Oh yeah, then I thought later, wasn't it Sartre who said you could wake up any random day and find a centipede where your tongue should be? Sorta illustrating the agony of existentialism?

Hey GHPeggy - I tried to email you but not sure that it went through. There's a story behind the tune "Squirrel Hunters" that you might find interesting.......

Thanks, Mark. Interesting reading! For a while I worked in regional archives dept of the library and transcribed correspondences between people in the area and this makes sense of some of the letters sent back and forth during the war...lol. I had only fractions of details plus a LOT of opinions to see in those letters.

Well it's also interesting just how much music came about during those Civil War encampments around the country.

I guess I'm kinda glad the tune isn't about hunting squirrels...lol...although I grew up eating squirrel all the time, spitting out buckshot and all...they were my favorite until I was probably about 12 years old. At this point in my life though, we have dozens who hang out here and I feed them and talk to them and take care of them...lol...so...yeah I know they did taste good, but they are now my cherished neighbors and friends...so...well I'm not happy the intention was to shoot people either...lol...but it's a good thing Lincoln did get around to that Emancipation Proclamation...speaking of Lincoln, one of my favorite fiddle tunes is Booth Shot Lincoln...and I know from reading the letters back and forth in the archives dept as I was transcribing them, Lincoln was really a despised figure among a lot of the area...but having a fiddle tune by that name seems really crass to me. I've heard people calling it just plain old Booth, but I'm like, hey why don't we call it just plain ol' Lincoln instead? Anyhow...I'm getting all sappy as I age I guess. And I'm veering off topic...but just sayin'...it's interesting that we do get so creative during times of war and other stressful times. Thanks for the link!

(quote) ............and I'm veering off topic...but just sayin'...it's interesting that we do get so creative during times of war and other stressful times. Thanks for the link!

Chromatic? Maybe I'll have to look up the definition of that word. 

Have you listened to the WV  versions?  Here's Ernie Carpenter's He got it from Dan Friend who was a relative of mine from around Clarksburg.

It's very similar to the way I know it. :  https://www.slippery-hill.com/content/dan-friends-piece

I learned the tune iat jams in WestVa and Western Maryland in the early 90s.     

Going to yer YouTube now.

I'm picturing a ship at sea with yer arrangement Peggy..... some choppy waters...pirates playing a little low key music in a minor key. a bit of rum sloshing in their bellies. I like the creativity this tune allows for.

THat is a very cool tune!
Peggy’s version is the first version I have ever heard, so I don’t have much else to say…
GReat that you are fiddling and making some music again, Peggy!
MEaning of ‘squirrel hunters’ was interesting to read. :-)

Lol...wow...we went from Civil War encampment parties to pirates laying low...lol...that's funny. Yeah...I'd call that a tune with a lot of room for ideas. Well thanks for the Ernie Carpenter recording. As I said before, I never heard the tune that I can recall except when the BGDaddy guy had the John Hartford version and gave a lesson from that on his site, back a few years ago.

Maybe chromatic wasn't the right word...as far as I can remember there's a little walkup in the second phrase of the A part...it strikes my ear with a chromatic twang...lol...maybe the notes aren't exactly...not sure, but somehow it disagrees with my ear. It also disagrees with my bowing. Ernie Carpenter sounded like he used a quick and choppy bowing on that and John Hartford used a lot of long bow...I'd like to find a middle ground that gives it the ol' Hank Williams type rhythm and tempo that I never got past...as I said, I have little opportunity to play at all, but I'm thinking about that one a lot for whatever reason...maybe just the fact that I really like the tune and can't play it in a way that sounds like what I wanna do with it. Maybe I should rename it: Pirates among the Tapers at the ol' Encampment Protecting the Union.

NC, thanks for replies. Yes, it's a neat tune...I guess it kinda yells out "Play that Fiddle" to me when I hear it. Now I've heard of another version....lol...life gets more interesting!

