The Swallowtail Jig

A traditional Irish double jig, old enough that nobody claims it and printed often enough that its paper trail is easy to follow. It shows up in Kerr's Merry Melodies, in Ryan's Mammoth Collection in 1883 and in White's Unique Collection in 1896. Francis O'Neill printed it in 1907 in A dorian under the name The Dancingmaster, which may be a nod to the swallowtail coats that dancing masters wore. It answers to other names too: The Swallow's Tail, and Gigue de Barnabe, which is what Joseph Allard called it when he recorded it in Quebec in 1931.

Sessions play it in E dorian today, and that is the key on this page. The mode is where the lift comes from. Two sharps sit in the signature, but the tune circles E and never settles into a major.

More people have learned this jig than almost any other in the tradition. For a great many players it was the first one, and it is so well worn that some sessions tease it for being too familiar. The teasing means everybody in the room can play it. Walk into a session with one jig in your hands and this is the one that gets you playing with other people on the first night.

On a mandolin every note sits in first position, none of them above the fifth fret, so the left hand has little to learn here. The pick pattern is the lesson. Six eighths to a bar fall in two groups of three, and the jig lilt comes from picking down, up, down through each group. That way the downstroke lands on both felt beats and the hand keeps swinging in the direction it started. Strict alternate picking turns it into a reel with the wrong number of notes. Em and D are the only two chords, so the pick can have your full attention.