Jimmy Allen – Jamie Allen or Reel of Tullochgorum

Jimmy (Jamie) Allen was a smallpipes player from Northumbria who lived from 1733 to 1810. Despite there being two biographies of the man, neither can be verified as the truth. At 70 he was imprisoned for stealing a horse, and spent his last seven years in a gaol under the road down to Elvet Bridge in Durham; he died days before a pardon arrived from the Prince Regent. (The underground gaol, very occasionally opened for guided tours, is left just as it was when abandoned, probably soon after Allen’s time: a very dark and spooky place.) (thesession.org/tunes/6354) “At any rate, he was highly regarded by his contemporaries as a musician and is thought to have played the Northumbrian smallpipes, Border pipes, and Union (uilleann) pipes.” https://tunearch.org/wiki/Annotation:Jimmy_Allen) According to Traditional Tune Archive, the tune is either a march or a polka. Oxford Slow Session calls it a rant.