Folklore: Dingle Regatta: Why 'Hey ho' etc?

Subject: Folklore: Dingle Regatta: Why 'Hey ho' etc?
From: Mr Happy
Date: 09 Jan 08 - 04:20 AM

The lively slide tune 'Dingle Regatta' is frequently played in sessions.

As demonstrated here: http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=KqlMP5yXjQo, the performers jump up & sing 'Hey ho diddley dee'

Has there been a famous recording/performance way back in the mists of time where this practice originated?

Anyone know?

Subject: RE: Folklore: Dingle Regatta: Why 'Hey ho' etc?
From: greg stephens
Date: 09 Jan 08 - 04:52 AM

There is a similar bit in the Kilfenora Jig where players used to stand up and sit down to emphasis some notes in the tune. Good question, where did these things start?

Subject: RE: Folklore: Dingle Regatta: Why 'Hey ho' etc?
From: the button
Date: 09 Jan 08 - 05:36 AM

When I was in a ceilidh band, we'd stand up & sit down during Dingle Regatta, but that "Hey ho..." thing is a new one on me. This may help date the practice, since I was playing in a ceilidh band in the early/mid-1980s.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Dingle Regatta: Why 'Hey ho' etc?
From: Mr Happy
Date: 09 Jan 08 - 05:44 AM

Also, where did the stand/sit bit originate?

Subject: RE: Folklore: Dingle Regatta: Why 'Hey ho' etc?
From: Mr Happy
Date: 09 Jan 08 - 05:56 AM

Found this among comments at 'The Session', that this short verse in sometimes sung during the stand/sit bit

"Heigh, ho! the Dairy-O!
It's four o'clock in the morning!
Heigh, ho! the Dairy-O!
It's four o'clock in the morning

May the tune be a song as well?

Subject: RE: Folklore: Dingle Regatta: Why 'Hey ho' etc?
From: Les in Chorlton
Date: 09 Jan 08 - 06:22 AM

Quite a few tunes have a verse at the start but the tune still stands on it's own rather than also being a song.

A tune, which I have forgotten, but played by, amongst others, the Chieftains:
"If I had a wife the plague of me life
I'll tell you what I would do
I'd buy her a boat and shove her afloat
and paddle me own canoe"

Lots of Morris tunes start with a verse in a similar way:

"Oh dear Mother what a fool I've been
Two young fllows came a courting me
One was blind and the other couldn't see
Oh dear Mother what a fool I've been"

From Lads a buncham I think

The idea came to me one day that it might be that some musicians, who might play in a range of contexts, social dance, church or whatever, would be called on to play for Morris at irregular intervals and could not immediately recall the tunes. The dances might then sing out a verse so that the musicians could recall the tune in question.

I have no evidence for this and although it sounds plausible that does not count as evidence.

Any views?

Subject: RE: Folklore: Dingle Regatta: Why 'Hey ho' etc?
From: Dave Sutherland
Date: 09 Jan 08 - 06:38 AM

It became popular for musicians in the North East of England to do that bit in Dingle Regatta around 1972. I don't know why though.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Dingle Regatta: Why 'Hey ho' etc?
From: GUEST,PMB
Date: 09 Jan 08 - 06:44 AM

It started at a performance to the Royal Court when King George II stood up while it was being played... oh, sorry, that was the other tune.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Dingle Regatta: Why 'Hey ho' etc?
From: Jack Campin
Date: 09 Jan 08 - 06:46 AM

I've never heard more than a simple "Hi ho", with the standing up. I learned to do it that way from Iain Grant and Jimmy Greenan at Sandy Bell's around 1990. Iain mentioned a specific performer who started it, not all that long before, but I forget who it was.


The Google ad I'm getting along with this message says

   Why is the rapture a lie?
   Jesus Christ will return to rule earth with the resurrected saints.

Maybe they know something about the significance of the standing up that we don't.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Dingle Regatta: Why 'Hey ho' etc?
From: pavane
Date: 09 Jan 08 - 10:03 AM

Les
There is a theory that Morris sides occasionally found themselves without a musician, and had to dance to songs.

But many Morris dance tunes are 18th or 19th pop songs anyway, and there are words to most of the Adderbury dances.

