Following on from earlier posts about the 1973 clip with Marcus Walsh: http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=ENzhd_JgAgg, another clip of Packie has now come to light on YouTube: http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=EBwTNaGGPBE, seemingly recorded around the same time, but with some other local musicians, including a better tambourine player!

The others are (left to right) Packie's brother Gussie Russell on concert flute, John Killourhy - fiddle, Rory O´Connor - whistle, Stevie McNamara - tambourine and Willie 'Bheag' Shannon - fiddle.

The tambourine playing on this second clip is especially interesting for me as it is the first time that I've actually seen an old-style tambourine player performing thumb-rolls on the instrument, a technique that can be heard on old recordings of both English and Irish tambourine playing, and which people have told me of in West Clare.

Edited to list all the musicians.

Stephen, thank you for pointing this video out . I saw it last week searching on youtube for Clare dancing, and it showed up in the loop. Although off topic of concertinas, let me ask you about the bodhrán ( tambourine) playing of that era. I have seen a few occurrences of jingles on old instruments over the years, sometimes played open hand. The technique you call the thumb roll, is amazing. Is it just that you don't hear the attack, and the player rocking the drum? or is his thumb dragging against the skin causing a vibration? I also noted the tipper playing to be very top end as some young players call it. How common were these type of tambourines ( 17 or 18 inch) in the west? I know I have seen old photos of wren boys with similar instruments.




quote name='Stephen Chambers' date='May 9 2008, 04:58 AM' post='72091']
Following on from earlier posts about the 1973 clip with Marcus Walsh: http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=ENzhd_JgAgg, another clip of Packie has now come to light on YouTube: http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=EBwTNaGGPBE, seemingly recorded around the same time, but with some other local musicians, including a better tambourine player!

The others include Packie's brother Gussie on concert flute, and the brothers John and Paddy Killourhy on whistle and fiddle respectively.

The tambourine playing on this second clip is especially interesting for me as it is the first time that I've actually seen an old-style tambourine player performing thumb-rolls on the instrument, a technique that can be heard on old recordings of both English and Irish tambourine playing, and which people have told me of in West Clare.
[/quote]

Lawrence,

Off (concertina) topic it may be, but the subject of old-style tambourine playing is one I'm always happy to talk about!

I first discovered Irish music around 1970, at a time when country people in Ireland still used the name tambourine for the instrument that has since become known as a bodhran (probably thanks to Sean O Riada), and those tambourines commonly had jingles on them. My first introduction was hearing Seamus Tansey play one (he's very good on it!) on his 1970 Leader LP (Masters of Irish Music: Séamus Tansey with Eddie Corcoran, Leader LEA 2005), and Joe Cooley's brother, Jack, made a fine fist of playing tambourine with him on his 1973 recordings: http://ie.youtube.com/watch?v=NCiqPCA_MRA.

Another noteworthy player was Bobby Casey's uncle, the fiddler and dancing master Thady Casey, from the Crosses of Annagh, here photograped in 1957:



Whist another YouTube clip shows Denis Murphy playing with a tambourine player at the 1966 Kilrush Fleadh Cheoil: http://ie.youtube.com/watch?v=_iuXCsD5jis

The thumb roll is played by (as you describe it) the "thumb dragging against the skin causing a vibration"- it's a technique commonly used by tambourine players in various styles, including English country music. A common tradition perhaps?

Edited to add:

Older tambourines/bodhrans tended to be smaller than 17 or 18 inches in size, and my experience would be that this made them better-suited to being played in the old "open" style (i.e. without being damped by the left hand) which tends to sound very "boomy" on an 18". Sonny Davey made his own rims and many of his drums were 15" in diameter, though I've also bought 13 1/2" and 18" bodhrans off him. But when sieves were used for rims, then the size might depend on what was available in the local hardware shop! So my Davy Gunn bodhran is 16", whilst a crude old tunable one (also made from a sieve - almost certainly by Ted Furey) that I have is more like 18". But I have seen smaller country-made tambourines - one in Listowel, Co. Kerry and another (by Sonny Davey) that's at the Sailor's Home pub outside Gurteen, Co. Sligo - whilst Jack Cooley appears to have been using a factory-made tunable tambourine, perhaps a 13 1/2" Orff Schulwerk one such as I also have (it's visible briefly at the beginning of the Joe Cooley clip).

