The Pigeon on the Gate

The melody goes back at least to the mid-19th century, when Cork piper James Goodman wrote it into his manuscripts, but the title only shows up around 1900. Francis O'Neill noted in 1922 that the old collections of Bunting, Petrie and Joyce missed it, yet Chicago pipers and fiddlers from the west and south of Ireland all knew it by this one name. Kerry piper William Hanafin, born in 1875, said it was one of the first reels he learned.

It has two main families, one in E and one in A, and in Donegal it is usually called "The Swallowtail." Cape Breton fiddler Johnny Wilmot played it in E minor after Michael Coleman's example, sometimes tuning his bass string down to a low E.