Of all the traditional tunes played in Ireland, polkas are perhaps the most misunderstood. On the one hand, these tunes are stereotypically associated with Kerry and Cork musicians, on the other, they are sometimes erroneously dismissed as a direct borrowing from continental European music.

A look at the Denis Murphy materials recorded by Breandán Breathnach and Murphy’s repertoire as a whole can no doubt contribute to a better understanding of polkas as a vital part of the living tradition. Studying the origin of these tunes in Sliabh Luachra often reveals the same kind of creative process involved in the making of the local slides, jigs and reels.

Sliabh Luachra polkas are among the most socially-oriented tunes, strongly tied to the dancing and the communal music making. Most of the polkas have been named after the people that played them or the places they used to be played in. These names are rarely set in stone since very few of these tunes made it to Irish music collections published before the second half of the 20th century. Some of the polka titles are easily recognised thanks to the classic recordings of the local musicians, including Denis Murphy, but finding several alternative titles in the Breathnach materials or Johnny O’Leary of Sliabh Luachra is not uncommon even for these tunes.

Polkas have historically been tied to the eponymous Polka Set (in its many local variants). In Sliabh Luachra and elsewhere, this group dance evolved from the quadrille over the course of the 19th and early 20th century with the help of the travelling dance masters and local creativity. While the polka boom was by no means limited to Cork and Kerry and various styles of polka playing are still present in counties like Limerick, Clare, Sligo and Donegal, the southwest or Ireland was destined to become their bastion due to the sheer number of these tunes that the locals enjoy playing and creating to this day.

Modern Irish set-dancing looks and feels very different from the dances created for European ballrooms and has long been accepted as part of the tradition. Even so, the core components of the sets can be traced back to the quadrille instructions printed and disseminated during the quadrille craze.

The same cannot be said about the polkas played for the Set: these tunes rarely, if ever, come from the sheet music attached to quadrille manuals and the style of their playing has little in common with the music played in the polka cradle of Bohemia. Instead of simply borrowing European tunes, Cork and Kerry musicians have creatively adapted melodies from a wide range of sources deemed to be suitable polka material and added their own compositions to the mix. These tunes would be played in the unique manner influenced by both the dancing and the pre-existing traditional music repertoire, making Sliabh Luachra polkas quite different from their continental counterparts.

One of the sources for tunes adapted as Kerry polkas could have been the repertoire introduced into Ireland by the British Army regiments as well as that of local fife and drum bands. Denis Murphy’s father, Bill ‘The Weaver’ Murphy, headed one such band; their neighbour Art O’Keeffe was its long-time member. While marching tunes are not often played in Sliabh Luachra these days, it is plausible that some of them have been transformed into dance music.

Breathnach recorded Art O’Keeffe in 1966–1970 and more examples of his fife playing and singing survive on the 1949 acetate discs made by Séamus Ennis. In October 1966, Art O’Keeffe joined Denis Murphy on the tinwhistle for a few tunes during a recording session. Breathnach transcribed one of the polkas they played from a separate solo recording of O’Keeffe dated November 1970 (CICD 6471; CRE 2, # 114).

The tune is called the Kiskeam polka on CICD 6471; the 1966 recording shows that Murphy’s setting is almost identical to that of Art O’Keeffe’s. This version of the tune has later become associated with Co. Cork accordion players Timmy O’Connor (who recorded it in G major as Billy Mahoneys) and Jackie Daly (who recorded it in A major as The Newmarket polka); Johnny O’Leary called the same tune Willie Reidy’s polka (no. 2). It is sadly unknown where Art O’Keeffe learned this polka.

However, Murphy was recorded playing a similarly-sounding polka with Pádraig O’Keeffe in 1949. Published on Music from Sliabh Luachra (RTÉ 183 CD), the third polka of The green cottage polkas selection could in fact be a separate setting of the same tune. Variously known in Ireland, England and North America as Babes in the woods, Tom Morrison’s polka, The girl with the blue dress on, Reel du bombardier etc., that tune might have been originally composed by a British-based dancing master of cosmopolitan origin. 

According to the Traditional Tune Archive, a community-managed web resource headed by Andrew Kuntz, traditional settings of the tune are adaptations of The Kitty schottische by one Charles Louis Napoléon d’Albert (1808-1886), a German-born son of a French cavalry officer who spent most of his life working in London, Newcastle and Glasgow, teaching dances and writing ballet music. Such fascinating travels of a classical composition, making its way into several music traditions as far as across the Atlantic, are not often researched and it was only fair to include one such example. Yet, the story is not dissimilar to how some of the famous reels were originally composed in Scotland and then made it to the repertoire of Irish, English, Appalachian and French-Canadian musicians.

Another unusual setting of a polka from The green cottage polkas selection, this time the first tune from the set (CRE 2, # 130), was recorded by Breathnach in November 1970. Breathnach made separate recordings of Denis Murphy and fiddle player Jack O’Connell of the Lighthouse, Ballydesmond playing this version; O’Connell was likely the source for CICD 6377.

There are no notes indicating Denis Murphy’s source for this tune but further research reveals a candidate among the old 78 RPM records made in America. A 1923 recording by Patrick J. Gaffney titled “PLAIN QUADRILLE (Intro. ‘Mc Allister’s Fling’ / ‘The Girl I Left Behind’)” released on the O’Keh label (4840) features the same tune identified as a fling. While the style of Gaffney’s playing of Mc Allister’s fling and Murphy’s playing of the untitled polka is markedly different, the melody is strikingly similar. The possible connection is all the more fascinating given that New York City-based Gaffney originally hailed from Cork.