So the (18"?) tambourine in the Packie Russell clips, from Doolin, is of an unusually large size (and it appears to be the same drum in both instances - maybe it too belonged to the pub, like Packie's concertina), whilst the only other one of that size that I've come across has been in the hands of a player in neighbouring Lisdoonvarna, so perhaps made in North Clare by the same person?

Most of my experience of traditional music has been in Counties Clare, Kerry and West Limerick in the South West of Ireland, and also further north in Co. Sligo, and I've encountered tambourines with jingles in all those places. No doubt they were also played elsewhere - as witnessed by the likes of Jack Cooley (Co. Galway) and Davy Fallon (Co. Westmeath).

But these days the tambourine seems (with the exception of mine) to be just about extinct in Ireland, though there are still old-style players around, like Ted McGowan or Seamus Tansey, both from Gurteen, who will gladly give mine a tip given half a chance. Indeed, when Seamus recorded 'Phantom Shadows of a Connaught Fire Light' they had to try to approximate the sound of Wren Boys playing traditional tambourines, for his Wren monologue, by combining the sound of bodhrans with that of orchestral tambourines, because they couldn't find any surviving examples. However, I've since backed him several times on it with the real thing!

I guess the old assumption that the bodhrán was "exclusively" a farm implement is shot down, jingles don't fit the theory. I think that O'Riada's distain for many things should be made known. He wasn't fond of ceili bands from what I have heard.So Stephen, where does one find an old style tambourine / bodhrán ?

Some nine years or so ago RTE aired a documentary about one of the old style Bodhran makers. I don't remember much of the detail except he was in North Kerry, the Listowel area. John B making an appearance and all. I think it was a restored old film from the late 60s or 70s.

The second fiddleplayer in the Packie clip is Willie 'Bheag' Shannon by the way.



For Clare dancing watch: Laichtin Naofa Ceiliband

No, they certainly don't!

But large tambourines were being used by British Army bands 200 years ago, and it may not be altogether mischievous to suggest that they may have introduced them into Irish music - a bit like set dancing!


He didn't like snare drums or accordions in traditional music, that's for sure, nor does he seem to have liked tambourine jingles, so the tambourine was stripped of them and the bodhran was born, as the drum for his group Ceoltoiri Chualann.

In that connection, it may be worth mentioning that when the Chieftains sprang out of Ceoltoiri Chualann in 1963, Paddy Moloney turned to Davy Fallon, an elderly tambourine player and farmer from Castletown Geoghegan in Co. Westmeath, for the first Chieftains' album. But Paddy persuaded him to tape up the jingles of his tambourine, so only the drum could be heard!


Sadly, one doesn't any longer.

The last traditional tambourine was probably the beautiful 15" one made specially for me around 1990 by James "Sonny" Davey, from Killavil (near Gurteen), Co. Sligo, a master maker who had started making drums when he was only 10 (around 1920) and used to sneak out at night to play at crossroad and house dances with his mentor, the older flute player Tom McDonagh. But Sonny hadn't made one like it for twenty years or more by then, having gone over to making only the more fashionable bodhrans (for which his customers had included the likes of Christy Moore and Kevin Conneff of the Chieftains), and it took me several years to persuade him to build me a tambourine since he was no longer set up to make them.

Most unfortunately that tambourine was destroyed in 1995, when an intoxicated woman (the wife of a well-known singer ) fell off a bar stool in Gleeson's onto it, and I didn't have the heart to tell Sonny what had happened to his cherished creation (his arthritis had become too bad to make another one by then anyway) so I made a replica of it myself, even matching the exact same shade of brown paint that he used. I must have made a decent enough job of it though, as I was delighted to be approached (at the Coleman Cottage, Killavil) by one of his son's a couple of years ago, who thought "my" drum was one his father had made, and both Seamus Tansey and Tommy Hayes have asked me to make them one too!

