Jon, my contractor, is also a member of Bufflehead Northwest Morris, and I got to serenade him with a parody of “Oh Danny Boy” (aka “Londonderry Air”) this weekend.

It all started at the Robert Mondavi winery, in the bathroom. Somehow that tune had found its way into my head and had become a bit of an earworm (that’s what you call those tunes that get in your head and refuse to leave). Like most instrumentalists, I’m hopeless with words and not a lot better at remembering melodies, but I did vaguely recall that the song begins, “Oh Danny Boy, the pipes, the pipes are calling…” Before you know it, I was singing to myself, “Oh Jonny Boy, the pipes, the pipes are calling…” and a parody idea was born. Unfortunately those and a few other fragments were about all I could remember.

Not to worry, though–if there’s one thing a busful of morris dancers is good for, it’s singing British folk music, so it didn’t take long to find a few dancers (Laura and Genevieve from Sheperdstown Northwest Morris of West Virginia) who could help me with the rest of the words and set me straight on the rest of the tune. Best they could recall, and best I can now make out my bus-bumped handwriting, the words are:

It does seem as though there must be some errors in there–springtime white with snow?–but let’s not be tedious and hunt down the correct words. Anyone can Google, but it takes talent to dredge words out of memory on a bus. Let’s hear it for Laura and Genevieve and leave it at that.

Later that night, I got my chance to sing my version of it for Jon, complete with a backup humming chorus. Thanks to Laura, Genevieve, Kyla, Victoria, and Wendy for being my Pips, providing moral support, and most importantly, keeping me clear on the tune all the way through. (We hornists tend to take left turns into harmonic variations and segues so on learned from too many orchestrated medleys.) Since I’m still battling off the bronchitis, it was a good octave lower than you might normally expect.