Rakes of Mallow Lesson

Irish by identity, complicated by travel

Rakes of Mallow is an anonymous traditional air, song, and dance tune strongly associated with Mallow in County Cork. The title already appears in John Walsh’s London-published Caledonian Country Dances in 1733; in the 1740s Burk Thumoth included the air among Irish material.

That evidence supports an old Irish identity, but not a simple birth certificate. Related forms travelled as Rakes of London, Rigs o’ Marlow, reels, polkas, marches, quicksteps, and country dances. Early London printing and international variants make a single place of melodic origin impossible to prove.

Traditional music often works this way: a place-specific song can become the best-known home of a melody whose earlier route crossed several regions. We should neither remove Mallow from the story nor pretend the tune never travelled.

Mallow’s spa gave the rakes a stage

Mallow grew famous as a spa resort during the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Its warm spring attracted visitors, and the town was promoted as an “Irish Bath.” The later Spa House, built over the spring in 1828, contained baths, a pump room, reading room, and space for medical consultation.

In that fashionable social world, a rake was a stylish but dissolute young man. Surviving song verses mock the Mallow set for drinking, dancing, spending money, causing disorder, avoiding sober responsibility, and eventually discovering that respectable marriage is not effortless salvation.

The lyric is therefore satire, not neutral tourism. It exaggerates young bloods who spend quickly and think slowly. A popular claim assigns the portrait to the nearby Creagh family, but the consulted archival sources did not establish that identification. The safest subject is the proverbial pleasure-seeking men of Mallow.

One melody, many jobs and languages

The tune has served as song air, polka, reel, military quickstep, march, country dance, and a relative of the Morris tune Rigs o’ Marlow. Different communities straighten or dot the rhythm and expand or shorten the strains.

Its journey went much farther than the British Isles. The Sanskrit nottusvara Vande Minakshi, associated with South Indian composer Muthuswami Dikshitar, uses the Western melody linked to Rakes of Mallow. The sacred text praises the goddess Minakshi, replacing tavern satire with devotion while preserving a recognisable imported air.

In 1947 Leroy Anderson arranged the tune for his Eire Suite, commissioned by Boston’s Eire Society and premiered by Arthur Fiedler with the Boston Pops. Anderson’s movement accelerates and grows noisier to portray the text’s carousing rakes. The expanded six-movement work became Irish Suite.

Whisflo’s compact twelve-bar form

Whisflo now writes the complete tune in C major, 2/4, at 116 BPM. It spans B4–C6, uses all seven natural pitch classes, and contains 75 attacks across sixteen notated bars. Every pitch is natural on a C chromatic harmonica, so the slide stays released throughout.

Bars 1–4 alternate C–E and B–D shapes before landing on G5. Bars 5–8 restate the opening, then compress into eight running eighth notes and settle E–C–C. The four-bar upper answer leaps to C6, descends B–A–G–F, pauses on G, and reuses the earlier eight-note run and cadence.

The old lesson called the material G major. The repository score contains no F-sharp and repeatedly resolves to C; C major is the accurate local key. The twelve-bar form is also a particular teaching cut, not the only traditional structure.

Build the runs without losing the joke

Begin at 70 BPM. Loop C–E–C–E and B–D–B–D as light quarters. Each is a two-note frame; keep the embouchure stable and move only as far as needed. Then practise bar 2’s F–E–D–C eighth-note descent after two quarters.

Bar 7 is the technical centre: F–E–D–C–B–C–D–F, eight even eighths. Speak “one-and-two-and-three-and-four-and,” then play on one air stream with small tongue releases. Bar 11 repeats it, so both appearances must sound equally controlled.

For the high answer, isolate C6–B5–A5–G5–F5. Do not blast C6; arrive with saved breath and let the descending line relax. Join bars 9–12 only after the upper register stays clear.

Raise the tempo through 70, 82, 94, 106, and 116 BPM. Give the tune buoyancy, not chaos. The historical lyric laughs at excess; the performance should suggest high spirits while proving the player still controls every beat.