The Shaskeen

A reel from south County Leitrim, where an early version was set down as the "Sheskan Reel" in the c.1883 manuscript of fiddler and piper Stephen Grier. The name comes from the Irish seisgeann — a marshy fen or stretch of gleaned land. It carried far on early records: the piper Patsy Touhey cut it on cylinder in a performance the collector Richard Henebry rated a greater achievement than the Brooklyn Bridge, and Michael Coleman recorded it for Vocalion in 1921, paired with "The Bag of Potatoes." O'Neill printed a related but separate melody as "The Shaskeen Clog," a hornpipe that shares fragments with the reel without being the same tune.