I joined up BGDaddy during my short stint with a little local amateur BG band. Since I hadn't played fiddle very long by that time (or even by this time...lol) and was just pretty much bull-headed self-taught back porch style old timey person, I felt like I should try to learn some useful stuff for the band...I mainly played guitar, but I don't play BG style guitar either, and they were just desperate for a guitarist who could also play the fiddle. So anyway, it was expensive to join up BGDaddy but I did learn quite a bit of useful stuff there. But here's how his lesson for Squirrel Hunters went. To me, the pace is frantic, hectic...it bothers me... like I said before, I'm all in with the Hank Williams pace to hear or play in. Anyway, regardless of specifics, the tune as I heard it there on his site for what I beleive was the first time struck me as something cool to learn. Here's how his lesson went... youtu.be/Peto830CvnM?si=4OydJVpGZ6JbjTL_

A few random thoughts....

I think what you mean by "chromatic" is what I'd call tonally ambiguous. The tune is essentially straight-ahead diatonic (though most players will throw in a passing accidental or two, and/or use a particular microtonal variant for one or more degrees of the scale), but which note is the tonic ("do") is not obvious.

Most notated versions use a key signature of 2 sharps, and since the ending note is A, the rule of thumb says it's A Mixolydian. I chord it with just D, G, and A, and end it on the D. Over all, however, it winds up sounding to me like the tonic is G (making the mode Lydian), and the tune "ends" (without resolving) on the 2nd degree of that scale, against the V chord! The Lydian mode (major scale with the fourth degree sharped) is quite uncommon in Anglo-American music, and when it shows up in an old time session, it's very obviously something a bit out of the ordinary.

Possibly just coincidental, but the key and range of the tune (as usually written) exactly match those of the GHB (great highland bagpipe, not the drug), and I wouldn't be at all surprised to find a traditional Scots pipe tune at the root of its ancestry. The story Mark shared (THANK YOU!), and the areas where the tune was collected, suggest it could well have made the rounds as a military fife tune (some of which certainly were shared with the pipes).

Sam Bayard collected 10 versions of the tune (some with different names, etc.) and published them in his book "Dance to the FIddle and March to the Fife".  He talks about tonal construction and tune "genealogy".

Here also is a copy of discharge that was given to the Squirrel Hunters in an effort to get them to leave the Cincinnati area.

BTW, Sam Bayard was a professor here at Penn State, and we would see him here and there in central PA with a couple of fifes in his pocket.  If he was collecting or wanted to learn a tune, he'd note the tune on his fife until he got it right.

Thanks, Dan!

I get the gist, although on fiddle I never know what notes it is I'm playing...lol...or even on guitar or banjo for that matter, just chord progressions and such...but yeah, the only way I know modes really is to try something on my dulcimer, which I have never done with Squirrels Hunters...I guess it would be a nightmare...lol.

Then there is that sudden shift on the B part which seems kind of jarring in a way, yet also is a very good sound. I used to feel a little too much of a shock in the B part of Forky Deer...but gradually came to like that shift too.

Some quirky and interesting tunes. I don't know if I'll ever feel a sense of comfort with Squirrel Hunters, but it does sorta tug at my heart strings to try once in a while...and see if I can capture what I "think" the music is saying , in my own way...maybe one day...maybe not. Time will tell. I sure appreciate all the thoughts and comments.

Another interesting but not likely useful factoid...... I heard somewhere that the civilians who mustered to defend Cinncinatti were called "Squirrel Hunters" because they didn't have to shoot twice to hit a squirrel.

update....... found it in one of the links in the article above (link goes to the origin of the name, the rest of the article is interesting, too): ohiomemory.ohiohistory.org/arc...%20twice.

