Earl’s Chair

By tradition the reel was composed by Pakie (Pato) Moloney, a flute player from Woodford in East Galway and the maternal uncle of the flute player Mike Rafferty. Moloney is said to have worked it out sitting on a large rock in Derrycrag Wood, and first called it "Down between the Two Derryoobers" before renaming it for that rock — the "Earl's Chair," itself named for the Earl of Clanricarde, who held the hunting rights there and used the stone, broad enough to seat his whole hunting party at lunch, as a resting place. Jack Coen, the Bronx flute player also from Woodford, learned it at home, and his setting is taken as the original. Players have long disagreed over whether the tune sits in B minor or D major, part of why its backing chords give more trouble than most reels'.