Annotation:Bonaparte Crossing the Alps
X:1 T:Bony Part Crossing the Alps M:C L:1/8 R:Hornpipe S:Leonard-Kernan MS (1844-c.1850, County Longford) K:Amin AB|c2 Bc AcBA|GEDE GABd| egfa gedB|BAGE G2 AG| EAAG AcBA|GEDE GABd|egfa gedB|A2 AB A2|| a2ab agef|gedB A2f2|gfgf gedB|gedB G2 AB| c2 Bc AcBA| GEDE GABd|egfa gedB|A2 AB A2!D.C.!||
BONAPARTE CROSSING THE ALPS. AKA - "Bony over the Alps." AKA and see "Battle of Waterloo (The)," "Bonaparte Crossing the Rhine (2)" (Irish), "Bonaparte Crossing the Rockies," "Bonaparte's March (3)," "Bonaparte's Retreat (5)" (Pa.), "Bonaparte's Welcome," "Bush Hornpipe (The)," "Diamond (2)," "Napoleon Crossing the Alps (1)," "Óró Welcome Home," "Peter Gray (2)" (Pa.), "Jerry Daly's Hornpipe (1)", "Poor Old Woman (1)," "TSeanbhean Bhocht (1) (An)," "Shan Van Vocht (1) (The)". Irish (originally), Canadian, American; March and Hornpipe. Canada, Prince Edward Island. A Dorian. Standard tuning (fiddle). AABB. "Bonaparte Crossing the Alps" is a particularly widespread hornpipe and song air throughout Britain, Ireland and North America. It appears in a number of musicians' manuscript collections from the mid-19th century on. Napoleon Bonaparte did cross the Alps with his army through the Great St. Bernard Pass in May, 1800, the year after he had seized power in France. He hoped to surprise his enemy, the Austrians, who had recaptured territory around Genoa.
The event was commemorated not only by this hornpipe, but by five versions of an oil portrait of Napoleon by the French artist Jacques-Louis David between 1801 and 1805. The paintings are known variously by the titles Napoleon Crossing the Alps, Napoleon at the Saint-Bernard Pass or Bonaparte Crossing the Alps, and depict an idealized view of the leader.
The wide diffusion, extensive ramification and probable great age of this Irish air have been discussed already in the notes to other versions in this collection (see notes for 'Bonaparte's Retreat'). The present version must also represent a fairly antique development of the tune; it has a strongly impressed character of its own, and may readily be traced in Irish tradition. Though some of its variants serve for songs or dances, most of them have the same strong, martial swing as the one given here. Petrie unhesitatingly calls it 'an ancient clan march' (see Petrie, pp. 251, 356), although he does not assign it to any particular Irish sept. Joyce, on the other hand, declares it to be a wedding march, or 'hauling-home' song-tune, since it was used in his boyhood in County Limerick to accompany the progress of a newly-married couple home from church (see Joyce 1909, pp. 130, 131). Its frequently occurring Irish name, "Oro, 'Sé do bheatha a'bhaile!" (Oro, Welcome Home), and two or three lines of verse quoted by Joyce, would be convincing were we not aware by this time of its protean variety of form and multiplicity of functions in the tradition. As a matter of fact, this version, like the ones already cited, goes under other names in Ireland beside 'Welcome Home'; while these words also begin the refrain to a Gaelic Jacobite song sometimes sung to it. We can only conclude that the statements of Petrie and Joyce were both partially correct: the tune, like other old and well known ones in our tradition, has been used for a number of purposes. In south western Pennsylvania this version is definitely a marching tune. Another local set is Bayard Coll. No. 352, from Greene County. When the volunteers from the communities of Pine Bank and Jollytown, in that county, went to camp at the time of the Civil War, they marched to the stately music of this tune as played by a 'martial band' (drums and fifes) made up of local folk musicians. Although this 'Welcome Home' form of the air is strongly individualized, it cannot be separated from the other sets, discussed under our Nos. 44–48, to which its variants continually show resemblance and relation. Intermediate or transitional forms have been recorded, some of which were listed under Nos. 44–48; others are referred below. ... A still more specialized march form of the 'Welcome Home' version goes in Irish tradition by the name of '(Fare Thee Well) Sweet Killaloe'. Variants are found in Joyce 1909, No. 824 and O'Neill's Irish Music, No. 100. A greatly simplified dance-tune form of this 'Killaloe' version is also current in western Pennsylvania under ('floating') titles of 'Jennie Put the Kettle On' and 'Nigger in the Woodpile'. Sets are in Bayard Coll., Nos. 21, 64. The American Veteran Fifer also has a variant, No. 122." [Bayard, Hill Country Tunes, 1944]
Bayard (1981) cites it as a member of the "Lazarus" tune family (identified in part by a subtonic cadence in the 1st and 3rd tune lines, with a tonic cadence in the 2nd and 4th tune lines; which is a feature of medieval music, he says). See also the similarly-structured (and covering some of the same melodic material) "Jerry Daly's Hornpipe (2)," "Loch Leven Castle," and "Tomgraney Castle."
A set (as "Bony over the Alps" appears twice (Books 1 and 4) in the mid-19th century music manuscript collection of County Cork uilleann piper and Church of Ireland cleric biography:James Goodman [1] (p. 68). It was entered into the c. 1850 music manuscript copybook of Lake District musician William Irwin. Perlman (1996) remarks that the tune was played by the regionally famous PEI fiddler Lem Jay on New Years' Eve over Charlottetown (PEI) radio during the 1930's.