Edited for spelling

Sounds interesting, I wonder if that was about Davy Gunn by any chance? He was the best-known maker around those parts, and I met him the very first time I ever came to Ireland, to a fleadh in Listowel about 1973. Like many of the old-school makers he used the wooden rim of a sieve (or riddle) for the rims of his drums, I've got one of his somewhere...


Is he anything to the concertina player Micheál Shannon from Doolin I wonder?

But who's the tambourine player?


Yes, that's a really great clip. There's another interesting one, with Michael Falsey playing for dancers from Quilty, here: http://ie.youtube.com/watch?v=QQ-ZmWfOCiM

That's a nice clip too, shouldn't be too hard finding out who are in the clip.

The whistle player may be Joe Cunneen and there are other familiar faces in the video as well (Steve don't you think one of the dancers, with the hair up and the glasses, looks an awful lot like a young version of Nel Gleeson?)

The plain set didn't seem to have caught on though, I have seen it danced in Moyasta a few times but never in the Miltown/Quilty area (I have seen it taught, by Aidan Vaughan, my son can dance it but I have never seen it in use at social occasions).

I have a bunch of recordings of (another instance of) the Quilty Ceili Band by the way with Junior Crehan, Michael Downes and others. Some of it quite good.

Also recently found some stuff of Mrs Crotty with Paddy Killoran and Josie Hayes recorded in Gleeson's in 1957 and 1960. And a tape of Thady Casey, Seamus Ennis, JC Talty, Martin Talty and Willie Clancy, some nice bits there too.

hi Stephen and others,

véééry interesting stuff for bodhrán players like me and Rea.

I put a message with a link to this thread on the bodhrán community group http://launch.groups.yahoo.com/group/Bodhran/message/14571. So if you want you can participate in the discussion on that site.

kind greetings

Dirk De Bleser, Belgium

Maybe it is Nell?


You should venture down my direction more often, further into the wilds of West Clare (south of Cree) if you want to see the plain set danced socially. They often used to dance it to polkas here, in years gone by, and I've seen it danced in the Old Brogue (a.k.a. "the Cloche" - it was my "local" for a while) at Killimer with a polka for the final figure only last year (they have dances there most Saturday nights, that will usually include some sets).


Wow, I'd especially like to hear Mrs Crotty with Paddy Killoran , and Thady Casey too...

They are the recordings Michael Tubridy was talking about, a bit of poking around made them emerge soon after that talk.

Two recording sessions were done : one in 1957 at Gleeson's and another in 1960 at Master Gorman's house in Shanaway (the only places that had the electricity in those days). Paddy Killoran acts as master of ceremonies, introducing the musicians and there are lots of messages from the 'locals' to friends and family in the US as well.

The tapes also included another 'musical letter' from Killoran in New York to the family here. There he plays with members of the 'orchestra', Paddy Sweeney, Martin Wynne and others (and the infamous Jack McKenna on the electric guitar). Tapes like this give us little trivia like the fact Paddy Killoran had a cuckoo clock at home.

Kitty told me a lot about Killoran's visits and how going to Crotty's where the men played with Lizzie made her pine in the corner for a concertina. She is included in one of the tapes, sending greeting overseas, saying 'if I had a concertina now, I'd play you a tune'. 40 years before she finally got one.

The Thady Casey tape is another 'letter', Seamus Ennis acting a MC, like the BBC recording (from the same session that also gave us Willie Clancy and Aggie White playing the Shaskeen and the Mary Haren concertina recordings) Thady is a bit scratchy but his playing (on the fiddle) is nicer here.

I know the Plain Set gets danced in South West Clare, I was responding more or less to the attempt talked about in the clip of reviving it in the Quilty/Miltown area, which seems to have been unsuccessful, it's always the Caledonian here.

We're going to get Brid O Donohue's father to look at the dancing clip, Brid says he's likely able to identify everybody in it, I'll come back to that later.