I unearthed one of them myself. Beaux of London City comes from a song with the unlikely name of The Knowing Maccaroni Outwitted, c1800
which starts, if I remember right:

You beaux of London City, likewise St James's Park
Give ear unto my ditty, tis of a frolicsome lark

On the original topic, I too remember playing Dingle Regatta in the 70's and 80's, and we never did any Hey Ho's. But as we usually played standing up, we didn't often do the sitting and standing bit either.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Dingle Regatta: Why 'Hey ho' etc?
From: Dame Pattie Smith EPNS
Date: 09 Jan 08 - 10:07 AM

I remember Flowers and Frolics used to do it back in the 70's

Subject: RE: Folklore: Dingle Regatta: Why 'Hey ho' etc?
From: Barry Finn
Date: 09 Jan 08 - 11:31 AM

In Boston during the late 70's early 80's at the Old Village Coach House sessions I remember this happening. An accordian player Joe Joyce used to do this with the Hey-Ho's & all, that wasn't his only stick either. He was quite a comic & did alot of the MCing at many local Irish music events, he was a very well liked & loved area musician. Joe comes from the old Dudley St (Roxbury area of Boston) dance hall erea of the 40' & 50's. I stopped going to sessions for almost 15 yrs while raisning a family & in the past yr started attending them again (singing sessions I tried with more sucess to make) after running into Joe & his daughter at a party local to me. Joe died recently, I was at a session not long after he died & his 16 yr old daughter, an All-Ireland champion fiddler, & a great whistle player & a great singer was playing there. When the Dingle Regatta was played in her father's honor the rather unusually large seesion of maybe 25-30 musicians all did this standing up & sitting down routine with all the Hey-Ho's, I forgot about this until that night. It was pretty moving knowing that everyone there knew it as Joe's routine, his daughter' eyes were dripping wet but she had the warmest smile on her face like someone had lifted her out of a hell.
I don't know if this originated with Joe, I've never seen anyone one else do this that wasn't encouraged by Joe. Joe stopped playing as a pro & leader of his own band back before I 1st knew him in the late 70's but he was loved, respected & known by many of the great musicians who'd spent anytime in Boston. Joe Joyce the People's Choice was how many in jest loving introduced him, on & off stage.
There was a recent thread here about Joe's passing.

Barry

Subject: RE: Folklore: Dingle Regatta: Why 'Hey ho' etc?
From: GUEST,Kiss me slow, slap me quick
Date: 09 Jan 08 - 11:57 AM

In the middle 1970,s an accordion player, who will well known to you all, DAVE BULLMER allways played this tune with the stand up High, Ho, Diddly Doh, chourus. But I am sure there was a record release of this in the 1950,s.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Dingle Regatta: Why 'Hey ho' etc?
From: Les in Chorlton
Date: 09 Jan 08 - 12:05 PM

I understand that DB has the copyright on standing up in the Dingle Regatta and that law suites may prevent others fro doing so.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Dingle Regatta: Why 'Hey ho' etc?
From: GUEST,Kiss me slow. slap me quick.
Date: 09 Jan 08 - 12:47 PM

Yea, but it is only a computer coppy so keep on dancing.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Dingle Regatta: Why 'Hey ho' etc?
From: Fred McCormick
Date: 09 Jan 08 - 01:45 PM

According to Sean MacNamara, fiddle player with the LCB, it was they who first introduced the hey ho into the Dingle Regatta and the Kilfenora. I don't have either of their records, Off to Dublin and Champions Twice (made mid-late 1960s), but I am fairly certain the tunes are on there, hey ho and all.

In any event, back in the band's heyday, late fifties to perhaps mid 1980s, it was regarded very much as a trademark of theirs.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Dingle Regatta: Why 'Hey ho' etc?
From: JennieG
Date: 09 Jan 08 - 05:47 PM

The "diddly-i" bit is also done in Oz, but I haven't seen anyone doing the standing/sitting thing.

Cheers
JennieG

Subject: RE: Folklore: Dingle Regatta: Why 'Hey ho' etc?
From: Joybell
Date: 09 Jan 08 - 05:59 PM

I studied "Billy Barlow" for years. There are hundreds of him -- but that's another story. His tag line on his songs - from the early part of the 19th century was "Hey Ho Raggety-o". I spent a great deal of time looking at these lines. (Among many hundreds of other deatails about Billy). I found "Hey Ho" at least as far back as Elizabethan times. I wearied of the idea and I can't remember where I've filed the research off-hand. Just by the way "Hey Ho" is still used as a rally cry as in -- "Hey ho we won't go" or similar.
Cheers, Joy

Subject: RE: Folklore: Dingle Regatta: Why 'Hey ho' etc?
From: Rowan
Date: 09 Jan 08 - 08:51 PM

"High, Ho, Diddly Doh" is new to me but, playing the tune in Oz in the early 70s, musos would all sing
Diddly ah, di diddly ah, di ah diddly ah di da twice through for the A part, often without also playing the tune at the same time; only instruments would be used for the B part. This would be repeated whenever the tune was played.

