Irish Traditional Music Tune Index
Tune ID# 2670 (Farewell to Old Decency)

RhythmBars8-bar phrase structureMode
Reel16ABG Major
Transcription of first 2 bars of Farewell to Old Decency
 about these two bars

These two bars are the start of my transcription of how this tune was played – the first time through – on the recording KOS (details in the Discography below).

Where do you get the tune titles?
Titles given to this tune in the sources listed below (plus notes of mine about this tune):
Farewell to Old Decency / [misspelled as:] Farewell to Old Decancy / For Sake of Old Dacency / For the Sake of Old Decency / Farewell to Decency (misattributed to Paddy O'Brien the younger in book JKg 3)
What do the "track#tune" codes mean?

cd Discography

Here are all recordings of this tune considering only the indexed recordings. I have discovered by careful listening that these sources are in fact musically the same tune, regardless of the tune titles they use, key changes, retuning, etc. They are listed in order of when they were recorded.

Year
Recorded
Track
#Tune
[Album code] Artist. Title. Primary musicians (instruments). Album details
and contents
~19817#2[KOS] James Kelly, Paddy O'Brien, Daithi Sproule. Traditional Music of Ireland. James Kelly (fiddle), Paddy O'Brien (accordion), Daithi Sproule (vocals, guitar).View album details
~20026#2[Fns] Feenish. Rabharta. P.J. Hernon (accordion), Marcus Hernon (flute, whistle), Don Stiffe (vocals, guitar, whistle).View album details

Bibliography

Here are all transcriptions of this tune under any title whatsoever – considering only the indexed books – listed in chronological order. I have discovered by careful comparison that these are very similar to this tune as played on the recordings listed above.

As reel #106 in [Cobb] Dan Cobb. Cobb's Music of Ireland. [available]
As reel #224 in [JKg 3] Josephine Keegan. A Drop in the Ocean. Traditional Irish Tunes Collected by Josephine Keegan. [available]
As tune #115 in [Raff] Lesl Harker. 300 Tunes from Mike Rafferty. [available]

If you are considering using the above transcriptions to help you learn this tune, I invite you to check these practical Tips for Learning Irish Traditional Music. See also: So why do you bother indexing books and abc?

Year of the oldest source for this tune, considering the recordings and transcriptions listed above (note that I concentrate on sources after 1900): 1981