Annotation:Steer the Gill
X:2 T:Steer the Gil M:C| L:1/8 R:Reel B:Robert Bremner - Collection of Scots Reels, Country Dances (1757, p. 13) Z:AK/Fiddler's Companion K:D d2 de (d/c/B/A/) (G/F/E/D/)|d2 df e(gTfe)|d2 de (d/c /B/A/) (G/F/E/D/)|E=C-CE =c2 ce:| |:dD-DB A(FTED)|dD_Df egfa|dD-DB A(FTED)|E=C-CE =c2 ce:|]
STEER THE GILL. AKA and see "Lassintullich." Scottish (originally), Canadian; Reel. Canada, Cape Breton. D Mixolydian. Standard tuning (fiddle). AABB. John Glen (1891) finds the earliest printing of the tune in Robert Bremner's 1757 collection. Steer is Scots for ‘stir,’ while a gill is a unit of liquid measure, "one fourth of a mutchkin, about three quarters of the imperial gill.” Until fairly recently the gill was in use as a unit solely for measuring whiskey, although it has now been supplanted by metric measurements.