I was hoping to make a video demonstration of the Carolan song air Cupán Uí Eaghra (O’Hara’s Cup), but in the end I don’t feel that I understand it enough, based on the transcription manuscript. It is an interesting and slightly unexpected aspect of this Old Irish Harp Transcriptions Project that there are tunes which are clearly notated live from the playing of a harper informant, but which it is very hard to convincingly reconstruct the harp performance behind the transcription.
The harp version of Cupán Uí Eaghra (DOSC 131) is written as a live transcription in QUB MS4.29 page 82/78/087/f38v, with a neat copy of the second half of the tune on the facing page 83/79/088/f39r. Bunting’s title here is “Campany ara”; he adds “or O Haras” on the neat copy.
Bunting made a piano arrangement in 1798, based on this live transcription. His piano arrangement is in QUB MS4.33.3 page 34-35, where it is tune no.25. The title is given as “Copan iu Ara or O’Hara’s Cup by Carolan”, and at the bottom of p.34 he has written “From Hugh Higgins County Mayo”. It looks like “Mayo” has been written over “Leitrim”.
This tag, in combination with the attributions of the tunes on neighbouring pages in MS4.29, means that we can be fairly certain that this live transcription was made in the summer of 1792, from the old Irish harper Hugh Higgins. For more about Higgins, see my post on Tá mé mo chodladh.
The harp bass
On page 37 of the piano manuscript, after the end of the next tune (Doctor Hart), Bunting has written “These 2 last tunes are very middling hard to set basses too”. Doctor Hart is also tagged “Hugh Higgins County Mayo” and was notated live on p.90-91 of MS4.29.
In the transcription of Cupán Uí Eaghra on p.82 Bunting has written “B” below notes in the transcription in 6 different places. These look like they might represent bass notes played by Higgins. Are these the only bass notes that Higgins played? Does this reflect Keane FitzGerald’s testimony that “Carolan’s tunes had no bass to them originally”? Does Bunting’s difficulty in harmonising these tunes with classical piano basses reflect the tunes being originally composed, and subsequently passed down in the tradition, as single melody lines?
Usually, the “B” in the transcription clearly indicates which note is to be dropped an octave and/or played with the right hand. One thing I notice in this particular transcription is that this is not always clear, as if Bunting himself was not sure. I am thinking that this transcription, made in his first year of collecting, is difficult precisely because he was unfamiliar with the old Irish harp style and idiom, and was not “up to speed” with notating the details of a live performance.
The song of Cupán Uí Eaghra
Bunting made a live transcription from a singer on his collecting trip to Westport in July 1802. Bunting had gone to Westport to meet up with the song collector Patrick Lynch, and Lynch seems to have taken Bunting to meet the singers whose song words he had already collected, for Bunting to notate the song airs. Lynch records in his Journal (QUB MS4.24 p.45) that he got the words of “Cupan i Ara” from Mr Bartley in Killargy, county Leitrim.
Queen’s University Belfast, Special Collections, MS4.33.1 p.25.
Bunting titles the tune “Capan ni Ara or Ohara’s Cup”. In the top left corner he writes “in A.M.” which is his shorthand in this notebook for the key signature – this tune is in A major and so should have three sharps. After the tune he writes “This set sings to the words / another set in Old Book No. 25”. At the bottom of the page he writes “Mrs. Conner Mrs Conner” but I don’t know if that is connected to this notation.
Did this tune also come from Mr Bartley? That seems unlikely, since Killargy is about two thirds of the way from Belfast to Westport, and yet the implication from Lynch’s journal p.19 is that Bunting was only collecting tunes from the singers in and around Westport (Lewisborough is mentioned). So perhaps it was one of the Westport singers that gave Bunting this version of the tune. Pages 22-31 of Bunting’s Westport 1802 notebook (QUB MS4.33.1) contains tunes numbered 1 through to 15, and our tune on p.25, is no.8. Page 22 is headed “Redmond Staunton the blind man” and p.24 is headed “Redmond Staunton” – is he the source of this song air? More work is needed to untangle all this.
The note about another version must refer to the 1798 piano arrangement of the Higgins harp set, which is no.25 in QUB MS4.33.3, and confirms that Bunting considered the two (DOSC 130 and DOSC 131) to be versions of the same tune.
Song words
A neat copy of the words written by Lynch in one of his presentation manuscripts is in QUB MS4.7 p.023, no.7. The words are titled “Cupan i ára” and are as follows:
Da mbein Shiar a ndarainn no a ccáirlinn na séad mur ngluaision gach sár long le clárit sle méid
bfeair liom gan amhras mar shasadh dhom pfein cupan i ara bhei lamh le mo bheail
Nuair bhion-sa lán ann don tsar lionn is treain chuireadh beadhas an mo gháire agus rasa ann mheair
Gud e fath dhomh chup a cceill is a liacht agh maith na dheigh ar gach ollamh fa na háite dar mo laimhse ni breag
a tharlaigh & bhriain agh mhur tar an tra so fa mo dhein go nolum as an tsar chupa slainte bhreagh chiain
It seems to me that two of these quatrains written by Lynch would fit onto the tune noted by Bunting in ms4.33.1 – so we have two and a half verses here. Lynches 1, 2, 4, 5 match Hardiman’s two verses and also ÓMáille’s two verses; I wonder if Lynch’s quatrain 3 matches half of one of Thady Connellan’s verses in Duanaire (Fonna seanma) (1829) – I haven’t yet seen this book (the RIA have the only copy I know of).
Other versions
Donal O’Sullivan (Carolan volume 2 p.80) gives a number of other versions of the tune from traditional musicians in the 19th century in the Forde manuscripts. Joyce (Old Irish folk music and songs, 1909 p.342) prints a version collected by Forde, which has been synthesised from version supplied by John Windele “the distinguished cork archaeologist (died 1865)” and P. Carey, “a piper of Co. Cork”. This is the version that Donal O’Sullivan printed as DOSC 130, with his invented title “Kean O’Hara First Air”.
It would be nice to see the other Forde versions especially the one collected from Hugh Beirne.
Two tunes, or two versions of one tune?
Donal O’Sullivan lists Higgins’s harp version, and the various song versions under separate numbers in his book, as DOSC 130 (the sung version) and DOSC 131 (the harp version). He assumed they were different tunes with the same title, and at first glance they do seem very different. However it is clear that Edward Bunting considered them as versions of the same tune, from his comment in QUB MS4.33.1 “This set (DOSC 130) sings to the words / another set (DOSC 131) in Old Book No. 25”. Bunting did not publish either of the two variants.
This tune could be an interesting case study for how harp instrumental style can shift a tune a long way away from its song air version. It would be an interesting study to line up all the different versions and make formal comparisons of where they track each other and where (and how) they diverge.
I made a video demonstration of the old Irish harp tune Sliabh gCallann (Slieve Gallen), as transcribed live from the playing of the harper Hugh Higgins in the summer of 1792.
Slieve Gallen, or Slieve Gallion, is a mountain in the north of Ireland. The original Irish form of the name is Sliabh gCallann. The mountain is the easternmost of the Sperrins, and is just to the south east of Ballynascreen (Baile na Scríne).
This interactive map shows Slieve Gallion, Ballinascreen and Lough Fea. See full screen
Slieve Gallan (rectires as Colgan has it, slieve Callann) has derived its name from Callann mor a giant, who lies interred on <in> Carnanbane, in the townland of Ballybriest, where mossy rocks yet mark his grave. The following quatra<i>ne is yet repeated which preserves all that is known of Callann mor.
Callann mhac rígh Tíre Tuain <recte t. Suthain> See Dinnseanchy Ta adhlaicthe air a taobh tuaidh de’n t-sliabh A cheann síos go loch na g-con ‘S a chosa suas chum a’ tsléibhe
Callann, the son of the king of <Tir Suthain> Tuan Is interred at the north side of the mountain His head (pointing) down to Lough-na-gun And his feet up towards the mountain
Loch-na-gun i.e. the lake of the grey hounds <so called from Finn Mc. Cool’s dogs> is now called Lough Fea. This is the situation of the giants grave on Carnanbane, which is said to be where Callann Mor is interred. One end of it points to the Lough and the other to the mountain.
Edward Bunting collecting the tune
In the summer of 1792, Edward Bunting spent “a good part of the summer about Ballinascreen and other mountainous districts” of this area, collecting “airs from the country people” (1840 introduction, p.4, cited on my Collecting Trips blog post). I assume that it was on this tour in the summer of ’92 that he met the harper Hugh Higgins, who played him the tune of Sliabh gCallann. Bunting made a live transcription of the tune into one of his collecting pamphlets, and the two pages are now part of Queen’s University Belfast, Special Collections MS4.29 page 80/76/085/f37v and 81/77/086/f38r.
We can look at my Old Irish Harp Transcription Project tune list spreadsheet to see that the tune is tagged in five different places as being played by Higgins, four of them specifying 1792. No-one else is credited with playing the tune.
As far as I can see, every other version of the tune of Sliabh gCallann derives from this live transcription of Hugh Higgins’s harp playing. Bunting made a number of manuscript piano arrangements, and he eventually published a piano arrangement of the tune in his 1840 collection (no.24, p.21). Other later published versions of the tune derive from Bunting’s 1840 print. More recently, in 1983 Donal O’Sullivan printed an edited score of the first half of the MS4.33.3 version (MOSB 24), and in 1992 Ann Heymann printed an edition of the MS4.33.3 version (Legacy p.22-3)
Structure of the tune
The notation in the live transcription gives us a 4 line tune on p.80, and a two line “variation” on p.81. I did wonder for a second if the pages are out of order so the p.81 notation could relate to an entirely different tune, but it seems clear that the “variation” is based on the middle section of the p.80 tune. The variation does not come to a neat end but finishes with a pickup and then a long curving dash which seems to imply the tune continues somehow. We can look at Bunting’s piano arrangements to see how he organises the sections of the tune.
