“St. Anne’s Reel” is a 20th-century Quebec fiddle tune that has crossed widely into Canadian, American, British, and Irish traditions. The first known recording was made in 1927 by Montreal fiddler Willie Ringuette, who recorded the tune as the fourth part of his “Quadrille du loup garou.” The tune’s canonical reading came three years later, when another Montreal fiddler, Joseph Allard (1873–1947), recorded it for Victor Records in 1930. Allard’s version is the source from which most North American settings of “St. Anne’s Reel” descend.
Victor released Allard’s recording with two parallel titles — “Reel de Ste-Anne” and “Reel des Esquimaults.” The Allard scholar Jean Duval has argued the title most likely refers to the municipality of Sainte-Anne-de-Bellevue at the western end of the island of Montreal, where Allard had connections.
The tune’s popular spread owed much to Canadian radio fiddler Don Messer, who included it in his 1948 published collection Way Down East under the title “Sainte Agathe” and broadcast it widely. The tune reached Prince Edward Island in the 1930s through CHNC radio broadcasts from New Carlisle on the Gaspé Peninsula, and from there spread outward into the Maritime, Ottawa Valley, and American old-time fiddling traditions. Today “St. Anne’s Reel” is a near-universal jam-session piece across the contemporary bluegrass and Celtic-folk traditions.