Sarah June was our mother, who died in 2014. She went by “June”. She and Pam were particularly close. I hear the poignancy of her loss in this Celtic style air. It works well in a Celtic style set followed by June’s Jig.

For a hint of their deep, complex mother-daughter relationship, see this poem. Our mother’s memorial website is at JuneMaginley.ca.

Audio on tenor recorder

Heather Holm, tenor recorder

Practice video

Here is a computer generated flute with a follow-along prompt to help with learning the tune or practicing the chords.

Sheet music preview

Sheet music (PDF) and download

The story behind the tune

I didn’t find this tune until 2021 when my brother Mike was finally able to come to Nova Scotia with some of the boxes that I wasn’t able to get in my car after cleaning out Pam’s Ottawa apartment after her death, two years before.

I loved the tune from the beginning, but at first struggled with finding the metre, as Pam had apparently done as well. She had written it in 3/4 time, and attempted to count the measures to figure out the structure. That tells me that she created the tune in her head before putting it down on paper. It stuck in my head until one morning I woke up with the idea to write it in either 9/4 or 9/8 time. Suddenly it all made sense, with phrases that scanned. I’ve used 9/8 simply because it’s easier to read joined eighth notes than quarter notes. It’s not a fast tune.

She also wrote it in D, but I transposed it into a suitable range for tenor (or soprano) recorder, in G.

I’ve also worked the chords a lot, finally settling on the ones indicated. But there are other possibilities.

Pam may well have written it in 2014, as it’s in the same mostly empty notebook as early drafts of Another Bright Star and I Found a Place where Angelica Grows, which she sang at our mom’s funeral. But it’s opposite a written note dated 2017.

It can be followed in a set by June’s Jig which was on the next page in the journal.