I haven’t seen all of the manuscript piano arrangements, but if we number the lines of the Higgins transcription we can see that Bunting gives a different ordering of the lines in each of the piano arrangements.
So let us say that line 1 is bars 1-4 on p.80, line 2 is bars 5-8, line 3 is bars 9-12 (numbered by Bunting on the transcription as 1-4), line 4 is bars 13-16 (numbered by Bunting on the transcription as 5-8), line 5 is the first four bars of the “variation” on p.81, line 6 is the last 4 bars of the “variation” on p.81.
The live transcription has each line shown just once, in the order 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6.
Bunting’s first piano arrangement in 1798 (QUB SC MS4.33.3 p.32-33) is structured with the lines in the following order: 1, 2, 3, 4, 3, 4, 1, 5, 6, 4 and so is the longest and most developed. Lines 3 and 4 are only written once but have repeat marks at beginning and end like this: 1, 2, ||: 3, 4, :|| 1, 5, 6, 4
A later piano arrangement in QUBSC MS4.33.5 p.59 is structured with lines 1, 2, 3, 4 only. Ann Heymann (Legacy p. 24) suggests that the MS4.12 version is similarly structured with four lines only. I don’t know the dates of these other manuscript piano arrangements; I suspect they may be quite late, from the 1830s.
The 1840 printed piano arrangement (no.24, p.21) is structured with lines 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 4, with rather a lot of editorial development of the material.
In my demonstration I have chosen to play 1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 5, 6, 4 on the understanding that lines 5 and 6 are variations based on lines 2 and 3, and thinking that in the 1798 piano manuscript Bunting often seems to be trying to articulate certain elements of harp style through his piano arrangements. But this may be misguided.
Reading the transcription
We can see that the transcription on MS4.29 p. 80 – 81 is a composite notation, with some dots visible beneath overwritten heavy notes. In fact we could possibly describe three kinds of marks on this page: dots which have been abandoned or crossed out; dots with stems and beams; and heavily written notes with stems and beams.
At this stage it seems hard to say which of these layers is closest to what Higgins played. Ann Heymann writes (Legacy, 1992, p.24):
This MS29 version was obviously written “on sight”, for a series of measureless dots on the staff have had stems, beams and barlines added afterwards. Bunting also added sporadic “B”s, indicating bass hand notes.
Do the initial dots represent Higgins, with every added change being Bunting’s piano composition? Or did Bunting mis-notate the initial dots, and use the re-writing to bring the finished notation closer to Higgins’s performance? The lack of relevant meta-data about the tune and arrangement does not help to answer these questions; the piano arrangements are just presented “as is” and it is up to us to make that judgement. In the end, to play the tune, decisions have to be made, and for the purposes of this demonstration I have tried to follow the dots rather than the heavy notes. Other approaches are possible, and may or may not better represent Higgins’s original performance practice. That is, after all the point of my Old Irish Harp Transcriptions Project, to try and come up with working methods to answer this kind of question!
The variation
QUB SC MS4.29 p.81 is headed “Variation to Ditto” and contains two lines, which seem to correspond to the middle two lines of the tune (as described above). They are notable for having sequences written low on the staff, with simultaneous pairs of high and low notes at the start of the first and second bar. Siobhán Armstrong suggested these could be understood as a “bass division”, a melody played with the right (bass) hand in the bass, while the left (treble) hand plays the little trills above.
As with the tune on p.80, I have tried to ignore the subsequent layers of heavier notes and look for the dots. I also tried to imagine Higgins’s playing in the mainstream of the old Irish harp tradition, and so I have edited some of the bass passages to bring them up into the treble. It is still not clear whether Bunting invented the idea of the bass melody in the variation, or if it was Higgins’s playing; either way can potentially have validity in trying to re-construct the original performance practice.
Some of Bunting’s piano arrangements of other tunes do contain the tag “harp bass” written against fragments of bass melody. However this tag does not appear in these bass passages in any of the arrangements of Sliabh gCallann. I have not yet collated all the appearances of this tag, so I can’t yet know whether that the lack of such a tag in the piano arrangement of Sliabh gCallann is significant or not.
Below the variation, at the bottom of p.81, Bunting has written a scale showing the notes of a harp, marked “Right hand” in the bass and “Left hand” in the treble. The very lowest note G, is marked an octave higher than we expect, and is labelled “organ”. There is no note for bass C or F. The two na comhluighe strings are labelled “Sisters” and are marked at g below middle c. They are divided by a bar-line to separate the right hand bass from the left hand treble. Below the chart is written “harp always tuned by the sisters”.
Is this the scale of Higgins’s harp? Did it arise from a discussion between Higgins and Bunting about the disposition of notes between treble hand and bass hand in the variation?
Mode and tuning
The transcription is written at pitch, so that the tune is in A minor. The notes of an A minor pentatonic mode are A C D E G and so it is related to C major. This tune seems to move between A sonorities and C sonorities. The passing Fs are f natural.
It strikes me that different parts of the tune have a somewhat different sound. Lines 1 and 4 have a more pentatonic feel; the B sounds very “out of mode” and gives the tune its mournful, otherworldly feel. But in lines 2 and 3, and in the variation, the B becomes much less otherworldly and takes its classical harmonic role. I think this gives the tune a very different feel overall from many of the other traditional old Irish harp tunes I have been working on.
Minor mode tunes seem quite rare in the old Irish harp tradition; major is perhaps the most common but there are a lot more neutral mode tunes than minor mode ones. I have been marking the pentatonic mode for each tune in my Old Irish Harp Transcription Project tune list spreadsheet so you can count each type.
Attribution to Lyons
On p.80 at the top of the transcription page is the text “Lions Imp:d” (i.e. “improved by Lyons”). However this is written in pencil, in a different hand from the live transcription from Higgins. I don’t know who might have written this text, or when, or where this information came from.
The manuscript piano arrangements have tags: MS4.33.3 p.32 “very Ancient”, MS4.33.5 p59 no tag; MS4.12 no tag (Moloney Catalogue p.245); MS4.13 p.14 “Very ancient. Author and date unknown” MS4.27 p.16, no tag.
In the 1840 book, the piano arrangement (no.24, p.21) is headed “Very Ancient, Author and date unknown”. In the introduction, Bunting has written describing the tunes played at Belfast in 1792,
Hugh Higgins, (blind), from the county of Mayo, aged 55, played “Slieve Gallen”, ancient, and “Madam Cole”, (Carolan).
In a passage on p.77 discussing Cormick O Kelly of Ballinascreen, Bunting says that Ballinascreen is
a district long famous for… the preservation of ancient Irish melodies in their original purity [footnote:] The beautiful tunes “Sliebh Gallen” and “The Little Swallow” are two of them; they are now given to the world for the first time.
Bunting also wrote in the section describing individual tunes, on p.96:
“Slieve Gallen,” (no.24 in the Collection,) is also a Ballinascreen air, arranged by Lyons in 1700.
In the indexes to the 1840 book, Bunting gives the Irish and English names: “Sliabh Guilleann – Slieve Gallen – Slieve Gallen” (p.vi) and the provenance: “Slieve Gallen – Very ancient, author and date unknown” (p.x)
Sliabh gCallan is not in the list of Lyons tunes given by Arthur O’Neill (Memoirs, QUB SC MS4.46 p.20/042 & QUB SC MS4.14 p. 25), and it is not in the repertory noted by Anna-Jane Maclean-Clephane in 1816 apparently deriving from the testimony of Lyons’s student, Echlin Ó Catháin. I am starting to doubt this Lyons attribution. The only places the attribution appears are 1840 p.96, and the pencil note in MS4.29 p.80.
The Friar and the Nun is another tune that has an isolated and uncorroborated Lyons tag in the 1840 print. It also has unusual bass markings in the transcription and description, possibly reminiscent of the Sliabh gCallann variation. Is Bunting making up Lyons attributions here? If we could identify the handwriting of the pencil “Lions Imp:d” tag in MS4.29 p.80 that could help us make a better assessment of this question.
Songs about Sliabh gCallann
I have come across a few different English-language songs about Sliabh gCallann. I don’t think any of these songs is relevant or related to the harp tune.
The best-known one is an English-language ballad, usually called “The Braes of Slieve Galleon”. I first heard this song from the singing of my friend Denise who lives in the area south-east of the mountain, close to Lough Neagh, in the opposite direction from Ballinascreen.
Here is a lovely video of a local Lough Neagh fisherman, Nailly Coney, singing the song:
I don’t know of any historical information about Cormac Ó Ceallaigh the harpmaker. Perhaps that’s not surprising for a Catholic at the times of the penal laws, living and working in a wooded valley up in the mountains, and working in an old oral tradition.
But there is a fair amount of traditionary information referring to him. By its nature this information may be wrong, but I thought I could try lining up what I have found so far, to collate all the different information, look for patterns, and maybe get ideas for future research or clues for other places to look.
Cormac Ó Ceallaigh is known as a harpmaker, and his name is inscribed on two extant old Irish harps plus one lost instrument. The extant harps are the Downhill harp in the Guinness Storehouse Museum in Dublin, and the Castle Otway harp in Trinity College Dublin. The lost example is the Magenis harp, known from a 19th century description and painting.
The name is spelt differently on the inscriptions. The Downhill harp has the famous poem inscribed on the soundbox, and the makers name is written “CR KELY” with the date “17 HVNDRED AND 02”. The Otway harp has its inscription running down the inside of the forepillar, and the name is written “CORMICKOKELLY” and the date “1707”. The Magenis harp soundbox inscription reportedly has the name “CORMICK O / KELLY” broken over two lines, and the date “1711”.
We cannot assume that these inscriptions were all genuinely put there by Cormac when he made each harp; they may have been added later to give a false provenance to an older or younger instrument. All three give an English form of the name; the poem on the Downhill harp which contains the name and date is all in English. The Magenis inscription is in English and Latin. Diarmaid Ó Catháin has pointed out that this is perhaps surprising, and that we might expect Cormac Ó Kelly to have used Irish. Does this tell us something about the customers who ordered or commissioned these harps? Was English even in this context seen as more high-status and more suitable for a display inscription by 1700? Or is it an indication that the inscriptions are all later spurious additions?
