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>Scotch Strathspey and Reel makes use of melody from the sea-shanty What Shall We Do with a Drunken Sailor? along with six Scottish and Irish folksongs which are skillfully interwoven. Writing about Scotch Strathspey and Reel in a program note, Grainger suggests that:
>"If a room full of Scotch and Irish fiddlers and any nationality of chanty-singing deep-sea sailors could be spirited together and suddenly miraculously endowed with the gift of polyphonic harmonic free improvisation enjoyed for instance by South Sea Island Polynesians, a rather merry babble of tune, harmony and rhythm would result."
>With Scotch Strathspey and Reel (1924), it is interesting to note how many Celtic dance tunes there are that are so alike in their harmonic schemes (however diverse they may be rhythmically and melodically) that any number of them can be played together at the same time and mingle harmoniously. Occasionally a sea-chanty will fit in perfectly with such a group of Celtic tunes. The underlying tune in the strathspey is Marquis of Huntley and in the reel The Reel of Tulloch (Thulichan). Of the other tunes employed in the strathspey a Scotch tune was quoted to Grainger by the painter Hugo Rumbold, and the Irish tunes are Nr. 983 and Nr. 319 in The Complete Petrie Collection of Irish Music, edited by Charles Villiers.