Annotation:Tom Steele (1)
X:1 T:Tom Steele [1] M:C| L:1/8 R:Reel B:O'Neill's Music of Ireland. 1850 Melodies, 1903, p. 239, no. 1271 Z:François-Emmanuel de Wasseige K:D d>D (3DDD F>A (3ABc|dfaf gfec|d>D (3DDD FA{e}dc|BGEF GABc| d>D (3DDD F>A (3ABc|dfaf (3gag bg|afge fdec|BGEF GABc|| d2(fd) adfd|(3ded af gfec|d2(fd) adfd|BGEF GABc| d2(fd) adfd|(3ded af g2(fg)|(3agf (3gfe fdec|BGEF GABc|]
TOM(M) STEELE ("Tomas Stiul" or "Tomas Ua Cruaid"). AKA and see "Cill Beathach," “Drogheda Lasses (1) (The),” “Hand Me Down the Tackle,” "Hielanman's Kneebuckle (The)," "Laurel Groves (The)," “Pure Drop (2) (The),” "Reidy Johnson's (2)." Irish, Reel (cut time). D Major. Standard tuning (fiddle). AB (O'Neill/1850 & 1001): AAB (Miller & Perron/2006): AABB' (Cranford/Holland, Miller & Perron/1977): AA'BB' (O'Neill/Krassen). Tom Steele was the name of a colleague of the Irish patriot Daniel O'Connell. Early versions of the tune can be found in the music manuscript collections of the Gunn Family, County Fermanagh, c. 1865, under the title "Boys of New York (2) (The)," and, as a distanced but cognate reel (in the second strain) in the mid-19th century Leonard-Kernan music manuscript collection from Abbeyshrule, Co. Longford, where the tune was entered with the exact date of "August the 12th, 1845.” The title appears in a list of tunes in his repertoire brought by Philip Goodman, the last professional and traditional piper in Farney, Louth, to the Feis Ceoil in Belfast in 1898 (Breathnach, 1997).
"Tom Steele" was recorded in the 78 RPM era in New York by the Flanagan Brothers in 1928, Hugh Gillespie in 1938, and Michael Coleman in 1921 (albeit under the set title “Reidy Johnson's,” the name of a female Irish-American accordion player). Dublin piper Tommy Reck recorded the melody as a pipe solo in his first commercial release, for the Copley label, paired with “Scholar (The)” and “Salamanca (1).” Pipers tend to call the tune “Hand Me Down the Tackle.”
