Miss Muggins' Jilly

Have I really not blogged since last Sunday? It's been a busy week... Despite my silence here I have actually been playing every day, except, as I rather expected, yesterday. Glasgow and back in a day was very straightforward, and rather tiring.

Glasgow was as good as I remembered from last time, even on a flying visit on a grey, dull day. It was busy, somehow lively and laid back at once, with lots of people about, but everyone seemingly relaxed and unhurried. Sauchiehall Street, seen from the restaurant in John Lewis, was a treetop walk leading down to twin towers at the end. Admittedly it's not so picturesque when you walk it. There were lots of buskers out, mostly with guitars and amps. Some rock, some blues, all sorts. There was even, on Sauchiehall, a man with a fiddle playing a traditional Scottish tune. He stopped as we reached him, and I didn't feel I could wait for him to strike up again. Not a single piper, however - very different from my last visit.

I had a conversation at cross purposes with a colleague in the taxi from the airport. I was explaining that I'd first come to Glasgow in search of the piping, and she was wondering why I was so interested in plumbing supplies...

So, arrived back not too late, but tired, and I did think of having one tune on the chanter, just not to break the promised that I haven't ever quite made this month. Useful as it has been to push myself to play every day, it's artificial and really 5 minutes tired play doesn't count as useful practice. I'm finally feeling that I play because I enjoy it, not because I feel I must practice (not that I don't need to practice more!)

I've started on a new tune today. Listening to Breabach in the car has reminded me what a fun tune Brose and Butter is. I know it also from Tryst, where it sits with My Home Town. It's also on Ossian's eponymous album, where it appears as a song. It's ridiculously simple, fun to play, and because I already know it  I am picking bits up already and hope to go dotless sooner rather than later.

The tune goes by several other, perhaps more, interesting names: Peacock Follow the Hen, Yellow Stockings, Mad Moll and Cuddle Me Cuddy are all listed on The Session as variants. But the dots I printed give it as Uilleam's Callum's Morag, which is presumably a way of identifying a small child through identifying her father and grandfather, in the days when Morag was a tad more popular than it is now.