Tune Search
Sign in or join  to see your:     Home   Playlists   Practice Machine   Stats   Friends   Albums   Preferences   Sign out
The Irish Traditional Music Tune Index

Tune ID#2162 (Ben Hill Reel)

Transcription of first 2 bars of Ben Hill Reel about these two bars
These two bars were transcribed by me from how this tune was played – the first time through – on the recording McGrCool (details in the Discography below).
Basic musical information on this tune.
Rhythm ?Bars8-bar phrase structureMode ?
Reel32AABBG Major
Titles ? given to this tune in the sources listed below (plus notes of mine about this tune):
Ben Hill Reel / Ben Hill / Fr. Kelly's Ben Hill / Father Kelly's #2 / Father Kelly's No. 2 / Father Kelly's / Paddy O'Brien's Favourite (composed by PJ Kelly aka P.J. Kelly aka Father Kelly)
To get to your personal tune notes, Log in or Create an account
Note shared with my friends:

Note to myself only:
14 members play this tune.
0 of them are your friends.

Suggest this Tune

To:
Comment to friend:
map of tune distribution
Where members are who play this tune.

Discography cd

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.

Click play below to hear the first 12 seconds.
Year
Recorded		 Track
#Tune?		 [Album code] Artist. Title (Link to Album Info page). Performers (instruments).
~1974B.4#2
[McGrCool] McGreevy and Cooley. McGreevy and Cooley. John McGreevy (fiddle), Seamus Cooley (flute). For this tune: Johnny (fiddle).
~19792.1#1
[AWhyte] Aggie Whyte. Aggie Whyte. Aggie Whyte (fiddle).
~20089#1
[HiBs 1] The HiBs. 40 Acre Notch. Jode Dowling (fiddle), Kate Dowling (whistle, flute). For this tune: Jode (fiddle), Kate (flute).

Goes Well with . . .

In the above Discography, this tune is:

Played afterOn Albums
McGreevy's		McGrCool
Played beforeOn Albums
Father Kelly's		AWhyte
Thrush in the Storm		HiBs 1

Bibliography

Here are all transcriptions of this tune considering only the indexed books, listed in chronological order. I have discovered by careful comparison that these are musical matches to this tune as played on the recordings listed above.

Listing of published transcriptions of this tune.
As tune #2 in volume 3 of [B&S] D[avid] Bulmer and N[eil] Sharpley. Music from Ireland. 4 vols.
As reel #93 in [Cobb] Dan Cobb. Cobb's Music of Ireland. [available]
As reel #136 in [JKg 3] Josephine Keegan. A Drop in the Ocean. Traditional Irish Tunes Collected by Josephine Keegan.
As tune #161 in [Raff] Lesl Harker. 300 Tunes from Mike Rafferty. [available]
On page 15 of [FrKlly] The Far East. Fr Kelly's Favourites. A Musical Tribute to Composer Fr PJ Kelly. [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 only the recordings and transcriptions listed above (note that I concentrate on sources after 1900): 1974
Please cite your source when you use information from this document.
© 2000–2025 Alan Ng. Questions? Comments? Please use the easy Feedback Form. Thank you!
Start at