Old Bush

The Old Bush carries an unusually well-documented pedigree. George Petrie collected it as an untitled reel in the mid-1880s from Frank Keane, a Kilfenora fiddler then working in a Dublin law office, and noted its County Clare provenance; O'Neill later printed it as "Captain Rock." Breathnach added a further tangle by setting it down in Ceol Rince na hÉireann as "The Long Hills of Mourne," taken from the piper Seán Potts, though that title properly belongs to the tune usually called "Tom Ward's Downfall." The Ballinakill Céilí Band of East Galway recorded it under its familiar name for Parlophone in 1930.