Foxhunter’s

Though it shares a name with the better-known reel, this is a separate tune: a slip jig whose oldest appearance, by the Traditional Tune Archive's account, comes at the close of the programmatic "Fox Chase" that the piper O'Farrell printed in his Pocket Companion for the Irish or Union Pipes around 1806. The Ayrshire fiddler John Hall printed the slip jig on its own about 1818 and credited it to the gentleman piper Walker "Piper" Jackson. O'Neill carried it in Dance Music of Ireland (1907) and Roche in his Collection, and it took particularly firm hold in Donegal. It also travels under the Irish title "Nead na Lachan sa Mhúta," the wild duck's nest among the reeds.