The earliest securely dated reference to Cormac I have found so far is in the description of Denis O’Hampsey written by Rev. Sampson and published in 1806 in The Wild Irish Girl. Sampson includes a description of the Downhill harp, and as Mike Billinge points out, mis-quotes the harpmaker’s name “Cormac Kelly”, suggesting that the name came from tradition rather than from reading the inscription.
Places
In a footnote on p.24 of the introduction to Edward Bunting’s 1809 Collection, is the following information, which is assumed to refer to the Castle Otway harp:
A Harp made by Cormac O’Kelly, of Ballynascreen, in the county of Londonderry, about the year 1700…
I think this is the earliest information connecting Cormac to Ballinascreen. In his 1840 book, Edward Bunting mentions Ballinascreen as “a district long famous for the construction of such instruments, and for the preservation of ancient Irish melodies in their original purity” (p.77). However, Bunting may be over-egging things here, since he also says that the harp, illustrated by Walker (1786) and said by Walker (p.163) to be inscribed “Made by John Kelly 1726”, was “made by Kelly, of Ballynascreen in 1726” (p.77). Was Bunting reporting genuine traditionary information or was he conflating disparate sources to fabricate a good story?
The Irish name of this parish, Baile na Scríne, comes from the old church of Scrine. The place is called Scrine (library) because it is supposed to have been founded as a library by St Patrick. There are many traditions connected to the church, including its bell which is said to be X.KB 2 in the National Museum of Scotland.
This interactive map shows the parish of Ballinascreen, and the half-townland of Creeve. Open in new window
The Ordanance Survey letters of John O’Donovan contain information about the O’Kelly family, although I don’t find any reference to Cormac. The O’Kellys were said to have been hereditary seanchaithe historians of Gleann Con Cadhain, and had collections of manuscripts. (letter 14D 21/29, 11 September 1834. PDF facsimile, PDF p.314). Gleann Con Cadhain comprises Ballinascreen plus the two parishes to the East.
O’Donovan also gives other useful local information, including that the valley was formerly heavily wooded down to the 18th century (PDF p313)., but that the woods were cut down for charcoal-burning for local iron mills and blacksmiths and also for export (PDF p329)
We get more specific information about where Cormac lived from Énri Ó Muirgheasa (Henry Morris), Dhá Chéad de Cheoltaibh Uladh (1934). Seán Donnelly’s 1993 article reproduces and translates the relevant passage, which describes the half-towland of An Chraobh (Crieve or Creeve), being the northern half of the townland of Doon. Ó Muirgheasa implies (though he does not state explicitly) that Cormac Ó Ceallaigh lived in An Chraobh.
Ó Muirgheasa refers to him as “Cormac na gCláirseach” (Cormac of the harp) and says his son was called “Maghnus na gCláirseach” (Magnus of the harp). Seán Donnelly assumes that Magnus was also a harp maker, but we are not told this. Cathal O’Shannon was more explicit in The Evening Press, (Friday May 1, 1964, p.12): “The famous harpmaker was a native of the townland of An Chraoibh, or Creeve, which I knew very well…” O’Shannon gives a lot of useful information about other members of the O’Kelly family of the area, from his own personal knowledge.
Portrait
There is a portrait that is said to be of Cormac Ó Ceallaigh. It was printed with a brief commentary by Breandán Breathnach, in Ceol vol 1 issue 3, Winter 1963, p.11–12. The item was headed “Cormac O Ceallaigh” and consists of a brief note about Cormac, lifted from Bunting’s 1840 book, mentioning Ballinascreen, and mentioning the Downhill harp. The article also comments on the Downhill harp having “acquired recently” by Guinness, and says the harp “is at present on exhibition in the USA advertising that firm’s Harp Lager”.
Breathnach concludes, “the portrait above, a reproduction from another print, was kindly made available by Colm O Lochlainn, Three Candles Press, Dublin. Unfortunately, it was not possible before going to press to ascertain from Colm who the artist was”.
There is an undated letter from Breandán Breathnach in the NMI Archive (file AI 64 006) which says “C Ó Lochlainn, the Three Candles, gave me a block of the harper for use in Ceól. I have a few notes collected on Ó Ceallaigh but should like to say who painted the original and where it is now.” A b/w photo of the painting is with the letter, with the name “Cormac Ó Ceallaigh” hand-written on the photograph. There is also a draft reply from William O Sullivan who says (tentative reading!) “I am retaining the print of the harper with the hope that [illegible]. The name of the painter is not legible and the print is a half tone made from another print not from the original painting. The national library research also failed to yield anything”
The painting is now in the National Gallery in Dublin, ref. NGI.1200. The catalogue says it was purchased privately in 1951. The catalogue also says it is of Arthur O’Neill, and says it was painted by Conn O’Donnell. A black-and-white reproduction was printed in Early Music May 1987 (frontis) where it was captioned as Arthur O’Neill (presumably following the NGI attribution); this reproduction allows the artist’s signature to be read as “ODONEL PINXIT”
I don’t know where either of these claims come from. I don’t think it looks much like the other portraits of Arthur O’Neill; but I have no idea why Colm O’Lochlann might have thought it was Cormac Ó Ceallaigh. Did Ó Lochlainn have traditionary information about the painting? More curiously, I have never come across “another print” which this reproduction is supposedly copied from. The letter refers to a “block” – did Ó Lochlainn give Breathnach a printed paper copy of the picture, to be photographically reproduced, or did he actually give Breathnach a wood-and-metal halftone printer’s block for Breathnach to use directly in printing the copies of Ceol? How does the copy on photographic paper preserved in the NMI archive relate to these? Ó Lochlainn was a publisher, setting up his own publishing house, “at the sign of the three candles”. Did he intend to publish the portrait in one of his own books? Most curiously, the painting was already in the National Gallery at the time of this correspondence and article, though Breathnach didn’t know this. In the letter, Breathnach explains “CÓL is sick so I can’t ask him”.
The harp is shown with the strings on the wrong side of the neck.
Further research
I need to go to An Chraobh to see his places. And we need to keep an eye out for other traditionary or historical references to Cormac.
I made a demonstration video of Mable Kelly by Carolan, played on my copy of Carolan’s harp. My performance is based on Edward Bunting’s edited field transcription, apparently taken from the playing of the old Irish harper Hugh Higgins, perhaps in 1792.
Bunting’s notation of the tune was written into one of his little pocket collecting pamphlets, now bound up in Queen’s University Belfast, Special Collections, MS4.29 (see my index and text transcript). Mable Kelly is on QUB SC MS4.29 page 78/74/083/f36v.
Attribution to Hugh Higgins
The next page of QUB SC MS4.29 page 79 contains a tune list headed “From Hugh Higgins”, and then the next 11 pages contain 5 tunes also tagged as being collected from Hugh Higgins.
In Edward Bunting’s 1798 manuscript piano arrangement (QUB SC MS4.33.3 p29-30), he tags the tune “Hugh Higgins County Mayo”.
In Bunting’s annotated copy of the 1809 printed book (British Library, London, Add.41508 p.48), he has written “Harp Linden”, implying that he collected the tune from Patrick Linden. However, these tags in the annotated prints were written in the early 1840s, almost 50 years after the old harpers played for him, and I don’t know how reliable these tags are. While Linden may well have played this tune, and Bunting may have transcribed it from Linden’s playing, I think the transcription in MS4.29 p.78 looks from its context to be more likely from Higgins.
For more on Higgins’s life and music, see my write-up of Tá mé mo chodhladh.
Mode and tuning
Bunting writes an interesting commentary in the annotated 1809 print:
This tune presents the anomaly of being in D♮ minor while the harp was tuned in high bass key (or key of C♮) The 4th tone from C. (F) being left out all through. This method of Tuning and arrangement of key viz: D minor happening very often
Bunting sets the 1809 piano arrangement in D minor with one flat in the key signature; he puts a natural accidental on every single B in the tune. Also he puts in quite a few F passing notes.
We can understand the tune as being not in D minor, but in D neutral pentatonic mode. D neutral is related to C major, and uses the notes D, E, G, A, C. This tune does include passing Bs and also there is a passing high F in the MS4.29 transcription, at bar 23, as well as the problematic low F in bar 25.
Understanding the layers of notation
I think MS4.29 page 78 highlights some of the serious problems of understand Edward Bunting’s notations of the old Irish harp music. It seems clear from studying the manuscript page, that this notation originated as the dots transcribed live from the playing of an old harper.
We can compare it to, for example, Brighid Óg on QUB SC MS4.29 p.64/60/069/f29v which presents the process nicely on two facing pages, starting with the live dots transcription, and then proceeding to the addition of note stems and beaming to indicate rhythmical groupings lower on the page, and finally on the facing page 65 a complete edited and “improved” version of the tune. As I discussed on my blog post about Brighid Óg, I think that the facing-page copy has been edited by Bunting as the first step of him progressing away from the live transcription of the traditional performance, towards his polished classical piano arrangement(s).
For Mable Kelly, I think that all three of these stages are superimposed one on top of each other.
it is very difficult to analyse the page to see which marks represent Bunting’s live response to the playing of the tradition-bearer; which markings represent his considered clarification of what he had heard, and which markings represent his classical piano ideas for improvement.
Problem areas
The biggest problem area for me, is bar 25 (first bar of the 4th system on page 78, numbered bar 1 of section 4 by Bunting). The rhythm of the tune doubles in time, and there is a very intrusive F. In my demonstration video I have silently omitted this F – the only change I have made to what is written. I am not entirely convinced by the double-time passage; does it represent Bunting’s flawed attempt to capture some kind of florid melismatic harp flourish? Bunting himself seems not to understand or believe what he has written – when he publishes the tune in 1809, he ignores his own bars 25-6 and just copies the passage given by Neal.