Sorry, that was a double post.

Peter,

Thanks for saving the remnants of my sanity , I knew I'd been discussing the Kerry influence in the music and dancing of [South] West Clare, and dancing of the Plain Set, with somebody recently, and I've been going mad in the last 24 hours trying to remember who it was with and hunting for it in correspondence on my computer... But you've just reminded me that it wasn't over the internet, but in conversation with Michael Tubridy at his talk in Miltown - doh!

Mind you, you remind me of the confusion about the geography of County Clare, which has a North, East and West, but you'd never hear anybody talk of a South! Whilst what is often considered to be West (like Miltown Malbay) is officially North (and the North Clare Tourist Office was there for a while, some years ago), and what is geographically South West is described as West, though the West Clare Railway was originally called that only on its meanderings through North Clare, but became the South Clare Railway at Miltown Malbay, where it actually entered West Clare...


Was it this corner in Crotty's I wonder? (It's great she's got the concertina there now, at last!)




That would be mighty altogether!

The tambourine, the bones, and the banjo were all staples in American minstrel music, which was all the rage in England and Ireland in the middle to late 19th century (I've reported earlier about its popularity with some 19th century Irish concertina players). In that the banjo almost certainly came to Ireland with the minstrels, it is not too mischevious either to suggest that use of the tambourine and bones in Irish ensemble playing came from that source too. Don't let the British army have all the fun!
I don't think I have seen any reference to tambourine or bones with Irish music in any of the old Irish music texts that predate the minstrels invasion (ca 1850). If you can find one, that may help the British army hypothesis....they invaded long before the minstrels!
Cheers,
Dan

Dan,

Just as Chief O'Neill later ignored the melodeon, concertina, harmonica and tinwhistle, along with the tambourine and bones, in his writings (though there is a banjo in one of his illustrations!), I'm not aware of earlier texts that mention the tambourine either. However, tambourines do appear in several paintings that predate the Famine, the earliest being "Snap-Apple Night" by Daniel Maclise, which portrays a Halloween party in Blarney in 1832:



The tambourine player is in the opening above the heads of the fluter, fiddler and piper, on the far top right of this detail:



I'm sorry about the quality of the image, which is the best I can find at the moment, but it is much, much clearer on the original painting.

Mind you, I don't rule out the possible later influence of the blackface minstrels, but let's not forget that many of the original ones were themselves Irish - so the influence could have been the other way!

It was the very same corner, in fact she was telling me this when we came up there for the Mrs Crotty memorial plaque. It was the first time she had been in Crotty's since she was up with Josie And Paddy Killoran and she pointed out where everybody was sitting and there was a sense of satisfaction she'd come back playing, long after they were all gone.

I had posted a clip of Mrs Crotty and Josie Hayes elsewhere, so that's something to satisfy some curiosity. It is also the first recording of Josie we've been able to locate. Paddy Killoran does the introduction. For those who aren't aware: Josie Hayes was a fluteplayer and husband to Kitty Hayes, Paddy Killoran was married to one of Josie's sisters. The clip was recorded on during of Killoran's visits to Clare.

And here's another, clearer image from some ten years later. It's a detail from the unsigned watercolour "A Shebeen near Listowel" (attributed to Bridget Maria Fitzgerald, c. 1842), which clearly shows a large tambourine being played to accompany a barefooted fluter, whose clothing and military cap suggest that he may himself be an old soldier "down on his luck":

Here's a different version of the Shaugraun image:

Thanks Peter, that's probably a detail from Scott's 1845 engraving?

The Na Piobairi Uilleann archive index lists it as 'Scene from the Shaugraun' artist: Currier and Ives

Hmmm, that's interesting, it's obviously an engraving based on Maclise's painting, but I've now found the 1845 one by Scott, which is more faithful to the original:

There is nothing like a period document to at least rule out errant hypotheses! Nice pictures, and nice tambourines.

