Cooley’s Reel

Almost no one who plays this reel still calls it by its older name, "The Tulla Reel." It took the name of Joe Cooley (1924–1973), the button accordionist from Peterswell, Co. Galway, and one of the earliest members of the Tulla Céilí Band, who carried it through the sessions of his lifetime — though he didn't write it. Who did is genuinely unsettled: the Traditional Tune Archive records a claim for the Mayo-and-New-York fiddler John McGrath, and another for Joe Mills of the Aughrim Slopes Céilí Band, said to have called it "Luttrell's Pass" after a spot near the site of the Battle of Aughrim. A separate three-part setting circulates as London-Sligo fiddler Michael Gorman's "Put the Cake on the Dresser."