4. Pride of the Ball / MacKinnon’s Rant / Lasses of Glenalladale / St. Kilda Wedding

Pride of the Ball is a variant of the key-of-A version of the 19th-century Irish tune, “Pigeon on the Gate”; it is also related to “Swallowtail Reel.” The tune is very widely played on PEI but my version is based on that of “Young Peter” Chaisson of Bear River. MacKinnon’s Rant comes from Cape Breton, and may be an old Scottish piping tune; I learned it from George MacPhee of Monticello. Lasses of Glenalladale was recorded by the well-known Cape Breton fiddler Joe Cormier and may also be an old Scottish piping tune (John MacDonald, Laird of Glenalladale, led the first expedition of Scottish settlers to PEI in the 1770s). St. Kilda Wedding appears in the Athole Collection (1884) and is very widely played among Scottish, Cape Breton, and PEI fiddlers. The tune is named for the Scottish Island of St. Kilda, so far off the coast and difficult to supply that in 1930 the British government chose to relocate all its inhabitants to the mainland.(Keys: various A-modes / A-major)