Yes, one of the biggest (and earliest) names in minstrelsy was Dan Emmett (Ohio born and of Irish ancestry); a site dedicated to him says
"In the winter of 1842-43, four stars of the minstrel profession formed a novel ensemble, consisting of the fiddle, bones, banjo, and tambourine. Calling themselves the "Original Virginia Minstrels," the four men, Dan Emmett on the fiddle, Frank Brower on the bones, Billy Whitlock on the banjo, and Dick Pelham on the tambourine, first performed in public at the Bowery Amphitheater on February 6, 1843, in New York. This unique ensemble, along with their song Old Dan Tucker, swept the entire minstrel world. Wearing ill-assorted garments, oddly shaped hats, and gaudy pants and shirts, the four Virginia Minstrels were an often rowdy, fun-loving group. Within a few short months scores of similar minstrel bands were performing throughout the country. The Original Virginia Minstrels had a short life. After a financially disastrous tour of the British Isles in 1844, the group disbanded. All of the minstrels eventually returned to the United States except Dick Pelham, who remained in England. "

So this is how at least the banjo got to Ireland. According to Wikipedia, Joe Sweeney (another of Irish extraction and the earliest documented white to play the banjo) was with the Virginia Minstrels (with Emmett and Pelham) on an 1846 tour...they played Dublin, COrk, Belfast and Glasgow that year.

O'Neill wrote of Emmett as one of Ireland's sons abroad...he approved of Emmett, at least!....and it is interesting that some American minstrel tunes found their way into O'neill's tunebooks as a result of some lightfingered action by O'Neill (not rare at the time, as tunes were not considered as copyrighted). So we get real reverberations back and forth, and back again, as you point out.

Now, as to the bones....does the British army claim them too?

Not to leave the British totally out of this discussion, here is something intereesting about a Blackface Sweeney before he ever joined the Virginia Minstrels: from Wikipedia:
"By 1839, Sweeney was performing in various blackface venues in New York. His earliest documented use of the banjo on stage was in April 1839. That same month, he performed alongside James Sanford at the Broadway Circus in New York with a blackface burlesque of The Dying Moor's Defence of His Flag called "Novel Duetts, Songs, &c". This was accompanied by a "Comic Morris Dance by the whole company"." There are some who say that some (English) Morris sides got their blackface from the minstrels....but they clearly supplied their own tambourines!

Cheers,
Dan

Love that image, no tambourine but at least they have a concertina

Here's your tambourine, and a concertina too.
Click to view attachment

Or both ways, just as it is today.

Let's have a look at them:

Is that Don Quixote in the background?

In any case, it looks like Mr. Bones is playing both rib bones (the model for modern-day Irish bones players) and a jawbone, an instrument which one rarely encounters these days.

Not the most realistic image, of course...they look as purposefully grotesque as Hollywood actresses with lip implants!

Try this for a real photo (I failed to capture it, so you'll have to go to the site):
http://books.google.com/books?id=rRc5AAAAI..._brr=3#PPA13,M1

If you go to page 22, you'll see where they mention Joe Sweeney's trip with this group to Dublin, and how he took the original gourd off the banjo and used a hoop instead.

If you go to (I think) p 287 (or was it 277?) you'll find a low res version of the photo of Fields and Hoey (Fields with concertina) that I used in my US Anglos article.

If you do a search on that book for Irish or Ireland, you'll see the extent to which Irish comedians and musicians were employed in the minstrels (and look up England to get an idea how popular they were there). The more one looks at this amazing book, the more one begins to appreciate how enormous minstrels were both in the US and Britain....of a similar relative scale as R&R in the past 50 years, in a day when racial mores were still at a primitive state of course. But then, we are thread creeping!!

Cheers,
Dan

But that's the whole point, aren't the acts of both based on them being caricatures...


I'm afraid that, in my browser, your link only takes me to a listing for the book, and using the Search in this book feature only shows me a small portion of a page (where the keyword is) - so I've had to get up from my computer chair and lift my copy of Monarchs of Minstrelsy* down from my bookshelves, to look at it manually...

