The Flogging Reel

The Dublin Magazine printed "The Flogging Reel" in 1842, in F, and Haverty copied it into his One Hundred Irish Airs in 1858. Cork piper James Goodman wrote down a version close to today's in his mid-19th century manuscripts. In Scotland a relative is called "The Flaggon," and Breathnach linked it to "The Fife Reel."

Francis O'Neill tells of Patrick Ward, a farmer and piper from near Drogheda, whose blind teacher had him write music with a burnt furze stick for want of pen and ink. This was the first tune Ward set down that way, and he said it came back to him whenever he picked up a pen to write music. In the 1930s it was still played for country dances in Orange County, New York.