“Belle of Lexington” is often heard at festivals and jams, and has a well established Old Time connection through famed Galax area fiddler Emmet Lundy. But the melody is also known by other names, and may (or may not) have Irish roots. Based on publication dates and other anecdotal information, the melody seems to have appeared first as “Smith’s Reel,” then “Belle of Lexington,” and finally, “Kitty’s Wedding.” 

Smith’s Reel

“Smith’s Reel” first appeared in print in George Saunders’ New and Scientific Self-Instructing School for the Violin, published with regional popularity in Boston in 1847. George Saunders was a dance master, dance fiddler and multi-instrumentalist who owned a music shop in Providence, Rhode Island. He described himself as a "Professor of Music and Dancing." In the publication’s preface, Saunders noted that tunes in the collection that were composed by him were identified with the initials G.S. These initials are clearly seen in the notation of tune # 39, “Smith’s Reel.” 

“Smith’s Reel,” aka “Mrs. Smith’s Reel,""Smith’s Delight,” and “Old Smith’s” became even more widely known when it was included in the popular Ryan’s Mammoth Collection of 1883. “Ryan’s” served as an essential source of traditional as well as popular tunes for generations of fiddlers and dance musicians. It remained continuously in print under later titles like “Cole's 1000 Fiddle Tunes" until the mid 1980s. Here is a little history on “Ryan’s” and its publisher Elias Howe.

Emmet Lundy’s “Belle of Lexington”

Emmet Lundy (1864-1953) grew up in Grayson County, VA and began playing the fiddle in his late teens. Lundy’s mentor was an older fiddler named Green(berry) Leonard, and the tunes he learned from Leonard consisted of a large number of melodies from the turn of the 19th century. “Belle of Lexington” was one of those tunes, with Lundy saying he learned it from Leonard some time during the early 1880s. There are suggestions that the tune may have been named for Mary Belle (Cox) Brezing (1860-1940), an extremely well known madam in Lexington, KY. Belle’s clients included influential businessmen, bankers and politicians. How influential? When arrested for her profession in 1882, she was pardoned by the governor of Kentucky.

Emmet Lundy never performed professionally, but he did play with other local musicians like Isom and Fielden Rector, Crockett Ward, who was a senior member of the Bogtrotters, and guitarist/fiddler “Uncle” Eck Dunford. Lundy did, however, make two commercial recordings with an up and coming guitar player and (eventual) Country Music Hall Of Famer Ernest V. “Pop” Stoneman. But the quality of the record so disappointed Lundy that he did not make any more. It was not until Alan and Elizabeth Lomax recorded Lundy in 1941 on behalf of the Library of Congress that Lundy’s tunes including “Belle of Lexington” were documented. 

Kitty’s Wedding

“Kitty’s Wedding,” a hornpipe well known by Irish musicians, shares the same melody as “Smith’s Reel” and “Belle of Lexington.” In its Irish versions, the tune is also known as “The Golden Wedding,” “The Hauling Home,” “The Ideal,” “Kitty’s German,” and “Ships In Full Sail.” It appears to have entered the traditional Irish repertoire after being published by Francis O'Neill (1848-1936) in his 1903 collection “Music of Ireland: 1850 Melodies” Here is the notation taken from O’Neill’s book. Here is a PBS documentary on his life.

O’Neill was Irish born, a musician, and eventually the Chief of the Chicago Police Department from 1901-1905. Although O’Neill could not read music, he was “...determined to make note of the traditional tunes people carried in their memories before their lives in America became so well-established that the old ways were forgotten.” O’Neill’s documentation of tunes directly from the Irish immigrant community in Chicago certainly raises the possibility that the melody could have originated in Ireland, and was one of the “...traditional tunes carried in their memories…”

While “Kitty’s Wedding” is widely embraced as an Irish original, it is also noted that many tunes in O'Neill's collections were sourced from other 19th-century American publications, like “Ryan’s Mammoth Collection.” This leaves the door open for the other possibility - that the melody traveled from North America to Ireland and then back. Notably, on The Session website, which is dedicated to traditional Irish music, the composer of “Kitty’s Wedding” is listed as our first “Smith’s Reel” reference, George Saunders.

Smith's Reel

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