The Butterfly

The familiar three-part slip jig is credited to the Dublin fiddler Tommy Potts (1912–1988), who had its first two parts from his father, John Potts, an uilleann piper. The story behind the third part is that Potts worked it out one day in his garden, following the erratic flight of a butterfly flitting about — and that gave the tune its name. The older two-part tune was in print well before that, turning up as "Barney's Goat" and "Skin the Peeler" in Frank Roche's collection (vol. 2, 1912) and Cole's 1000 Fiddle Tunes; Highland pipers still know it as "Skin the Peeler."