We also have the four-note rising fragment on page 79, with a .$. mark indicating it should be inserted in between bars 23 and 24 (labelled by Bunting bars 7 and 8 of section 3). The paler ink looks similar to the F-A-B-C rising motif in bar 25 – are they both later inventions? Yet bar 25 is not crushed in – why did Bunting leave so much space if this is not what was played? Or did he write the initial live transcription dots scattered all over the page like in Brighid Óg, leaving him plenty of space to insert newly composed bridging material?
Because the layers – live transcription dots, rhythmic explanation, and creative compositional development – all overlay each other, we have to be very careful here.
I don’t really believe that Bunting “gets” the traditional style; I think he is always working towards developed piano arrangements, and so I am very suspicious and basically I don’t believe any of his arrangement choices.
But I am playing this demonstration video for you anyway, even though I think it is corrupt, because I also think that this notation does give us some very interesting and beautiful old Irish harp style and idiom.
Important and interesting features
The reason I think this is a harp performance transcription rather than a song version is not just the D neutral pentatonic mode which fits the harp modes, but also that there are bass notes marked in. “B” has been written below bars 6, 26 and 29, indicating most likely that those notes are played an octave lower, with the right (bass) hand. In each case the bass note is C (in bar 29 the sequence E-D-C), which is interesting since the tune seems to be in D neutral. The notes of a D neutral scale are D-E-G-A-C-D and so there is a clear relationship with a C major pentatonic scale, which can give rise to a “double tonic” effect as the tune switches between a home sonority of D and an away sonority of C.
Bunting does not write any time signatures on p.78, but the tune is clearly in 3 time. However there are a significant number of bars which have four beats in them – bars 6, 16, 26, 28, 29. (bar 16 has 3 beats but is followed by a pickup onto bar 17). I notice at once that all of the bars with the B bass-note markings have four beats. We could also wonder if bar 16 might have had one of the repeated Ds as a bass note (though I don’t play a bass note here in my demonstration). We might also have to count bar 23 as having 4 beats if we insert the little .$. fragment there.
I am thinking that these extra beats in some bars might represent the way that traditional musicians will hold certain notes, stretching the time or rhythm of the tune. Mary Harvessy does exactly this in her singing of Seabhac na hÉirne.
Perhaps related to this is the way that three-note pickups are sometimes written with two semiquavers and a quaver (e.g. at the end of bar 1), and sometimes written as a triplet (e.g. the pickup before bar 1). Other places have three quavers without a triplet mark. I wonder if these also represent different ways of bending and flexing the rhythm of the tune in an old traditional harp style.
Other versions
Bunting made different piano arrangements of Mable Kelly, though only one was published.
Bunting made a piano arrangement in his unpublished 1798 piano manuscript, QUB SC MS4.33.3 p29-30, titled “Maible og ni Ceallaigh or Mable Kelly by Carolan”. He marks a repeat sign for both the first half of the tune and the second half of the tune. Bunting also makes a more florid piano arrangement for his 1809 published book (page 48), titled “Mabla sheimh ini Cheallaidh – Mild Mable O’Kelly”
There is an earlier published setting of this tune, in John and William Neal’s “Colection” printed in 1724, p.14. It is titled “Mable Kelly” and is not attributed. The Neal version curls a bit differently from the Higgins version noted by Bunting. I think that Neal’s versions of tunes are arranged for baroque violin. Bunting had a copy of the Neal book – the only known surviving copy of Neal 1724 is in Bunting’s papers at Queen’s (QUB SC MS4.31). Bunting also had access to another, damaged copy, from which he copied tunes into his collecting pamphlets, on the pages immediately preceeding where he wrote Mable Kelly. (QUB SC MS4.29 pages 67-77)
There is another early copy of the tune in Pádraig Ó Néill’s manuscripts, written in the 1790s. “C Mable Kelly” is set in G neutral. Ó Néill was a piper and so I suppose it’s possible that this is a piper’s version of the tune. it goes too high for fiddle. I think the “C” is Ó Néill’s shorthand for attributing the tune to Carolan.
Mable Kelly is no.73 in Donal O’Sullivan’s Carolan. He says (vol 2 p. 44) “…we have no less than seven airs for persons named Kelly. It has been a matter of some difficulty to sort them out…” I am not convinced that all his claimed associations are correct; we also have to accept the possibility of confusion in the 18th century tradition. O’Sullivan lists a number of versions of Mable Kelly (DOSC 73), starting with Neal (which is the basis for his own edited version of the tune), Mulholland (copied from Neal’s version), and Bunting. He also references versions in the Pigot & Forde mss. I have not seen these.
O’Sullivan also mentions (Carolan vol 2 p.47) two different traditions of the song’s composition. Hardiman (vol 1 p. liii) says that the tune was composed for Mable Kelly at Castle Kelly, Co. Galway, though this is a bit of a throwaway line in a convoluted story. Tomás Ó Máille (Amhráin Chearbhalláin p.271) reports a tradition that it was composed for “one of three handsome daughters of Kelly of Cargins”. Bunting writes in the annotated 1797 print (p.11) that one of the other Kelly tunes, Planxty Kelly (DOSC 71) was “composed for the Kelly’s of Cargins in the county Roscommon”, and his transcription on QUB SC MS4.29 p10 calls it “Miss Kelly”. Perhaps Bunting, or one of his informants, was confused, or perhaps Carolan composed a different song and air for each of the three handsome daughters.
Beneath the notation of Mable Kelly (DOSC 73) on page 48 of the annotated 1809 print, Bunting writes:
This tune was much esteemed by the harpers, it is very wild and from its construction so different from others of Carolans, that we must attribute it to some of the harpers prior to his time, OCaghan, Scott or one of the Connallons
However, I think we can accept this as a Carolan tune because of the tag in the manuscript transcription (presumably from the harper Higgins) and because of Ó Néill’s “C”. And also, because there is a song to Mable Kelly composed by Carolan. There is a version of the song text in Hardiman 1831 vol. 1 p. 60 which begins “Cia b’é bh-fuil sé a n-dán do, a lámh-dheas bheith faoí na ceann”. The song addresses itself to “Máible shéimh n-í Cheallaigh” which matches Bunting’s 1809 printed title “Mabla sheimh ini Cheallaidh – Mild Mable O’Kelly”. Tomás Ó Máille (Amhráin Chearbhalláin p.109) prints it as the very first song in his book, and says in the notes on p.271 that it “is considered the best of Carolan’s poems”.
However, it seems to me that our manuscript transcription from Higgins is a harp instrumental version, and not a song air version of the tune. It is possible that one of the Pigot ms version may be a sung version of this tune. We should check these out.
I made a demonstration video of Brighid Óg, based on Edward Bunting’s live transcription from a tradition-bearer in the 1790s:
The transcription is at QUB SC MS4.29 p.64/60/069/f29v. This page from one of Bunting’s little pocket collecting pamphlets, is headed “Breed doag”. On the facing page p.65/61/070/f30r Bunting has made a neat edited copy of the tune, headed “Young Bridget or Breed Doag / Struan a roon”. The neat copy has a number of differences from the transcription, and raises the important question of whether the neat copy is derived from the transcription, or whether the neat copy comes from an earlier book and the transcription is done for comparison purposes. At two points in the neat copy Bunting writes “mine” above the staff and “his” below, with two different notes indicated simultaneously – I presume “his” refers to what the harper plays, and “mine” indicates what Bunting has, either in an earlier exemplar, or in his own new piano arrangement.
The transcription shows the tune written at pitch. It seems to be in A neutral, though I am starting to wonder if it might be artificial to distinguish between the three related modes of G major, E minor and A neutral. There is no F in the tune; there is an intrusive C at a few points (the notes of these pentatonic modes are G A B D E). Bunting has written a few + or tr marks.
The first half of the tune is shown only as dots; in the second half of the tune Bunting introduces stems and a few beams, until the final line is shown with full note values (though still without barlines). At a superficial level we could just use the neat copy to give us the rythym and structure of the tune, but there are two problems with this. The neat copy turns in a different way from the transcription; and the time signature and therefore the barring and phrasing of the neat copy does not seem to match the words. I think this means that the neat copy may be irretrievably corrupt and unusable. Unfortunately, this is the only witness to this tune; we have no other version; and so I think we are stuck.
For this demonstration video, I am working from the dots transcription, and I am using both the words of the song, and the neat copy, as guides to my phrasing and strong notes. I don’t make any claim that this is correct; really, I think that this is a job for a singer, to try and find a way to fit the transcription notation on p.64 to the words.
Song words
Bunting writes “struan a roon” above the neat copy, and when he comes to make a piano arrangement in his 1797 “Ancient and Modern” manuscript (QUB SC MS4.33.2 p.9) he gives us more information, writing “Britheit Og – or Young Bridget – by Carolan / I have the words” above the piano score, and “From Donald Black / struan a roon gan ma agus too / cugea moon a nenagh” at the bottom of the page. Donal O’Sullivan (DOSC v5 p7) points out that this is a phonetic approximation of the first line of a verse from Carolan’s song addressed to Bridget Cruise, which begins A Bhrighid bheusach, is duit an béarsa agus creid an méid úd a dhearbhaim (Tomás Ó Máille, Amhráin Chearbhalláin, 1916, p.181-3). The only difference is that Black’s verse begins “Is truagh…” where Ó Máille’s (v3, top of p.181) begins “‘Se mo chreach” (it’s a pity, it’s a shame)
‘Se mo chreach, a ruain, gan mé agus tú, i gCóige Mumhan i n-éinfheach, No thios sa Triúcha ar choillte dlúth, agus gan fios ar rúin a bheith aig aoinfhear. A mhian na sugh ar maidin drúct’, cna agus ubhlaí na dhéidh sin, As gan de leabaidh fúinn acht féar a’s drúcht agus duilliúr cúmhra mar éadaigh.
