Fiddle Tune Poems

These “fiddle tune poems” are part of my book of poems Quarry Cross. In the book, you will come across them here and there, poems in their own right that work with the rest of the poems in the book. When you see these fiddle tune poems in Quarry Cross, you’ll find that they are accompanied by the music scores of the tunes that inspired them. You’ll also find information about them in the book’s final Notes. But here on the site, you can hear these poems combined with the music.

As a flute and penny whistle player, I’ve played traditional fiddle tunes a lot—so many times, in fact, that my favorite tunes, along with their distinctive titles, began to stay in my head. Sometimes, I’d “hear” the music and the words of the titles like an inner soundtrack while I was writing. I was influenced by each tune’s sound—its rhythms, major or minor key, its melody and phrasing—that creates an underlying mood or background, and also by the images or narratives suggested by the titles.

The “fiddle tune poems” have the same names as the tunes that inspired them. Most of these tunes are traditional. One of them, “Bus Stop Reel,” was composed Anita Anderson and is used here with her kind permission. The settings for all music notation were provided by Susan Songer and (with the exception of “The Rights of Man") are included in The Portland Collection: Contra Dance Music in the Pacific Northwest, rev. ed., © Susan Songer with Clyde Curley. Many thanks to the musicians who gave their time and talent to make these recordings in the sound studio at the University of Alabama School of Music.

The Fiddle Tune Poems are featured on Plume Poetry along with "Music and Poetry: Fiddle Tune Poems and Quarry Cross An Interview with Robin Behn by Chard deNiord."

Read the Interview

Jil Chambliss, flute and singing. Jil is an internationally-known Celtic flute player and singer. Contact Jill

Robin Behn, spoken word, flute and penny whistle. Contact Robin

Dan Vogt, guitar. Dan is a versatile guitarist and owner of the Guitar Gallery. Contact Dan

Roger James, fiddle. Roger is a professional violinist in the Alabama Symphony Orchestra who moonlights as a fiddle player.Contact Roger

David Myers is an audio engineer at the Moody School of Music. He plays trumpet as a freelance musician in the Tuscaloosa/Birmingham area, and is in pursuit of his D.M.A. in Music Performance at the University of Alabama. Contact David

The Star Above the Garter

At an old village hall, sometimes called a grange, “The Star Above the Garter” is being played by the band. The dancers are arranged in long lines, and as the caller calls out the sequence of figures over and over, every couple dances once through the sequence with every other couple as they come down the line. There are actually two tunes here: the second is “County Clare Waltz" by contemporary composer Andrew Levin. County Clare, it happens, is where another of these poems, “The Cliffs of Moher,” is set.