Gan Ainm (Bergin)

Gan ainm is Irish for "no name," and this reel earned the label honestly — it has never settled on a single title. It appears in Breathnach's CRÉ III as "Gan ainm / No title," notated from the playing of tin whistle player Mary Bergin, who opened her landmark 1979 debut Feadóga Stáin with it as an untitled reel; that album is credited with establishing the tin whistle as a front-rank instrument, and the tune is now also widely known as "Mary Bergin's." In east Clare it goes by "Naughton's" — the name under which concertina player Mary MacNamara recorded it on Traditional Music from East Clare — while elsewhere it travels as "Finbar Dwyer's." Players also shade it between A Mixolydian and A Dorian, so even the mode shifts from one setting to the next.