Congress Reel

The title nods to the World Eucharistic Congress held in Dublin in 1932, a huge Catholic gathering; whether the reel was actually composed for the occasion or simply picked up its name around then, the sources don't agree. It's usually attributed to the accordion player Joe Mills, though that has never been firmly pinned down. The earliest printed setting is in Breathnach's Ceol Rince na hÉireann vol. I (1963, no. 122), and the travelling piper Felix Doran cut one of the first recordings, on a Copley 78, around the 1950s. In A Dorian, it has long been a staple of the session repertoire.