Annotation:Paddy's Resource (1)
X:1 T:Paddie’s Resource [1] M:6/8 L:1/8 R:Jig B:McGlashan – Collection of Scots Measures (c. 1780) Z:AK/Fiddler’s Companion K:A B | ABA ECE | ABA f2e | fed cBA | BFF F2B | ABA ECE | ABA f2e | efg aed | cAA A2 :| |: A | Eac cAE | EGB BGE | Eac cBA | cdc B2A | Ace agf | edc B2A | cAF EFA | cAA A2 :|]
PADDY'S RESOURCE [1] (Tionsgnad Paidin). AKA and see “Belle of the Kitchen (1),” "Ill Omens," "Kitty of Coleraine (2)," “New York Jig (3) (The),” "Road to Skye (The)," “Rover (2) (The).” Irish, English; March (6/8 time) or Jig. E Flat Major (Winstock): F Major (Aird): D Major (Aird): C Major (Forde): G Major (O'Neill, Sumner): A Major (McGlashan). Standard tuning (fiddle). AB (Forde, Winstock): AABB (Aird, McGlashan, O'Neill, Sumner). Winstock (1970) says it was written by band sergeant James O'Connor (Galway, Ireland) as a march for his British army regiment, the 77th, in the Crimean War (1855), at the suggestion, it is said, of his commanding officer. Perhaps it was that O’Connor adapted it, for the tune (as “Paddie’s Resource”) appeared some seventy years earlier in a collection of Scots Measures by Alexander 'King' McGlashan, James Aird’s Selection of Scotch, English, Irish and Foreign Airs, vol. 2 (1785), and Niel Stewart's A Select Collection of Scots English Irish and Foreign Airs Jiggs & Marches (Edinburgh, 1788). See also the closely related “Rover (2) (The)” and “Road to Skye (The).”
The tune appears in a few musicians' manuscript copybooks of the 18th and 19th centuries: H.S.J. Jackson (Wyresdale, Lancashire, 1823), Thomas Sands (Lincolnshire, 1810), Daniel Henry Huntington (Onondaga, N.Y., 1817, as "Paddy's Recourse"), and Thomas Molyneaux (Shelburne, Nova Scotia, 1788). Frank Kidson finds the title twisted into "Paddy's racehorse" in one old publication.