I have not found another version of this tune. Donal O’Sullivan (Carolan v2 p. 20-22) prints four different tunes which he gives the invented titles “Bridget Cruise First Air / Second Air / Third Air / Fourth Air” (nos. 26-29). Ours (no.26) is “Bridget Cruise First Air”. I find these invented titles pretty unhelpful; Donal O’Sullivan’s “Fourth Air” is really called “Brighit óg na gciabh” (young Bridget of the curls) and is most likely a song by Séamas Dall Mac Cuarta. O’Sullivan seems to have taken any and every song or tune addressed to anyone called “Bridget” and has mashed them all together and claimed they may be by Carolan. He also changes his mind between his Bunting of 1936 (v5 p.4) and his Carolan of 1958 (v2 p.20) but because he doesn’t explain his rationale for either attributions, nor for matching words to tunes, it is hard to take his pronouncements seriously.
I think it is possible that we might find a previously un-noticed variant of this tune which matches Black’s transcription dots, and has a title perhaps related to “struan a roon”, but I haven’t looked very hard yet.
Our work to re-discover and/or reimagine the music and playing techniques of an extinct oral tradition has a number of ingredients, and one of these is the physical instrument itself. I put a lot of value on the study of the museum harps, which we know were the actual instruments owned and played by tradition-bearers; for some of them we have the physical instrument, preserved since the death of the performer; we have a portrait of them sitting with the same instrument; and we have live transcriptions of their playing.
The instrument can sometimes be thought of as a kind of constraint on what you can and cannot do. However I am more and more aware of the idea that a performance tradition can ignore the constraints and especially the possibilities of an instrument. I think I first was explicitly aware of this from the Finnish jouhikko tradition, where Juho Villanen (1846-1927) played a three-string jouhikko for the collector A. O. Väisänen in 1912. Villanen had made the instrument himself many years ago. He tuned the three strings to g d’ a’. “Villanen did not use the G string at all, but played his pieces on a single [a’] string while the other [d’] was a drone” (Nieminen, Jouhikko, 2007, p.41).
I have posted here before about the Irish pipes, and how the tradition does not take full opportunity of the possibilities offered by the instrument. You could even say the same about traditional fiddle styles, where the player usually stays in first position and does not use the full length of the bow. I start to wonder if it is a classical idea that the instrument has to be used to its full potential, pushed to its limit, and I wonder if this is connected to the idea of “improving” the instrument to extend those limits. I also think there is a connection in Ireland in the 19th century, where the old Irish harp with wire strings was pushed aside and eventually supplanted by the Anglo-colonial-classical gut-strung pedal harp and lever harp.
Ellis Roberts (1819-1873) wrote a Manual or method of instruction for playing the Welsh harp originally written in 1858 but published in 1902. This seems to be a very interesting insider’s testimony from the Welsh tradition. He describes the tuning of the telyn deires (triple harp) on pages 3-4:
For some unexplained cause the Triple Harp is tuned in the Key of G…
He gives a cycle of 5ths and 4ths to set the diatonic notes of the outer rows including F♯ in the outer row. He starts to discuss the inner row of strings, starting with C♯ on the inner row “situated between C♮ and D♮” but then he gets side-tracked and says that
the C being raised half a note enables the performer to play in the key of D. Of course every C through the scale must be raised a semitone
– interesting to see that the outer rows of the harp are re-tuned for different keys, using the inner row only for “accidentals”.
Then he gives a cycle of 5ths for tuning the inner row of sharps and flats, and says “you will find the Harp scale Diatonic and Chromatic quite correct according to scientific principles”
On p.10 he writes “General Observations”. Again he says:
It being the custom (as before alluded to in Chapter I on Tuning) to tune the Welsh Harp in the key of G (though for what reason I have not been able to ascertain), the first Exercise will begin in that key. The more natural key would be C to open with.
He has what in Scotland might be referred to as “the cringe”, referring to his traditional practice as “inconsistent with modern usage” and quoting Boscha as an “eminent author” on harp technique. This is the same measuring ones own traditions by Anglo-classical norms, as I have seen in other Scottish music traditions in the early 20th century.
He continues:
The Chromatic Scale on the Welsh Harp is perfectly complete, though its notes are rarely used by Welsh Harpers, for the following reasons – First; Flats and Sharps are seldom used in Welsh Music except as accidentals. Secondly, being in the Middle they are difficult to play without causing a disagreeable jar upon the outside strings. And lastly, the art of Fingering the “Middle Strings” has been hitherto unknown to us. I never heard a chromatic passage played by any Welsh harper, though the whole Chromatic system is as perfect upon the Triple Harp as it is on the Piano-forte, but of course more difficult to execute. I see no reason why the Music of Corelli, Handel, Haydn, and Mozart should not be performed upon the Welsh harp.
It’s interesting that Ellis Roberts thought he was being radical and new suggesting Handel could be played on the Welsh triple harp; 100 years previously John Parry was in London playing Handel on a Welsh triple harp.
But more interesting still is that he learned in a tradition, and was strongly enough invested in that tradition, which used and required a fully chromatic triple harp but which made minimal use of the inner chromatic row of strings.
Does this parallel our testimony of Carolan playing his tunes with “no bass”, even though his harp had a full 2 octaves below na comhluighe g? Did Carolan have such a big harp with all those strings tuned to their allocated pitches because that was his tradition, even though he had no need or inclination to use them, just like Villanen had the 3rd string on his jouhikko?
I made a demonstration video of Róis bheag dubh, based on Edward Bunting’s live transcription from a tradition-bearer in the 1790s:
The transcription is at Queen’s University, Belfast, Special Collections MS4.29 p.62/58/067/f28v. This page from one of Bunting’s little pocket collecting pamphlets, is headed “Rosey Black or Rosh veg Dooy” and “very old”. The transcription seems nice and clear with notes and dots but no barlines. Underneath the transcription Bunting has written […m] McCracken Belfast” – I don’t know the significance of this. Then on the lower half of the same page, Bunting has made a neat edited version of the tune.
The transcription shows the tune written at pitch, either in E minor or A neutral. There is no F in the tune; there is an intrusive C at a few points (the notes of both E minor and A neutral pentatonic mode are E G A B D). Bunting has written a few + or tr marks, and a couple of wee grace-notes in the transcription. The strong notes and pulse of the transcription is ambiguous in places due to the lack of barlines, but we can perhaps use the neat copy to help us understand this, as long as we remember that the neat copy is Edward Bunting’s edition and has been changed in a number of ways from the transcription.
Three different versions
There are many different notations and piano arrangements of Róis or Róisín dubh in Edward Bunting’s notebooks and publications, but we can group them together and see that the various copies derive from just three different performances, and so we can understand that Bunting has in all his many copies, three versions of the tune.
Two of the versions were printed as piano arrangements in 1840: No. 18, “Black Rose Bud” and no.19 “Second Set of Black Rose Bud”.
The hairdresser’s version
The first version is tune no. 18, on p.16 of the 1840 book, titled “Black rose bud”. In the index p.vii Bunting says it was collected from D. Black, Harper, in 1796. But I am questioning this attribution, because the melody of this piano arrangement is clearly derived from a transcription in Queen’s University Belfast, Special Collections, MS4.33.1 p.42. This transcription was made by Edward Bunting from a traditional singer in or around Westport, between Tue 6th and Thur 22nd July, 1802. Bunting had gone out to Co. Mayo to meet with Patrick Lynch, who had been collecting song texts. It seems that Lynch took Bunting to meet his informants so that Bunting could notate the tunes from them.
In Patrick Lynch’s journal QUB SC MS4.27 p.47 he lists the words of “Roisin Dubh” as being collected from P. Lynch Hairdresser in Castlebar, May 26th 1802. Was this P. Lynch Hairdresser also the source for Bunting’s transcription of the melody on MS4.33.1 p.42?
This index entry in Patrick Lynch’s Journal refers to the text of four quatrains written out neatly in Lynch’s song book, QUB SC MS4.7.091, no.58, titled “Roisin Dubh” and beginning “A Roisin na biodh bron ort far eighrigh dhuit”. Colette Moloney (Introduction and Catalogue p.209) says that these words are tagged “Castle Barr” at the top of the page, but I don’t see that on the online facsimile (the image may be cropped).
On the next two pages are 10 more quatrains, tagged at the top of the page “Drogheda”, numbered “59” and titled “Rois Bheag Dubh” and beginning “Beidh eiclips ar na speirigh is doirtear fuil”. This must be a second independent version of the song, inserted by Lynch for comparison. This manuscript is not a transcription notebook, I think it is a neat copy made by Lynch for presentation purposes. There is a second copy of the Castlebar words in QUB SC MS 4.11.
At the moment, I have not done any serious collation of the song airs transcribed by Bunting in QUB SC MS4.33.1 in early summer 1802, and the song words collected by Patrick Lynch on the same trip, presumably from the same informants – that’s a project for someone else. So, I would not say that for sure the lyric beginning “A Roisin na biodh bron ort far eighrigh dhuit” goes with Bunting’s first version of “Black rose bud”, and that the tune and words both come from the singing of P. Lynch, hairdresser at Castlebar, but it looks pretty likely.
The doctor’s version
The second version of our tune was printed on the very next page of the 1840 book (no.19, p.17), with the title “Second set of black rose bud”. In the 1840 index p.vii, Bunting tells us that this second version came from a peasant in Cushendall in 1804; in the introduction p.97 he says it was from the Lower Glens, co Antrim; in QUB SC MS4.27 he says it was from the Low Glens in 1803; and in QUB SC MS4.12 he labels it “Dr. McDonald’s set”. The tune appears in QUB SC MS4.29 p.34/34/043/f16v where it is titled “Doctors set bad good not very”. This notation in MS4.29 is clearly not a transcription but is copied from another written version; the other two tunes on this page are copied from a printed book. My guess is that Dr. James MacDonnell, originally from Cushendall in the Lower Glens, had notated it from a traditional singer in 1803/4, and had sent Bunting a manuscript copy of the tune, which Bunting subsequently copied into a blank space in his pocket notebook.
