Mist Covered Mountain (jig)
A beautiful jig by the Clare composer and fiddler Junior
Crehan (1908-1998); he also composed
two of my favourite tunes – Farwell to Miltown Malbay (reel) and Caislean
an Oir (hornpipe). Mist Covered Mountain (sometimes Mist on the Moutnain) was
inspired by Slievecallan (or Mount Callan) which could be
seen from Crehan’s Ballymakea home
in West Clare.
The Mist-Covered Mountain - Slievecallan from Ballymakea, Co. Clare
Here is some footage of Junior Crehan in which he recalls composing the tune before playing a few bars. Pure magic!
The popular jig has since been recorded by Matt Molloy (Matt Molloy, 1976), De Danann (Mist Covered Mountain, 1980), Kevin
Burke (Up Close, 1984), Martin Hayes
(Martin Hayes, 1992) and numerous
others.
I picked up the tune from Brian McGrath’s album Pure Banjo (2009), on which he follows with Scatter the Mud. Here he is playing these two tunes (with a third – the Yellow Tinker reel) in Tom Cussan’s banjo shop in Clarenbridge, Co. Galway, a town famed for its Oyster Festival.
I picked up the tune from Brian McGrath’s album Pure Banjo (2009), on which he follows with Scatter the Mud. Here he is playing these two tunes (with a third – the Yellow Tinker reel) in Tom Cussan’s banjo shop in Clarenbridge, Co. Galway, a town famed for its Oyster Festival.
For anyone learning tunes from YouTube, if you click on
“settings” (the nut-shaped symbol to the lower right of the video) and then click “speed”
you can slow down the video, which I find particularly handy for picking out ornamentation.
So here's my attempt, which I'm happy enough with for a change.
You'll find ABC, tab and sheet music HERE on www.thesession.org
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