Old Favorite

A County Clare jig that travels under a pile of local names: "The Kilfenora," "Miko Doyle's," "The West Clare." Its plain main title may not be Irish at all. The Traditional Tune Archive records a suggestion that it took its name from The Favourite, a Holloway pub in north London that drew Irish musicians, though Antóin Mac Gabhann learned it simply as a Clare jig. Its earliest documented setting sits in the Duffy family manuscript of Legga, Co. Longford (c.1930), as the second figure of a quadrille set called "Spanish Schottische" — hence the alias "Spanish Schottische No. 2." Breathnach printed it untitled as a slide in CRÉ II (1976), and players still take it both ways, a rolling 6/8 jig for some and a 12/8 slide for others.