- Style
- Old-time
- Tradition
- Scottish origin, American fiddle standard
- Form
- Reel
- Key
- A
- Level
- 3
- Played on
- Fiddle and Mandolin
In the public domain. Source
Music
100bpm
Click any note to start from there
Chord chart
History
In Scotland it is "The De'il Among the Tailors." Aberdeenshire piper John Sutherland wrote it down around 1785 as "Devil's Dream," a few years before David Johnson's date of about 1790 for the Scottish reel. Milton Barlow, born about 1784, copied it into his American tune book in the early 1800s, and the "Dream" name is the one Americans kept.
New England contra dancers took it up, and a dance was named for it. Tolman and Page's Country Dance Book says a fiddler there was not taken seriously unless he could play it and "Speed the Plow." New Jersey players had a joke that the devil himself wrote it.