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MIKE MACDOUGALL'S. Canadian, Jig. Canada, Cape Breton. G Major. Standard tuning (fiddle). AABB. The late Cape Breton fiddler and composer Jerry Holland (1995-2009) gave the tune the title, having heard it from northside fiddler and fisherman Mike MacDougall. However, the tune is traditional and widely known among Cape Breton musicians. Dave MacIssac remembered part of a ditty sung to the tune by his mother, who had learned it as a youngster in West Lake Ainslie:

I asked my mother for fifty cents
To see the elephant jump the fence

The ditty is a well-known jump-rope chant, whose next two lines are (in America):

He jumped so high he touched the sky,
And never came back till the fourth of July.

Source for notated version:

Printed sources: Cranford (Jerry Holland: The Second Collection), 2000; No. 295, p. 105.

Recorded sources: Jerry Holland - "Master Cape Breton Fiddler" (1982).




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