People in Ireland mostly see Irish traditional music as a thing that is quintessentially Irish and traditional (or very old). They also tend to see Orange music as separate and unrelated, often as a violent clashing accompaniment to pictures of marching bowler-hatted figures on TV. Very few people other than the ones playing it have heard much of it with a sympathetic ear. I used to think that way myself. Irish music was Irish, and ancient. Orange music was Orange and was played by Orangemen. Indeed, I played music for quite a while before I learned any different, though most of what I thought I knew I learnt from record covers. But nothing is simple in this country and there is no reason why music should be any different!

The first person to confuse me was Breandán Breathnach in his book Irish Folk Music and Dance. Breathnach says that reels came from Scotland, hornpipes from England and most of Europe was riddled with jigs (single, double and otherwise). Polkas were from somewhere else as were Highlands, strathspeys, waltzes, one-steps, barn dances, marches, clap dances, sets and whatever you're having yourself. All recent imports, only 200 years or so in the country. But, I cried, the tunes must be older than that! There must have been a dance tradition before all this stuff came in from foreign parts? Well there was, but whatever there was we know very little about because it was never written down, it was passed on orally, from person to person.

Alan Feldman's book The Northern Fiddler confused matters even more. In the introduction he says that the vast majority of tunes found in the repertoire of the average traditional musician nowadays go back little further than the late 1700s. Or at least that's as far as they can be traced. Around the latter half of the 18th century and the beginning of the19th, there was a dance boom when the peasantry of the country did little else other than dance, in between breeding, eating and doing things associated with potatoes. That's when most of the tunes came to be. So is everything else lost? No, but it can't be found. The older tunes must have been mined and cannibalised to serve for the new rhythms and dances that were becoming fashionable but since they were never written down, we can't tell which stuff is older than which, except in a few cases.

Even the song tradition doesn't seem to go back very far. Little of that is older than the 1700s, even the Irish language material. The claim to be ancient (something that fascinated the Victorians) was false and the claim to be Irish, in an exclusive, definitive, unique sense, proved to be false as well.
Tommy Vetties Waltz is a good example of an import, adopted, adapted and sitting happily in the eclectic oral musical tradition of the country. It is in fact as Irish as any other style of traditional dance - which isn't saying very much!

Shaken, I turned to finding out a bit about Orange stuff - Lambegs and that. You know where you are with a Lambeg. A Lambeg, for anyone who has led a sheltered life, is an oak and goatskin drum weighing 34-40 lbs.; it is 3 foot in diameter, is played with two canes and has a decibel level equal to that of a pneumatic drill. The drum grew out of the long drum of 18th century European armies and is traditionally carried on the twelfth of July in Orange Order processions. The traditional accompaniment to the Lambeg is supplied by the fife. This is a small transverse flute with six to eight finger holes dating from the 15th century which was used in the British army until the end of the 19th century. In army bands the fife has largely been replaced by the band flute.

I met fifers living in and around Ahoghill and Cullybackey in Country Antrim, one of the last remaining areas where the old style of fifing and Lambegs is still on the go. Some had learned their fifing from a man called Jock Lecky. In a collection of his tunes from the 30s and 40s I was surprised to find no Orange party tunes except for The Boyne Water (known also as Rosc Catha Na Mumhan / The Battle Cry of Munster in other parts of Ireland!) and The Battle of Garvagh. What also surprised me was that many of the tunes were jigs or reels or highlands written in a time to suit the drums; hornpipe time. Young Men in their Bloom is a tune played in fifing time and in double jig time, showing how many tunes were derived from the common dance tradition.

What intrigued me further was the inclusion of Kelly the Boy From Killane and The Wearing of the Green, tunes not normally associated with Orange processions. It turns out that Jock Lecky taught the fifers of the (Catholic) Ancient Order of Hibernians as well - exactly the same tunes, barring one or two party tunes. The fact is that the AOH once carried Lambegs and fifed the same tunes, roughly speaking, as the Orangemen! The fifing tunes still played in this area are interesting because they preserve the kind of music the Orange Order used throughout the areas of the north where the Lambeg was found - Antrim, Down, Armagh and Tyrone. It seems that when the Order was founded in 1795, they borrowed the usual military marching format of fife and drum to accompany their marches and also were happy to use the dance tradition of the country at the time for many of their tunes. So we find in the collection set dances (known by fifers as time-and-a-half tunes because the second part was half as long again as the first), reels, double jigs, highlands and one or two song airs. All organised to suit the time of the drums and the fingering of the fife. The Hangman's Knot is a set dance.

Because the fifing repertoire was only played once or twice a year it became preserved as it was and didn't change much. The fifes would only have been taken out for processions or for practising since they were not used to accompany dancing. The tunes then gradually became separated from the mainstream dance tradition. While some are still played throughout the country (Maids on the Green, The Downfall of Paris, Kiss the Maid Behind the Bed, The Blackberry Blossom etc.) others are no longer generally known or played. Young Men in Their Bloom is one example, as indeed is The Hangman's Knot . There are also other tunes in the collection which seem to be related to whatever the British army fifers were playing in the early 1800s, or else they are tunes specifically made for the fife in the Orange tradition such as the following. Number 5

So Orange music is really as Irish as anything else on this island, whatever that means, and possibly much more Irish than much of the stuff now peddled as being Irish. Two hundred years ago there was no other kind of music in this country than traditional music, at least as far as the ordinary people of either religion were concerned. The fifing and Lambeg tradition, perceived as an Orange, unionist thing, also existed on both sides of the divide at one time, with a common musical collection of tunes. The whole musical tradition associated with the Orange Order has its roots squarely in the dance and song traditions as well as the military traditions of Ireland, Scotland and England. But it is still part of Ireland's musical tradition.

Music and song traditions are living things, constantly changing to suit the context they exist in. To survive they adapt and alter themselves, take on some new aspects and drop some old. As living things they are complicated and messy, and can't be simply divided up into this or that, Orange and green, ours and theirs. They might comfortably and often be both. It is true however that we sometimes use music and song to identify ourselves as being on one side or another. There is good music on both sides but it is how we use it, or how we hear it, or what we want to hear that determines what sort of music it is. In the end it's just music, good or bad!

Video Clips

The Lambeg Drum	The Fife

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