Drunken Tinker

Better known to many players as "The Yellow Tinker," this Galway reel carries a tangle of names: the box player Kevin Keegan called it the "Old Yellow Tinker," while Kevin Burke and Jackie Daly recorded it as "The Drunken Tinker" on Burke's "If the Cap Fits." The Tipperary accordionist Paddy O'Brien made the first recording in January 1954, on the then-new B/C button-accordion system. The "yellow" may mark the tinker out as a traveller, after the old song "Seven Yellow Gypsies" — though that link is tradition more than documented fact.