Bunting gives us more information about this version of the tune, in the 1840 introduction, p.97:
(No.19 in the collection) Roisin Bheag Dubh “Little Black Rose-bud” – Differs only slightly from the preceeding. It is here set according to the version preserved in the lower Glens of the county of Antrim. The cadence at the termination seems to lean so much more to E than A, that the Editor has adopted the former key-note as its tonic. This curious anomaly is frequently observed in these simple airs.
Black’s version?
Donald or Daniel Black is an interesting harper and we have some snippets of information about him. In the context of this tune, Bunting describes him singing with harp accompaniment – a rare eyewitness account of a harper singing to their own accompaniment.
(No. 18 in the Collection) Roisin Dubh. “Black Rose-bud” … It was sung for the Editor in 1792, by Daniel Black, the harper, who played chords in the Arpeggio style with excellent effect. The key-note at the end of the strain, accompanied by the fifth and eighth, without the third, has a wailing, melancholy expression, which imparts a very peculiar effect to the melody.
1840 introduction p.97
Bunting has put descending arpeggios in his 1840 piano arrangement of the Castlebar hairdresser’s vocal version of the tune, but I don’t think this piano bass is anything more than Bunting’s newly composed harmony, inspired by his memory of Black’s playing over 40 years previously.
So we have three conflicting pieces of information. we find the transcription source of Bunting’s first version of the tune in the Westport 1802 notebook; Bunting says that the tune was collected from Black in 1796; and he says that Black sung the song to him with harp accompaniment in 1792.
Perhaps all three are true. Perhaps Bunting prepared his 1840 first version from the Westport 1802 notebook. Perhaps he did collect a version from Black in 1796. And perhaps he did hear Black singing the song with harp accompaniment in 1792.
In which case, is the QUB SC MS4.29 p.62 transcription from Black in 1796? Bunting tells us (1840 intro p.76) that Black’s “chief resort, when in Antrim, was Mr. Heyland’s seat at Glendaragh, near Antrim, where the Editor saw him shortly before his death, in 1796. He sung to the harp very sweetly”. (see my Bunting Collecting Trips post)
It is also possible that some of this information printed in 1840 is wrong, and that we are being led wildly astray by Bunting’s disorganised waywardness… Bunting was telling us about the events of 44 years ago; we can see looking at his manuscripts that his notes are scattered, partial, and full of context-less notes.
{Peggen a Leaven Daniel Black +{Brough ne Shannon ditto——– {Garran Buoy yellow horse Ditto —- {Collin Fin ——— Ditto ——– {Black bird & thrush Ditto ——– {Little hour before Day Ditto —— {Castle Moon Ditto ——- {Huar ma fian Ditto ———-
We can see from my Old Irish Harp Transcription Project Tune List spreadsheet, that a lot of these tunes appear in QUB SC MS4.29 between pages 93 and 106. We also have a tune, tagged Black, on p.64 (possibly related to the p.62 Róis bheag dubh). It is not clear to me at the moment how the different gatherings of ms4.29 have been shuffled and re-assembled before their first binding (see my pdf), and whether they may originally have been related.
If the p.62 transcription was written from Black’s performance at Glendaragh House in the summer of ’96, was he singing it? There is no indication in the transcription of “chords in the Arpeggio style” which made such an impression on Bunting. And the structure of the melody as transcribed seems very harp-like. Perhaps Bunting asked him to play the tune on the harp so that he could more easily make a transcription. We really know so little about the details of this process.
However there are two transcriptions in this section which seem to me to be written in a different style, and which I think might be noted from Hugh Higgins in 1792.
Caitlín Triall
The first of these is Kitty Tyrrell. Bunting wrote a live transcription on Queen’s University Belfast, Special Collections, MS4.29 p.47/43/52/f21r. Bunting has titled his transcription “Cathleen Treeall”. It is a lovely traditional air with many variants, still well-known today in the living tradition. Here is my tentative demonstration:
Caitlín Triall is one of the tunes tagged “Higgins” in the annotated copy of Bunting’s published piano arrangement (1797 no.8). I’m not convinced that his arrangement is really based on the transcription; it might derive from an earlier printed edition.
At first sight , the p.47 notation looks very clear and simple. But, because Bunting does not indicate bar-lines, this transcription does not show what the stressed or strong notes are, which is vital for reconstructing the flow and structure of the tune. Some parts are clear enough, and to help me make sense of it, I have listened to other traditional versions, including Teresa McCormack’s 1930 harp recording, where the tune is titled “Eamonn na Cnuic”, and Máire Ní Arbhasaigh’s sung fragment from 1931.
Bunting has noted “B” at certain points in the tune, which is usually interpreted as an indication of a note played an octave lower, in the bass. I have also chosen to play the low D-E passages in the bass, though that is not indicated in the transcription. This video is perhaps less a “demonstration” of the transcription, more an “interpretation” of it.
The Friar and Nun
Turning over to the next page, QUB SC MS4.29 p.48 shows another tune in the same transcription style, without bar-lines. Here is my demonstration of it:
As well as this transcription, Bunting gives us a fair amount of commentary on this tune. I don’t have copies of the manuscript pages, but they are cited by Donal O’Sullivan in his Bunting (1983, p.199), and Colette Moloney in her Introduction and Catalogue (2000, p.229). There is a little English song text:
A Lovely Nun to a Friar Came to Confess on a morning early In what, my dear, are you to blame come tell me most sincerely Alas, my guilt I dare not name but my lad he loved me dearly
There are also three different descriptions by Bunting, all within a few pages in QUB SC MS4.12 which kind of repeat the same information but with different emphasis or detail. Two of the descriptions say
This air is given on Hempson’s authority as being an Irish tune; he had learned it from his first master…
but the third does not mention O’Hampsey. We are told that
Many other harpers had it and played it with the same variation of the Octave to imitate the soft effeminate acute voice of the young lass and the masculine deep voice of the friar at confession
In the video, I am playing the sections marked “B 8ths” in the transcriptions using bass octaves. These sections in the harp transcription don’t match the male and female voices in Bunting’s song text. There is no mention of the harpers singing any words to it.
Bunting also tells us that
This was a favourite tune with the old harpers, and listened to by every auditor with great delight
Bunting published a piano arrangement in 1840 (no. 142), and in the introduction p.100 he writes:
This is the only air admitted into the collection which is not of unquestionable Irish origin; but the Editor has adopted it as Irish, on the authority of all the old Irish harpers with whom he has conversed; it was at all times a favourite tune of theirs… the higher and lower octaves aptly coincide with the alternations of the male and female voices in the song
Bunting’s piano arrangement is very enthusiastically classical piano style; it doesn’t follow the transcription very closely. He includes a division-type variation, and at the top of the page he says “The var[itation] by Lyons in 1698”, but I have no idea where this information comes from and I don’t see it in the transcription manuscripts.
There is some interesting sociological stuff going on here; compared to the beautiful and sophisticated Irish song airs played by many of the harpers, this is a sniggering schoolboy ditty of a song. How are we to understand the harpers and their listeners taking “great delight” in this “favourite”?
Attributions
All but two of the tunes in QUB SC MS4.29 p.44 to p.61 are tagged Denis O’Hampsey in later piano arrangements. The two exceptions are Kitty Tyrrell on p.47, and A ghadaidhe ghoid mo shláinte Uaim (The Jointure or the Golden Star) on p.53, which are both tagged “Higgins” in the annotated 1797 print. The Jointure is not a transcription, it is a neat edited copy, but we could be missing the facing page (indicated in my ms29 text pdf) which may have contained the transcription which this neat edited copy is based on.
I suspect that the Friar and Nun was also transcribed from Higgins in 1792; the notation style of both it and Caitlín Triall on p.47 of the manuscript looks different from the O’Hampsey transcriptions, but reminds me of Tá mé mo chodhladh on p.28.
Did Bunting carry these Higgins ’92 transcription sheets with him when he visited O’Hampsey in Magilligan in ’96? Did he scribble O’Hampsey’s tunes into spare spaces in the ’92 collecting booklets? Did he ask O’Hampsey’s opinion of the tunes he had collected from Higgins?
Thoughts on the Old Irish Harp Transcriptions Project
It struck me that these two raise questions about what my current work is; the manuscript transcriptions can offer different and interesting sets of tunes from what we get from classical arrangements, or from present day living tradition. It depends really what you want to do. I understand more and more that for me, my motivation is to understand how to play the old Irish harp, what is its natural style and idiom, how does a tune become adapted by the harper to sit easily and freely on the instrument.
This Old Irish Harp Transcriptions Project developed out of the realisation that the transcriptions “froze” the performing style of the last of the old harpers, and so a detailed study of those transcriptions could reveal subtle aspects of old Irish harp style and idiom that would not be available from any other source.
However, it quickly became clear that the study needed to firstly discriminate, so as to filter out all of the manuscript notations that are not transcriptions at all, but were copied from printed books and other written sources, or are new piano arrangements; then to filter out all the transcriptions that are not from harpers, but are from singers or other instrumentalists; and now the third level of filtering, to recognise transcriptions that are genuinely notated live from the playing of an old Irish harp tradition-bearer, but which are deficient in some way so as to not give us what we need to know, about how the tune was actually played.
I made a demonstration video of A chailíní, an bhfaca sibh Seoirse, played (with some editorial adjustments) from Edward Bunting’s live transcription from old Irish harp performance in the 1790s.
This interesting tune was published twice by Edward Bunting; he had transcribed it twice, from two different harpers on two different occasions.
The published piano arrangements are no.6 in his 1797 book and no.11 in his 1840 book. Both of these piano arrangements are derived from the same live transcription, made probably in the summer of 1796 from the harper Denis O’Hampsey in Magilligan, County Derry. The transcription of the instrumental tune with variations is spread across pages 46, 48, 49 and 50 of Queen’s University, Belfast, Special Collections, MS4.29, in a section of the manuscript (p.44 to about p.61) which is mostly transcriptions from O’Hampsey in 1796.