However, though there are individual portraits of the four members of the Virginia Minstrels on page 13, they were all taken in later years when they were much older. I think (especially for my purposes) I'd rather have the caricaturised "action shot", where the tambourine can be seen literally "in full swing".


Exactly what Sweeney did, or did not do to the banjo seems to be a great bone of contention in banjo circles, though he was certainly hugely "instrumental" in turning the banjo into a "white" instrument. But (just to keep somewhat on topic for a moment) it's worth noting that early banjo hoops are very similar to tambourines of the period (be they "tackhead" or "tunable"), and in fact several of the early banjo makers were originally tambourine makers!

For that matter, my friend Pete Stanley in London makes primitive "tackhead" banjos out of 12" bodhrans!


It's page 277, the only one I had marked from reading the book when I first bought it.


I know.

* By the way, thanks to your link I took a look at what copies of Monarchs of Minstrelsy are fetching these days, and I'm stunned! I thought £22 was expensive at the time, but then it was a good few years ago...

When I was at the session in Doolin in 1975(?), there was an older fellow playing the bodhran/tambourine, and a boy (about 10 years old?) with him. I was told that the man came down from Galway and that the boy was his grandson. The grandson took an occasional turn on the drum, and he too was quite good.

The tambourine had jingles on it, which were old English pennies, pierced through their centers. When the drum was braced on the player's thigh, the jingles were still. I recall that the main technique of getting noise out of the jingles was to bounce the drum on the player's leg.

The intriguing thing to me was the way they played the head. It wasn't striking with the fingers (as in many other cultures), nor with a stick, but with a small knob of wood on the end of a leather loop. The loop was around one or more fingers, with the knob then projecting from between the fingers and striking the head as the hand was moved similarly to how it is done with a stick. I'm pretty sure that the tension on the loop was varied to accommodate the tempo of the tune. And something very much like the above-described "thumb roll" was accomplished by dragging the knob across the head, with it bouncing repeatedly as it was dragged.

I've seen the old large pennies used, as you describe, or flattened beer-bottle tops, or "pot menders" (large washers that were intended to be bolted over holes in cooking pots), whilst Sonny Davey used what appear to be discs cut out of the lids of tin cans, on the one he made for me. When I was building my own, I did a lot of experimenting to achieve an acceptable sound, and finally scrapped a new Egyptian tambourine for its rustly-sounding jingles.


I used to play a bodhran like that, with morris bells tied to the cross-piece (copying Robin Morton with Boys of the Lough), but I hold the tambourine with my hand underneath it and my thumb in the thumhole, as the player in the Maclise painting is doing. I never rest it on my knee, but I can control the jingles by the angle of the drum, and how I hit it.


I've seen it done, but not recently.

These YouTube clips featuring Packie Russell, and others accompanied by traditional Irish tambourine playing, seem to have generated curiosity and discussion in various quarters, including the 'Bodhran' Yahoo! Group: interesting link to the bodhran on concertinanet and the IRTRAD-L List: The Irish Tambourine, and its replacement the Bodhran, and I've been meaning to write some notes on how the tambourine first became popular in Britain and Ireland, so here goes:

The Fashionable Tambourine

British Army

The tambourine is an ancient instrument that was mainly associated with the Middle East. It is said to have been first introduced into Europe by the Crusaders, and it was reintroduced and became highly fashionable in the latter years of the 18th century as part of a craze for Orientalism that saw the sound of the Ottoman military Janissary Band, or Mehter, and especially its rousing and exotic percussion instruments, introduced into both European classical and military music under the name "Turkish music". You will find numerous clips of revived bands of this type if you search under either "Janissary" or "Mehter" on YouTube, but I'd recommend this one if you'd just like to get a good taste of what they sound[ed] like.