Mark - I've looked at this subject for several years, and I don't see any evidence of a connection between this tune, collected in Pennsylvania in 1960 (Mr. Horner was 80 years old at the time) and the event in Ohio 100 years earlier. No fiddle tune is mentioned in the contemporary newspaper accounts, and Samuel Bayard doesn't mention a connection either - instead he says this is a very widely known tune with many names. More about that later, if I have time,
The idea of backcountry men being deadly sharpshooters is not new. Have you heard of the Pennsylvania Bucktail regiment (Kane's Rifles)? They were from your general area, and its a similar idea, except for deerhunters. You might be interested in this 1948 article from Outdoor Life that mentions the value of men with their "Pennsylvania" rifles in the American Revolution, partly because George Washington had seen their accuracy in the French and Indian War: outdoorlife.com/guns/kentucky-rifle/
There are also target shooting clubs in Germany, Switzerland and the Netherlands that have an interesting history going back to the Middle Ages, and have been transplanted to the US in some communities with large German populations (these are also the countries where the early Pennsylvania "long gun" makers apparently came from).
Maybe more later.

Hey Doug - I'd be willing to bet that the tune has been around a lot longer than the name "Squirrel Hunters". Bayard collected versions of the tune by that or other name (some questionable: Pennsylvania Quickstep, Jenny Put The Kettle On, Bell Cow, etc, but "Squirrel" was apparently one of the most prevalent title words) from counties mostly in very southwestern PA, and he attributes the tune to British Isles roots. The provenance of the tune is pretty uncertain and probably unknowable. The provenance of the story of the Squirrel Hunters is fairly well documented.

Without going too deep into the musicological weeds, I'd also be willing to bet that someone (fifer or fiddler) in southwest PA
re-named the tune for the locally-significant, historic event in Civil War Ohio. It makes an interesting story, in any event ! ! And a good tune.

GHPeggy - tnx for starting this thread ! !

P.S. - local fiddler (now deceased) Elmer Shaffer used to have a sales route from Centre County to Pittsburgh / Greene Co., and he would look for fiddles in his travels. I bought about 30 remaining fiddles from his family..... some by small PA makers. I have a box of cassette tapes of Elmer's fiddling that I will turn into MP3s when I find the time.

Oh my gosh...that's an impressive batch of fiddles!

I'm sure the squirrel hunters tales of the times travelled around quite a bit.

Where I grew up most people hunted squirrel and ate them. It was often the first hunting we did as kids... after birds... I think I was 6 or 7.

One time I went out and spied this squirrel...he ran around the other side of the tree so I stood and waited him to com e back around and when he did BANG

Went to go get it, picked it up... and it had turned into a blue jay

Here is Samuel P. Bayards recording of the tune from fifer Hiram Horner... https://youtu.be/qazBicnZZYc

5 out of 7 sources for the tune were fifers or one penny-whistler, all were from the far southwest corner of PA.

H. C. Horner - fife, Westmoreland Co.
C. Ganiear - fife, Greene Co.
T. J. Hoge - fife, Greene Co.
C. Lloyd - fife, Indiana Co.
S. C. Connolly - voice, penny-whistle, Greene Co.
J. White - voice, fiddle, Greene Co.
G. Strosnider - fiddle, Greene Co.

Not uncommon on fiddle in West Virginia (also the Allegheny Mountains of course)

I've listened to all the recordings I could find of the tune from West Virginia fiddlers but can't find recordings from Rob Probst (Pendleton County) or the Hammons (Burl?) Hail (Hell) Agin the Barn Door.

Anyone know where I might find those two? I have heard Probsts fiddling on other tunes, but not this one.

quote:

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Originally posted by ShawnCraver

Not uncommon on fiddle in West Virginia (also the Allegheny Mountains of course)

I've listened to all the recordings I could find of the tune from West Virginia fiddlers but can't find recordings from Rob Probst (Pendleton County) or the Hammons (Burl?) Hail (Hell) Agin the Barn Door.

Anyone know where I might find those two? I have heard Probsts fiddling on other tunes, but not this one.

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Melvin Wine called it "Rainy Day"
https://www.slippery-hill.com/content/rainy-day

yep. heard that one.

Still looking for recordings from Rob Probst (Pendleton County) of it or the Hammons (Burl?) Hail (Hell) Agin the Barn Door.