Annotation:Kitty Gone a Milking
X:1 T:Kitty is gone a milking M:C L:1/8 R:Reel S:James Goodman (1828─1896) music manuscript collection, S:vol. 3, p. 71. Mid-19th century, County Cork Z:AK/Fiddler’s Companion K:G (d>A)(AG) d2 de|dc (AG) FG A2|d>A (AG) d2 (de)|g>e d>B G2G2:| (d>g)(g>a) (bg)(af)|(dg) g>e d2 cA|dgga (b>g)(a>f)|(g>e)(d>B) G2G2| (dg)(ga) (bg)(af)|dgge d2 cA|(bg)(af) (ge)(fd)|(ge)dB G2G2!D.C.!||
KITTY'S GONE A-MILKING. AKA - "Kitty Goes a-Milking," "Kitty is gone a milking." Irish, Reel (cut or whole time). G Major. Standard tuning (fiddle). AB (O'Malley, Tubridy): AAB (Harker/Rafferty, Stanford/Petrie): AABB (Mulvihill): AABB' (Mitchell). There is a remarkable absence of alternate names for such a popular session tune, a version of which appears a(as "Kitty is gone a milking") in the mid-19th century music manuscript collection of Canon James Goodman (County Cork). The tune was included in a three-tune medley famously recorded on a 78 RPM disk by County Meath fiddler Frank O'Higgins, featured on early Irish radio broadcasts. O’Higgins (1891-1975), a fiddler from Glenamona, Kilskeer, County Meath, in Dublin in 1938. He paired the tune with “Merry Sisters (The)” and "Dogs Among the Bushes (The)", a medley still widely imitated (Donegal fiddler John Doherty, for example, played the same medley). Paddy Ryan, writing in Treoir, records that O’Higgins “was a highly esteemed figure in traditional music circles in and around Dublin. He also taught the fiddler for many years and, among his star pupils was Larry Redican, who was prominent in New York traditional music circles during his lifetime there.”
The second strain of "Kitty's gone a milking" is cognate with the second strain of "Repeal of the Union (1)." See also the related "Monasterevin Fancy (The)." Fr. John Quinn also matches Irish collector George_Petrie's (1790-1866) "Sprightly Kitty" with the "Kitty goes/gone a milking" tune family.
