Trim the Velvet

Although it didn't reach print under this title until Francis O'Neill's Music of Ireland (1903), the reel was already circulating in mid-19th-century Ireland: the Cork piper and collector James Goodman copied the same melody into his manuscript as "The Humours of Flip," reserving the name "Trim the Velvet" for a separate jig. The setting most players know descends from Michael Coleman, the Sligo fiddler whose 1927 recording fixed it in the repertoire. Its third part climbs to a high C, a reach that makes it one of the more demanding session reels in G.