Gaffney’s recording has been included in ITMA’s “From the Bridge” project and has separately been shared by the Ward Irish Music Archives. The latter has also discovered a description of Gaffney in the Columbia Records’ Eire record catalog which called him “the first Irish fiddler to broadcast over the radio in this country, whose music was heard and enjoyed by people listening in Ireland.”

Murphy’s and O’Connell’s setting of the polka, which may have been adapted from Mc Allister’s fling, is notable for being particularly close to the Scottish ancestor of the tune. A strathspey called Alasdair MacAlasdair (Allister McAllister) published in Kerr’s Collection of Reels and Strathspeys etc. in the late 1800s closely matches the polka transcribed on CICD 6377 (if transposed to E minor). Curiously, a variation on the same strathspey may have been used to create the widely-known Irish reel The Monaghan twig; another possibly related tune played by Denis Murphy is found in the Reels chapter.

A setting similar to CICD 6377 would later become widely known as Denis Doody’s polka, named so by Dónal Lunny’s band in honour of the Ballinahulla, Co. Kerry accordion player. Doody recorded it as The green cottage no. 1 on Kerry Music (Mulligan LUN 019) in 1978.

A new interactive transcription of Denis Murphy’s setting of this polka based on the 1970 recording can be found below.

[The green cottage no. 1, polka] / Denis Murphy, fiddle ; transcribed by Anton Zille. (Breandán Breathnach Collection. Reel-to-Reel 21, November 1970)

Quite a few other polkas bear a striking resemblance to Scottish tunes and songs and probably descended from them. The motive of the song The haughs o’ Cromdale – also played as a strathspey and a reel in Scotland – could have served as the inspiration for a whole umbrella of Sliabh Luachra tunes. One of them is The green cottage polka no. 2 (CRE 3, # 78), another is a popular polka titled As I went out upon the ice.

A recording of Denis Murphy and Pádraig O’Keeffe playing As I went out upon the ice has been published on The Sliabh Luachra Fiddle Master (RTÉ CD 174) but the reel-to-reel made by Breandán Breathnach also contains Murphy singing the verse that gave the tune its title:

As I went out upon the ice,

The ice being rough and stony,

The ice it broke and down I went

And wet my Taglioni.

The verse is part of a comical song Taglioni, which refers to an overcoat worn in the early 19th century (There are multiple spellings of this word in the transcriptions of this song; Murphy himself pronounced it as “tanlee-ownee”). 

This of course is but one example of humorous verses Denis Murphy used to sing to the rhythm of polkas, jigs, slides etc. Some of them he made up on the fly using the tunes of choice, other ditties were commonly known in Sliabh Luachra and gave name to popular tunes, while in some cases the song apparently came first and the tune was adapted from it later (see Miscellaneous chapter for Murphy’s rendition of The Herring).

With all the creative tune changes happening in Sliabh Luachra, polkas, too, weren’t immune from being further transformed. Denis Murphy liked to demonstrate this by playing Maurice Manley’s polka and then seamlessly transitioning into a slide made from this tune; he played this combination for Breathnach several times over the years.

On CICD 6444 Breathnach noted the following: “Polka played by P. Ó C [Pádraig O’Keeffe] and followed by slide adapted from it”. This transcription comes from a recording made in November 1970, while on a separate recording from October 1966 Murphy refers to both the polka and the slide as Maurice Manley’s. In Sliabh Luachra the slide version has since become a well-known tune in its own right.

Another subtle but important transformation polkas would undergo in the hands of Pádraig O’Keeffe, Denis Murphy and Julia Clifford concerned the style of their playing. Kerry fiddlers could turn these inherently dance tunes into richly ornamented and relaxed music for listening. While this has become a widespread and normal practice in Irish dance music in general, polkas tend to trigger stereotypical expectations of high tempos and unadorned, forceful style of playing, which hardly gives justice to the creative, gentle way these tunes have been played in Sliabh Luachra.

O’Keeffe famously disliked playing for the dances as he was expected and encouraged to change his style of playing to suit the tempos and the rhythms preferred by the set-dancers. Known for his lonesome, introspective and richly embellished style, the fiddle master detested simplifying and speeding up his music. In contrast, Denis Murphy enjoyed playing for the dancing and listening alike as he easily picked or adapted tunes for the context required. Murphy’s long-time role of playing for the sets with Johnny O’Leary and a self-professed enthusiasm for the revival of the local dancing (cited by Breathnach in Ceol vol. 2, no. 4) are a testament to that. Luckily, there are recordings of Murphy and O’Keeffe playing polkas in both relaxed and lively tempos with various levels of detail. O’Keeffe’s solo recording of O’Sullivan’s and O’Callaghan’s polkas from The Sliabh Luachra Fiddle Master (RTÉ CD 174) and Murphy’s set of Tarrant’s, Lacka Cross and The blue ribbon polkas on Music from Sliabh Luachra (RTÉ 183 CD) are a master class in intricate and complex polka playing. These recordings show that any tune can be as sophisticated as the performer desires if given proper respect and care.