I was at the piano, getting music ready for friends to play in honor of St Patrick's Day, when I came across a tune in O'Neill's Music of Ireland called "The Sheep on the Mountains." It seemed like a good tune for beginners, so I began to put chords on it. Time was running short, and I hoped to quickly note the I,IV and V chords and move on.

Things were going well until I got to the three notes C# - A - F#. "Just use a D chord," I said to myself, but just then, out of the corner of my eye, I saw movement, and then a small, green coat-tail seemed to vanish past the frame of a nearby door. And at that very moment, the realization came to me, as if by magic, that C# - A -- F# constitute an F# minor chord.

So it was good-bye to the I,IV,V shortcut. The F#m sounded just right. But once it was in, the next G note seemed to need an Em, and so on. The next thing I knew, the Universal Graphite I/O device (pencil) was getting a workout as I tried this, tried that. Naturally I had to play rather slowly as I experimented, listened, and noted various accompaniments. And as the moments passed, a pearly mist enveloped the Mountains, and the Sheep became, if not actually magical, witnesses to magic.

If all goes well, a MIDI of the tune and accompaniment will soon appear in this thread. The accompaniment is a little clumsy, because it would take hours to notate all the left-hand fluttering I do, more or less unconsciously. So I decided to put in enough to show what the harmony is and let other people do what they like from then on.

In format, the tune was what we call a French Pick-up song (eh-eh, bebe?) but I changed it by playing the A part one more time to end it. As long as nobody is dancing and expecting a certain order of play, this is perfectly legal.

The accompaniment in the MIDI is too loud, but I don't know how to change it. So listen hard for the melody.

If anybody who doesn't know theory comes on and is actually interested in playing it, I can write out what the chords are. We'll see.