However, that is not what I am playing. I am working from the other, independent transcription of the tune which Bunting made, on QUB SC MS4.29 p.32/32/41/f15v. This transcription which I am working from is in the second, “difficult” section of the manuscript, which mostly seems to have been written in the summer of 1792 (see my tune list spreadsheet). Previous tune transcriptions on p.26 and 28 are tagged as being from Hugh Higgins in 1792; I am wondering if the transcriptions on p.30 and this one on p.32 are also from Higgins in ’92.
Bunting has written other information around the notation of our tune on p.32. At the top of the page in a cartouche, he writes a note to himself: “get Molly bawn the first tune learned on the harp”. The only transcription we have of Maíli Bhán is from Patrick Quin, probably between 1802-1806, in QUB SC ms33.1 p.62/71/f31v. Bunting also writes two other tune titles, “Rosh veg Doo or Rosey Black” at the top of the page, and “Hugar M’ Fean” at the bottom. These might not be relevant or contemporary notes. Both these tunes were later transcribed in QUB SC MS4.29. On p.86, in the other main group of Higgins ’92 transcriptions, we find a transcription of Thugamar féin an samhradh linn; but the copies of Róisín Dubh in the manuscript appear to date from 1796 (p.62, maybe from Black) or from a manuscript copy of 1803-4. (p.34)
Then Bunting writes information about our tune. He writes: “Shalena <Callena> vacca sheo shorse or / Chooheeir a Chur heava / McCabe’s verse’s on Carolan to the same tune”. This information relates to different titles and/or song texts connected to the tune.
Song texts and airs
Bunting’s phonetical titles refer to song texts, even though both of the ms4.29 transcriptions are clearly harp instrumental settings.
A chailíní, a’ bhfaca sibh Seóirse
We have a song text collected by Patrick Lynch from Denis O’Hampsey in 1802/3, and preserved in Lynch’s manuscript QUB MS4.26 p12/2j. Under the page header “Fragments from Denis Hempson”, Lynch has written the title “A chailinigh bhfaca sibh seorse” (Girls, have you seen George?) and four lines of text beginning “A chailinigh chailinigh bhfaca sibh Seoirse”. This text must relate to our tune, both the harp version on QUBSC MS4.29 p.46-50 transcribed from Denis O’Hampsey, and the harp version I am playing transcribed perhaps from Higgins. Both of these harp instrumental versions are titled with phonetic spellings of the title “A chailíní, a’ bhfaca sibh Seóirse”.
Above the transcription of Denis O’Hampsey’s harp instrumental set of the tune, (QUB SC MS4.29 p46), Bunting has titled the tune “Callena Vacca Sheo Shurse / with English words”. It may be that O’Hampsey gave Bunting a metrical English version of the song, like he did for Burns’s March (QUB SC MS4.29 p.51). But if he did, it does not seem to be in the manuscripts any more. Patrick Lynch made an English translation; on QUB SC MS4.36.48 f144v, a page headed “Fragments from Dennis Hempson”, he has written four English lines, starting “Girls O girls have you seen George”. This would have been done in 1802/3, so it seems less likely that the note in MS4.29 p.46 refers to Lynch’s translation.
Conchubhar Mhac Coiréibhe
James Cody’s song air and words: facsimile of QUB SC MS4.5 p.20 with the text transcribed from ms4.6 p.63. Published by Charlotte Milligan Fox in the Journal of the Irish Folk Song Society, vol VI, 1908, p.26
We have a song-air version of the tune in James Cody’s manuscripts, written between 1805 and 1810 (QUB SC MS4.5 p.20, and QUB SC MS4.6 p.53/62). Cody’s title for the tune is “Connchúbhar Mhac Coirhéibe”. Cody also wrote down the words of the song in QUB SC ms4/6, p.63. As well as Charlotte Milligan Fox’s version, shown above, Donal O’Sullivan printed this text in his Bunting (1983 p16); I haven’t seen this manuscript page. O’Sullivan’s text begins: “A chnochúir, a chnochúir, a chnochúir ‘ac coiréibhe, buin a’ chluig ins a’ ghoirt agus déanamuíd réidhteach”.
On the preceeding p.62 is the title “[Conchubár] mhc Coirhéibe le seumus mhac párlaín air eilínóra iní ruarc”. The song text on that page begins: “Tá gach glaoighe dá mongaibh, is a loinne mar ghlan pheúrla”; Collette Moloney in her Introduction and catalogue (ITMA 2000, p.201) lists this as the song of Conchubhar Mhac Coiréibhe, but I think it must belong to Cody’s previous tune on p.53, Siobhán Bhán Ní Dhónaill. The Irish Song Project at Queen’s just adds to the confusion by transcribing the Siobhán Bhán Ní Dhónaill text from p.62, but offering as a “translation” Donal O’Sullivan’s translation of the Conchubhar Mhac Coiréibhe text from p.63, and stating incorrectly that Bunting “significantly ammended” Cody’s vocal melody “for publication in 1840”.
In general I think that Cody’s manuscript QUB MS4/6 with song lyrics and their matching tunes written on adjacent pages has been very much neglected; Bunting does not seem to have used it very much in his piano arrangements, and I am not aware of any attempts to re-combine these lyrics and melodies. This is a potential PhD or Masters project for someone!
We also have a version of the words of Conchubhar Mhac Coiréibhe written down by Patrick Lynch in 1802 (QUB SC MS4.17 f52v-53r, as listed in Moloney2000 p.280). I haven’t see these pages. Thomas Hughes made a copy of the translation in QUB SC MS4.14.222.
McCabe’s verses on Carolan
Bunting writes above the p.32 transcription (perhaps from Higgins), “McCabe’s verse’s on Carolan to the same tune”. It is not entirely clear to me what this tag refers to. Charles McCabe was a very good friend of Carolan, a poet and a harper; Donal O’Sullivan, in his Carolan (1958 vol 1 p.67 on) gives us information about McCabe.
There is a story about McCabe playing a practical joke on Carolan, pretending to bring news of his own death; Carolan took the news very seriously and composed a lament for his friend McCabe, which begins “Ní Cathaoir mar chathaoir an Cathaoir fó ‘gcaoiniom” (QUB MS4.7 no127/191). but Donal O’Sullivan suggests (Bunting 1982 p.17) that Carolan’s lament for MacCabe should be sung to the tune Sgarúint na gCompánach / have you seen my Valentine (DOSB 25/57). He says that is a variant of our tune (which I don’t think is true) and suggests that Bunting’s tag is the wrong way round and should say “Carolan’s verses on McCabe”. This is a whole tangle in itself and deserves its own blog post.
There is another story of a practical joke (Donal O’Sullivan, Carolan vol 1 p.72-81) where, after a drinking match, Carolan tied McCabe up in a sack, and so the two poets exchanged satirical verses against each other. But there is no information about whether these improvised flyting verses were sung.
McCabe also composed a fine elegy after Carolan died, which begins “Nach í so an chuairt easbhach a laguidh mé réis mo shiubhail” (Donal O’Sullivan, Carolan vol 1 p.106). Is this what the tag “McCabe’s verse’s on Carolan to the same tune” refers to?
Carolan’s Elegy on the death of his wife Mary Maguire
Carolan’s wife, Mary Maguire, died in 1733, and he composed a lament for her, which begins “Intleacht na h-Éireann na Gréige ‘s na Róimhe” (Tomás Ó Máille,Amhráin Chearbhalláin p. 161). We are told by Joseph C. Walker (Irish Bards 1786, Appendix p.93) that the lament is sung “to the Irish Air of Concovar Mac Curely”
Interpreting the transcription and reconstructing the performance
The transcription of the tune of A chailíní, a’ bhfaca sibh Seóirse, perhaps from Hugh Higgins, on p.32 appears at first sight to be very clear, but there are problem bits which need addressed. The notation is at pitch, and the tune is in E minor, with a prominent and intrusive C (the notes in an E minor pentatonic mode are E, G, A, B, D). The tune is in 6-time, but Bunting has written the first three bars with only four beats. We can imagine that the E-G quavers at the start of these first three bars should be crotchets. Also, the bar count is off; Bunting has 9 bars in the first part of the tune. I think that Bunting’s bars 4 & 5 should be just one bar; his barline seems to be inserted.
In the second and the third section of the tune, Bunting has crossed out bars. I think he has deleted one bar in each section; I assume this is to do with the repetitive nature of the division-style music in these sections.
An interesting thing about this transcription is that it seems to represent a different class of transcriptions from many those I have discussed previously. A tune like Planxty Drury or Diarmaid Ó Dúda has the dots written first and then a neat copy on the facing page or lower down on the same page. But this transcription has the neat copy written over the top of the dots, almost entirely obliterating them. I think this can be more difficult for us, because we cannot see all of the changes that Bunting makes from his initial quick dots reaction to the performance, when he begins to think and make a neat edited version.
In the first two bars, the 4-note semiquavers a-g-e-d have a two-note quaver motif e-d written directly beneath. I wondered at first if this is a bass motif transposed up an octave, but it doesn’t seem to make sense like that. I feel that it is more likely to be an alternative way of playing that bar, if the a-g quick notes are a kind of optional extra. It is also possible that the e-d quavers represent how the tune might be sung – but that presumes that the rest of the notation is vocal, which I doubt. The transcription from O’Hampsey has this same feature.
The second section of the tune has double bars with repeat dots at the beginning and end, as if the tune were to be played as a four-part tune, 1 – 2 – 2 – 3.
The last section of the tune has a word written above the first bar. I cannot properly make this word out. I wondered at first if it might read “Sym” but there is a second tail, as if other letters have been inserted over the top. This final section is like a division variation, and can be compared to Denis O’Hampsey’s version which has a full set of division and other variations.
The same process of reconstruction can be done with O’Hampsey’s version, from Bunting’s transcription on QUB SC ms4.29 p.46-50. I did some work on that version 10 years ago but I wouldn’t now agree with a lot of my conclusions from back then! The O’Hampsey transcription has a lot of bass notes in the transcription, and is an important witness to old Irish harp right-hand (bass) practice. But the Higgins (perhaps!) transcription I am working from has no bass notes at all, and so I am playing it with no bass for this demonstration.
