History of an old-time folk tune

When I tell you the name of this tune some of you senior citizens will say, “yeah, it used to be popular when I was a kid.” The tune is still “catchy,” so you’ll probably hum a few bars of that old country piece to yourself.

Before I tell you the tune’s name, you might be interested to know that it could have originated in Ireland. In 1903, an Irishman living in Boston, one Captain Francis O’Neill, collected and published nearly 2,000 Irish melodies. Except for a few compositions by O’Neill, the tunes are traditional pieces that supposedly have been played in Ireland for generations.

Last winter I sat down at my keyboard to play every one of those tunes. It took me several months this time – I had already attempted it once before - and in the process I discovered something interesting. Some of the music we think of as New World, especially some of the square dance and fiddle music Americans claim as their own, is of Irish or at least of Celtic origin, meaning in this case that the tunes came from Scotland as well as Ireland.

If you can take O’Neill at his word, the proof of this is in his collection. I found many tunes in the book that are played today as original American music. Among them is the tune I said I’d tell you about. It’s a fiddle standard that has been in the public domain since the 1920s and it was first popularized, with lyrics added, in the 1820s and early 1830s.

The tune is “Turkey in the Straw”. One can find it in the O’Neill collection as “Turkeys in the Straw”; note for note, it’s nearly identical to the tune Americans claim as their own creation.

One Dan Bryant added words to the tune and published it circa. 1860. Since then, various songwriters have used the melody of “Turkey in the Straw” with other lyrics.

A lot of so-called original American tunes besides “Turkey in the Straw” have Irish and Scottish roots. Look, for example, at how heavily the Bluegrass genre was influenced by Celtic people who immigrated to America. The creator of Bluegrass music, Bill Monroe, freely acknowledged the Celtic influence on his music.

Ricky Skaggs, who is undoubtedly one of the top Bluegrass performers in the world today, acknowledges the Celtic influence on his music. Listen closely to some of Skaggs’s recent Bluegrass compositions and you’ll hear a strong hint of the bagpipe style of playing.