Grainger's source for this lively piece was the Complete Petrie Collection of the Ancient Music of Ireland, edited by composer Charles Villiers Stanford. Grainger cribbed two tunes, actually, both of them reels from County Cork: "Temple Hill" and "Molly on the Shore." Grainger's treatment keeps the pianist's fingers flying, although he employs such a wide variety of dynamics and coloristic effects that it never seems like a cheap knuckle-buster. He introduces the two tunes almost unharmonized, then slaps them through a short series of lively variations, jolting from one dynamic extreme to the other and enveloping it all in extremely detailed pedaling directions.

© James Reel, All Music Guide