock'' banjo head Mick O'Connor, who informed us that this tune was 'Finbarr Dwyer's' too

but we swam out for Beare Island _a crisp version of which closes our debut . . .

# Posted on February 19th 2006 by lisaniska

Master session

i had the pleasure of backing Finbar at a ''sneaky'' in-house session on thurs 28th dec '06 at The Kilkenny Tavern (formerly The Dark House), hosted by noel

with fellow box players sean mc'donaugh, john bowe and vincent halloran, also alan o'leary, peter coughlan & others

. . . and before playing the best version of it i've heard, Finbar told me that Beare Haven was composed around 1969, at a time when he put a number of tunes down c.1968-1972

. . . i wonder what he makes of ours?

# Posted on February 11th 2007 by lisaniska

Master session

i had the pleasure of backing a ''sneaky'' in-house session with Finbar on thurs 28th dec '06 at The Kilkenny Tavern (formerly The Dark House), hosted by noel

with fellow boxplayers sean mc'donagh, john bowe and vincent halloran, also with alan o'leary, peter coughlan & others

. . . and before playing the best version of it i've heard, Finbar told me that he composed Beare Haven around 1969, at a time of putting a number of tunes down c.1968-1972

. . . i wonder what he makes of ours?

# Posted on February 11th 2007 by lisaniska

Berehaven /= Beare Island

Finbarr Dwyer's reel "Berehaven" (recorded on "Ireland's Own Traditional Accordionist" in the set : Trim the Velvet/Berehaven) is not the same as the reel known as Beare Island. The Berehaven is a G major reel (accurately transcribed in Joshephine Keegan's book "A Drop in the Ocean") while the Beare Island is a modal tune in Edor/Emaj.

# Posted on August 20th 2007 by ithaca-markb