About This Song

Miss McLeod's Reel is a traditional Scottish reel. Its first known printing is in Nathaniel Gow's Fifth Collection of Strathspey Reels (1809). Gow noted that Mr. McLeod of Raasay gave him the tune and called it an original Isle of Skye reel. From Scotland it traveled to Ireland, where it's still a standard session reel, and to North America, where it picked up a long list of names. Southern and Ozark fiddlers know it as Hop High Ladies, Hop Light Ladies, Uncle Joe, and Did You Ever See the Devil, Uncle Joe. Most versions are in G and follow the usual AABB form.

No single recording made it famous in America. It spread from fiddler to fiddler. Uncle Jimmy Thompson played it as McLeod's Reel, Vance Randolph listed it among Ozark fiddle tunes, and Alan Jabbour recorded Virginia fiddler Henry Reed playing it as Hop Light Ladies for the Library of Congress in the 1960s. The Uncle Joe and Hop High Ladies titles come from the sung verses that grew up around the tune, and people have been making up new verses ever since.