Other examples of mouth music I observed in tunes in Oz were to the Rakes of Mallow and to the Battering Ram.

Rakes was usually known as "Balls up" because of the opening notes of the A part (and I gather this is widely known and not limited to Oz) but, due to events preceding the 1975 National in Sydney, other amendments were accrued. At the end of the descending notes in the phrases of the B part there are three rising notes; in Canberra and Sydney these were routinely replaced by the words "Warren Fahey!" and the tune became widely known (in Oz) as "Planxty Fahey". Warren is one of Oz's great collectors and disseminators of traditional and folk music in Oz as well as a longtime performer and this was a bit of 'piss-taking'.

In the early 70s a house in McIlwraith St, North Carlton (Melbourne) was where a lot of folkies lived and the sessions were legendary and crowded. The opening bars of the A part of the Battering Ram became replaced (in Melbourne) by

Don't piss in the garden in McIlwraith St,
don't piss in the garden in McIlwraith St.
You can piss in the kitchen and piss in the hall
but don't piss in the garden in McIlwraith St.

We're all much older now.

Cheers, Rowan

Subject: RE: Folklore: Dingle Regatta: Why 'Hey ho' etc?
From: manitas_at_work
Date: 10 Jan 08 - 05:59 AM

Does anyone slap the table in The Battering Ram? I've seen this done as well.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Dingle Regatta: Why 'Hey ho' etc?
From: alison
Date: 10 Jan 08 - 11:20 PM

the standing up thing is indeed done in sydney - it is to represent the boats bobbing up and down on the regatta - but for some reason you only "do it" during the 3rd section of the tune..... maybe the sea is calmer in the other sections.

and we "diddily di" the 1st section instead of playing the tune after a couple of times through........

slainte

alison

Subject: RE: Folklore: Dingle Regatta: Why 'Hey ho' etc?
From: GUEST,PMB
Date: 11 Jan 08 - 03:25 AM

it is to represent the boats bobbing up and down on the regatta- Don't forget the Irish are mostly Catholic, and bobbing up and down for no apparent reason is just ordinary. We (me and my sibs) got caught out at my mother's funeral. She being a Catholic, we'd given her a Requiem Mass. It was years since I'd been (and only once- another funeral- since), so I thought I'd just do what everyone else did. But family go in the front row... eventually the priest took pity on us and started saying things like "We kneel for the next prayer".

Subject: RE: Folklore: Dingle Regatta: Why 'Hey ho' etc?
From: Brendy
Date: 11 Jan 08 - 03:35 AM

We were doing to Dingle Regatta in in Portadown Comhaltas, around 1972

I always presumed Eamonn Jordan; author of the 'Whistle & Sing' Tin Whistle Tutor, and chief overseer of said Comhaltas, invented it...

... Oh the shattered illusions of Childhood...

B.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Dingle Regatta: Why 'Hey ho' etc?
From: The Sandman
Date: 11 Jan 08 - 10:33 AM

I suggest people play the other version,the one that Seamus Creagh plays[a two part version] wihout any hey hos,diddley dos.allthat jumping up and down is very bad for geriatrics[most people on mudcat seem to be long in the tooth],unless you can wave your zimmer frame up above your head.Dick Miles

Subject: RE: Folklore: Dingle Regatta: Why 'Hey ho' etc?
From: GUEST,Jim I
Date: 11 Jan 08 - 11:26 AM

Jack Campin above mentioned Jimmy Greenan and Ian Grant in the 1990's I certainly remembering playing with Jimmy in the late 1960's and the High Ho/Standing up was going on then.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Dingle Regatta: Why 'Hey ho' etc?
From: Mr Happy
Date: 11 Jan 08 - 11:32 AM

....as in 'Bobbing Up and Down Like This' ?



http://dragon.sleepdeprived.ca/songbook/songs3/S3_83.htm

Subject: RE: Folklore: Dingle Regatta: Why 'Hey ho' etc?
From: Brendy
Date: 11 Jan 08 - 08:32 PM

I never liked the idea...., but then I wasn't too fussed about Comhaltas at that time, anyway.

B.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Dingle Regatta: Why 'Hey ho' etc?
From: GUEST,Seán Báite away from his watery grave
Date: 12 Jan 08 - 07:00 AM

Obviously an old Gaelic tradition for testing the shock absorbers... :-> Those young fellas in the first clip don't seem to have enough mileage on them to need to, but how and ever...
Regarding the mouth music, or lilting part of it - brings back to me a cassette I have somewhere of Joe Heaney (Seosaimh O hEanaí) where he tells an explanatory anecdote that leads into a lilted version of it. His rendition of the tune is 'Did-de-rum-do-di' rather than 'Hey ho, Diddly Do'.
His anecdote has a couple of tots of rum in it, needless to say.
It seems to be a tune that leads to levity on all fronts..