These Turkish percussion instruments were introduced into the British Army in the last quarter of the 18th century (and generally played by black musicians in exotic uniforms), starting with cymbals in the 24th Foot (1777), then a bass drum and tambourine in the Royal Artillery (1782), and a Jingling Johnnie and two tambourines in the Coldstream Guards (1785). Below is a Portrait of the tambourinist John Fraser of the Coldstream Guards, c.1790 (notice the Turkish crescent on his turban):


And here is an engraving of the band plus the fifes and drums of the "3rd Foot Guards [Scots Guards] at St. James's Palace, 1790", with their "Turkish music" (in this case, cymbals, bass drum and tambourine) in the middle:

These "blacks," as they were usually designated on the muster rolls, were great adepts at the handling of these Turkish music "tools," as Wagner called them, and they became "the rage" by reason of their antics in performing upon them. The modern cross-handed drumming on the bass drum, the leopard or tigerskin apron, and a few other oddities, are survivals of their régime as percussionists. Dressed in high turbans, bearskins, or cocked-hats, with towering hackle feather plumes, and gaudy coats of many colours, braided and slashed gorgeously and gapingly, they capered rather than marched, and flung their drumsticks and tambourines into the air, adroitly catching them in discreetly measured cadence. Their agility with fingers, arms and legs was only equalled by their perfect time in the music. (Extract from the paper The Turkish Influence on Military Music (1950) by Henry George Farmer.)

Some idea of the "tricks" those tambourine players probably used (I've seen similar techniques, including spinning the tambourine, described in contemporary tutor books) might be gained by watching this amazing clip from YouTube: Karim Nagi performs on the Duff (frame drum)

Whilst this detail from George Heriot's painting Minuets of the Canadians (c.1801) seems to show some similar "tricks" being employed:


"Belles of Distinction"

W.T. Parke in his 'Musical Memoirs' (1830) tells us that the tambourinists of the Guards' bands did a roaring trade as teachers to fashionable ladies: "It may be worthy of remark that the Africans, who appear generally to have a natural disposition for music, produced such effect with their tambourines, that those instruments afterwards, under their tuition, became extremely fashionable, and were cultivated by many of those belles of distinction who were emulous to display Turkish attitudes and Turkish graces."

Emma, Lady Hamilton certainly fell into that "belles of distinction" category, often dressing in Turkish costume, and this portrait of her with tambourine, ''Lady Hamilton as a Bacchante'', was painted in Naples, in 1790-1, by Élisabeth Vigée-Lebrun:


The fashion for the tambourine as a classical instrument around 1800 is illustrated by some forty-odd musical works/songs with tambourine obligato between 1798 and 1816, that are listed in the British Library Catalogue, plus three tutor books:

Bolton, Thomas. Instructions for the Tambourine. [WM 1799]
Dale, Joseph. Dale's Instructions for the Tambourine. [1800]
Instructions for the Tambourine, with a selection of the most admired airs, waltzes, and marches, arranged for the piano forte, [WM 1813]

So you see, the tambourine really did owe it's rise to fashion and popularity to the British Army, though it also passed through the Big House along the way...

(A bit like sets of quadrilles/set dancing! )

Edited to correct link.

In confirmation of that, whilst browsing YouTube I accidentally stumbled on some clips of Christy Moore playing with Planxty (in 1974) on what is obviously (to anybody who has one) one of Sonny Davey's bodhrans, you can tell from his signature light-brown paint (I found out the shade was called "Mace", when I needed some to make my replacement tambourine) and band of black tape around the bottom of the rim, as well as the carved cross-sticks that he put in the back of his older bodhrans (later ones had dowels). You can see these details very clearly in this clip: The Rambles of Kitty - Planxty, especially around 2.12

And I forgot to mention that Sonny also played fiddle, made his own drum kit (to play in a ceilidh band) which was painted the same shade of brown (as was all the furnture/woodwork in the kitchen of his farmhouse ), and should not be confused with the well-known 5-times champion bodhran player from the same locality "Junior" Davey (son of the fiddler Andrew Davey).

Why no Jim, that's Old Dan Tucker, as described in the second verse of Dan Emmett's song of the same name and popularised by the Virginia Minstrels:



I guess it must be what they were supposed to be singing at the time...

I answered my own question tonight, when I found a 1973 photograph of him in the Clare Local Studies Project collection - his name was Stevie McNamara.