Pub session
A pub session (seisiún in Irish; seisean in Scottish Gaelic; seshoon in Manx Gaelic) is performing music in the setting of a local pub, in which the music-making is intermingled with the consumption of ale, stout, and beer and conversation. Performers sing and play traditional songs and tunes from the Irish, English, Scottish and Manx traditions, using instruments such as the fiddle, accordion, concertina, flute, tin whistle, uilleann pipes, tenor banjo, guitar, and bodhrán. Some sessions have dancing too. History Singing and consuming alcohol have been practised together from ancient times, but the written evidence is fragmentary until the 16th century. In Shakespeare's Henry IV, Hal and Falstaff discuss drinking and playing the "tongs and the bones". There are depictions of pub singing in paintings by Teniers (1610–1690), Brouwer (1605/6-1638) and Jan Steen (1625/5-1656). 1800 to 1950 The 1830 Beer Act abolished the levy on beer - within a single year 400 new pubs opened, and within 8 years there were 46,000. This number peaked in the 1870s and declined after 1900. By the 1850s, an increasing number of student songs and commercial song-books were published across Europe. The most famous was the Scottish Students' Song Book by John Stuart