Farewell to Whiskey

Composed by Scottish fiddler Niel Gow (1727–1807) as a slow strathspey in B♭ major, written in 1799 when a failed barley harvest prompted a British government ban on distilling. Gow’s own note described it as giving voice to a Highlander’s sorrow at losing his favourite drink, and he followed it the next year with a companion piece, “Welcome Whisky Back Again.” It first appeared in the second edition of his First Collection (1801) and again in the Fifth Collection (1809); verses set to the melody were printed in 1804. The tune traveled widely and changed function as it went: Cape Breton players keep it as a slow air, Irish players took it up as a polka and a march (it carries the second figure of the set dance “Siege of Ennis”), and New England fiddlers play it in G major as a contra dance reel. Recorded in 1928 in New York by Sligo flute player John McKenna with fiddler James Morrison paired with “The Dark Girl Dressed in Blue,” and later by Denis Murphy and Julia Clifford on The Star Above the Garter (Claddagh CC5, 1969).

Niel Gow was the leading Scottish fiddler of the eighteenth century. He and his son Nathaniel published a series of collections that shaped the printed Scottish dance repertoire.