I probably found The Canongate Twitch browsing through thesession.org looking for tunes that fit the range of the different kinds of bagpipes I play (6 now, I think, though 3 of those nominally have the same, Scottish, scale). I thought, “what a great tune, shame about the first line phrase endings.” So I rewrote them, as I was in a bit of a composing fit at the time.
Turns out this tune has been covered before by The Battlefield Band and The Tannahill Weavers (cannot verify). Perhaps it references the Canongate district of Edinburgh? The tune has similarities in the first part to The Woman of the House in the centre in David Glen’s Irish Tunes for for the Scottish and Irish War Pipes. Woman of the House is yet another tune that has similarities but isn’t close enough to be quite the same tune, in my opinion (I’ve added it to my list of tunes I’m going to learn on the uilleann pipes though).
If we take this source (which attributes the Tannahill Weavers for the setting), the Tannies and the Batties play very similar versions of The Canongate Twitch, so there’s history somewhere in there, I’m just not sure how to connect the dots. Below I’ve provided the Batties/Tannies version along with my own so you can decide which you like better for yourself. If you feel my setting lacks the usual number of gracenotes expected for a highland pipe setting, I decided to cut back on the number of gracenotes my brain was automatically adding because I felt it was just too much and they got in the way of the melody.
The Canongate Twitch <-pdf