The Bucks of Oranmore

Oranmore is a village on Galway Bay, where the roads to Galway, Dublin and Killarney meet. This five part reel is one of the big tunes of the tradition and a test piece for uilleann pipers, many of whom have their own settings. Seamus Ennis rated it the best of all Irish reels, and when asked what should follow it in a set, he said nothing could. Musicians often save it for the end of the night.

It grew from the Scottish reel "Greig's Pipes." Kerr printed it in the 1880s as "The Bucks of Cranmore," and O'Neill in 1903 and 1907. O'Neill also tells of the Ballinasloe piper Patrick Flannery, who is said to have died in 1855 while playing it for a crowd on a Brooklyn street. Waterford piper Liam Walsh made an early recording in London in 1933.