Subject: RE: Folklore: Dingle Regatta: Why 'Hey ho' etc?
From: GUEST,Captain Pugwash
Date: 13 Jan 08 - 01:23 PM

Yes, it was the Liverpool Ceili Band who started the jumping up and down bit, and I wouldn't be at all surprised if it was a bit of Eamon Coyne's devilment in the first place - must ask Sean Mac or Mick Coyne next time I see them. You can hear the LCB singing along to the Kilfenora jig if you click on the link (above).

But I think the "Diddly ah, di diddly ah, di ah diddly ah di da twice through for the A part" bit probably goes back to Sean O'Riada's score for the soundtrack of the film version of The Playboy of the Western World, performed by Ceoltóiri Chualann - I've still got the LP somewhere...

Subject: RE: Folklore: Dingle Regatta: Why 'Hey ho' etc?
From: Mr Happy
Date: 14 Jan 08 - 11:33 AM

Captain Pugwash,

Nice link - enjoyed the music - Thanks!

Subject: RE: Folklore: Dingle Regatta: Why 'Hey ho' etc?
From: Ernest
Date: 15 Jan 08 - 02:22 AM

Maybe that peace of lilting originated to help people learn the tune and was just integrated in the performance for fun?

I sometimes hear "Ding-Dong Ding-Dong" added to "Haste to the wedding" - is this done elsewhere too?

Best
Ernest

Subject: RE: Folklore: Dingle Regatta: Why 'Hey ho' etc?
From: r.padgett
Date: 15 Jan 08 - 12:30 PM

Certainly I first saw this with Hedgehog Pie when they were a 7 piece outfit including Iain Fairburn and Mick Doonan and probably Bob Fox etc

Ray

Subject: RE: Folklore: Dingle Regatta: Why 'Hey ho' etc?
From: Fred McCormick
Date: 15 Jan 08 - 01:18 PM

Captain Pugwash. "Yes, it was the Liverpool Ceili Band who started the jumping up and down bit, and I wouldn't be at all surprised if it was a bit of Eamon Coyne's devilment in the first place - must ask Sean Mac or Mick Coyne next time I see them. You can hear the LCB singing along to the Kilfenora jig if you click on the link (above).

Eamon Coyne ? Devilment ? Steady on. You'll be accusing the pope of being a Catholic next.

But I think the "Diddly ah, di diddly ah, di ah diddly ah di da twice through for the A part" bit probably goes back to Sean O'Riada's score for the soundtrack of the film version of The Playboy of the Western World, performed by Ceoltóiri Chualann - I've still got the LP somewhere..."

I doubt it. The film version of Playboy was produced in the mid 1960s. 1965 I think. The LCB were diddly idling the Dingle Regatta long before then.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Dingle Regatta: Why 'Hey ho' etc?
From: GUEST,Jon
Date: 15 Jan 08 - 01:36 PM

Yep, Manitas, I've seen/done it.

de de de de de de thump thump.

De's are silent but "thump thump" is "played" on the table, knocked on side of guitar, etc.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Dingle Regatta: Why 'Hey ho' etc?
From: GUEST
Date: 15 Jan 08 - 01:38 PM

(silent - I mean not thumped on "percussion" - the instruments play the notes)

Subject: RE: Folklore: Dingle Regatta: Why 'Hey ho' etc?
From: GUEST,JJ's wife
Date: 17 Jan 08 - 05:19 PM

Yes, Joe Joyce, the People's Choice got it from the Liverpool Ceili Band and it was Eamon Coyne who started it. Joe introduced it to Boston and it became his theme tune and the Dingle Regattae was not the same when played without Joe in the room. Everyone would look around and wait for the Heigh Ho, it's off to Co. Kerry we go. Now when it is played, you can only think of Joe and smile. Played at the end of his funeral mass with the whole church clapping as they processed out. Way to go Joe. We miss ya.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Dingle Regatta: Why 'Hey ho' etc?
From: GUEST,Acorn4
Date: 18 Jan 08 - 03:01 AM

I saw this done at a Folk Festival this year - the problem with the standing up in Dingle Regatta is that some of the performers are now getting a bit long in the tooth and it can end up looking a bit like they are squatting on a French toilet!