Other instrumental versions
As far as I can tell, this melody is not current in the living tradition of Irish music, but it does appear in one other old source. There is a baroque fiddle version in John and William Neal’s “Colection of the most Celebrated Irish Tunes proper for the violin, German Flute or Hautboy”, printed in 1724, p.18-19, where it is titled “Challeeny vacca shu sheorshe”.
facsimile edition by Nicholas Carolan, Irish Traditional Music Archive 2010, p.72-73
It seems to me that there is some kind of parallel between the sequence of variations in the Neal print and the sequence of variations transcribed by Bunting from Denis O’Hampsey, and indeed the single division variation transcribed by Bunting from Hugh Higgins (I think), which I am playing in this demonstration video.
Cornelius Lyons
On p.98 of the introduction to his 1840 volume, Bunting writes:
(No. 11 in the Collection) Chonchobhar Mac Areibhe. “Connor Mac Areavy”, known also by the name of Calleena bhacha su Seorse, “Girls, have you seen George?” – The melody is extremely ancient, and the variations by Lyons (Lord Antrim’s harper) are excellent. The modern musician will be surprised to find such an admirable arrangement by a person ignorant (as it is presumed all the Irish harpers at the beginning of the eighteenth century were) of modern musical science.
Cornelius Lyons (usually given as c1670-1740) was a contemporary of Carolan. He was harper to the Earl of Antrim. I think our main information about him comes from Arthur O’Neill’s Memoirs. O’Neill says “Cornelius Lyons was the other Great performer and a very fanciful composer especially in his Variations to the Tunes of Ellen a Roon, Calleena a Voch a thoo Shoarsha (Girls did you see George) Green Sleeves, the Cooleen, and several others. He was a County Kerry man” (QUB SC MS4.14 p.25). O’Neill also recounts some anecdotes of Lyons writing down a tune from Carolan’s live performance (the very first Old Irish Harp Transcription?) and travelling to London in the entourage of his patron the Earl of Antrim.
O’Neill tells us the names of two students that Lyons taught the harp, Hugh Quinn and Echlin O’Kane. Echlin went to Scotland and some of his repertory made its way into classical keyboard or pedal harp arrangements, including versions of some of Lyons’s compositions or variation sets.
It is not clear to me how we should understand Lyons. He was sighted, literate, and moved in cosmopolitan Anglo circles, including going to London. The works attributed to him in Bunting’s notes are mostly in the form of variation-sets, supposedly on traditional airs, but there seems some confusion about this even in our sources. Lyons’s variation set The Lady of the Desert is said by Bunting to be based on the traditional song air The Coolin, but there are clear differences and it is not immediately certain in my opinion whether this is true. Perhaps there is a parallel, in that A chailíní, a’ bhfaca sibh Seóirse might be Lyons’s instrumental variation set, which he composed based loosely on the traditional song air Conchubhar mhac Coiréibhe.
It is not clear to me how much this music is consciously based by Lyons on older traditional airs, and how much it is new composition with a traditional form and style. There is a lot of “classical” harmonic structure and content in these variation sets as well, especially the baroque “division” variations. It is not impossible that Lyons could have got some formal classical European music training in London as well as learning the old Irish harp traditions back home.
O’Hampsey played a number of Lyons variation sets, including Lady of the Desert, A chailíní, a’ bhfaca sibh Seóirse, and Eibhlín a Rún. Other harpers also had Lyons’s music; Hugh Higgins is listed as the source for Bunting’s transcription of Sliabh Gaillean, and also as one of the multiple sources for Lyons’s tune Miss Hamilton.
Untangling strands
As you can see there are a lot of tangled strands to this tune. One of the things I am trying to do here is to untangle things, to try and be more specific and to follow each thread and look to each specific fragment of the old tradition at a time on its own terms, to make genuine connections and to look sideways to make comparisons.
For this tune, Donal O’Sullivan has been clear and helpful, printing both of Bunting’s ms4.29 harp transcriptions alongside Denis O’Hampsey’s words of A chailiní, a’ bhfaca sibh seoirse (DOSB 6 and 6a); and printing Cody’s words and tune together of Conchubhar mhac Coiréibhe (MOSB 11).
Bunting himself has been unhelpful; he printed two different piano arrangements, both derived from the Denis O’Hampsey harp instrumental transcription, but under different titles in 1797 and 1840. Ann and Charlie Heymann were perhaps influenced by Bunting’s 1840 title when they sang Cody’s words of Conchubhar mhac Coiréibhe, to a synthetic combination of the two different harp instrumental versions of A chailiní, a’ bhfaca sibh seoirse, on their CD Cruit go nÓr (2006).
In this blog post I have tried to lay out all the different strands, the three different notations of Lyons’s version of the tune with variations; the song air from Cody, and the various sets of lyrics that are said to be related to different variants of the tune. I think that we can always learn new insights into the old tradition if we carefully separate out different threads, different versions passed down through different lineages and shown to us by different witnesses. And we can learn a lot also, if we can identify and then contrast versions that come through harp tradition, song tradition and fiddle tradition, because I think that each different instrumental or vocal tradition will take the material in its own idiomatic direction. I even think that different harpers had different regional styles, or different styles inherited from their teachers, so that if we have multiple variants transcribed from different harpers we might gain insights into how different individuals’ performance styles differed or were similar.
But in my playing in the demonstration video I am following my principle in this Old Irish Harp Transcription Project, in trying to make a realisation of one particular transcription of one particular version as notated live from one particular tradition-bearer at one particular point in the summer of 1792. I think we still have a long way to go to understand this tradition and this music before we can dive in and start creating new variants based on a deep insider knowledge of the old Irish harp tradition. But, I also feel that we are getting closer…
I made a demonstration video of Tá Mé Mo Chodladh, from Edward Bunting’s live field transcription of the playing of old Irish harper Hugh Higgins in 1792.
Tame Ta me ma halla / Im[..] asleep and na russkin me / dont waken me
Pádraigín Ní Uallacháin suggested to me that this can be understood as a phonetic attempt at “Tá mé mo chodladh, nár dhúisce mé” (I am asleep, may I not awaken).
Below the notation, Bunting has written
from Hugh Higgins in 1792
It’s very unusual for Bunting to give us provenance or date information in his transcriptions. Normally we have to collate provenance information from later piano arrangements or indexes, which can be contradictory or unreliable. Of course, we can’t be sure that this title and attribution were written onto the transcription page at the time – nothing is certain in Bunting’s manuscripts!
Bunting’s notation on p.28 is unusually detailed and clear for a 1792 transcription. He has not barred the tune, but he has written in note stems and beams to indicate the rhythm. Unfortunately he seems to switch his note durations, sometimes writing crotchets and quavers, and sometimes writing quavers and semiquavers. He clarifies his thinking on the facing page 29/29/38/f14r. This edited copy is perhaps a little closer than usual to the transcription, but he has still made edits, omitting some of the notes, and expanding some of his “tr” or “+” marks into little notated note clusters, which may reflect Higgins’s harp practice, or may alternatively reflect Bunting’s piano imagination.
In my demonstration, I have used two different fingerings for these trills or ornaments. The trills or ornaments on E (bars 7, 15, & 31) can easily be fingered 2-1-2, which is cúl aithris in the table of “graces” (1840 intro p.25). However, I found this less convenient for the trills or ornaments on B (bars 4 & 12), and there I have used 3-2-4 which is not in the table of graces. I rationalised it to myself as a variety of barrlúdh, although the bárrludh gestures seem to rise up to finish on the upper note. Interestingly, the very next page on ms4.29 shows a live transcription of Burns’s March, which also includes a similarly shaped ornament (system 2, notated f-a-f) which is in a position where 2-1-2 fingering (cúl aithris) does not work very well. We have usually assumed this notation of Burns’s March is transcribed from Denis O’Hampsey, but I am now thinking that it is not in an O’Hampsey group, and it is noted one note up, whereas all of O’Hampsey’s transcriptions are noted at pitch. I have wondered before if this transcription of Burns’s March might be from Higgins; and so it is notable that this unusual ornament matches.
Bunting made a little note to himself on p.29, writing “major” above bar 17 where the flat 7th first appears. I am starting to seem more of Bunting’s naivety about this music in 1792 transcriptions, and a greater confidence in the 1796 transcriptions. (see Bunting’s collecting trips for more about these different tours).
Bunting did not take this transcription any further; as far as I can see he did not develop this version of the tune into a piano arrangement in any of his manuscripts or books.
Hugh Higgins
According to Bunting (1840 intro p.64), Hugh Higgins was 55 years old in the summer of 1792, so he must have been born c.1737. He is said to have died in 1796.
Higgins was later described by Arthur O’Neill, in his Memoirs: the first draft is QUB SC MS4.46 p.16, and the neat revision is QUB SC MS4.14 p.20. The two texts are slightly different, and O’Neill seems to be talking a bit sideways, but he tells us that Higgins was from a respectable family in Tirawley, Co. Mayo. His mother’s name was Burke; he was blinded early on and his parents sent him to learn to play the harp. He did extremely well at his studies and became an excellent harper: “one of the best I ever heard” says O’Neill in ms4.14. Higgins had “genteel manners”, and travelled in the style of a gentleman, with a servant boy; he “spared no expense” on his clothes, but because he was blind he had to trust his boy to choose the colours.
The young William Carr said in 1807 that Higgins “played very well and had an elegant harp”. (ed. Angela Byrne, A Scientific, antiquarian and picturesque tour – John (Fiott) Lee in Ireland, England and Wales, 1806-7 Routlege 2018)
I have not yet properly investigated Hugh Higgins. From looking at my ms29 text transcript and my tune list spreadsheet I notice that there are groups of tunes transcribed live from Higgins by Edward Bunting in 1792. (Higgins died in 1796, so presumably missed Bunting’s ’96 collecting tour). There is this possible group around Tá mé mo chodhladh on p.28, including Toby Peyton on p.26, and perhaps also Burns’s March on p.30 and A chailíní, an bhfaca sibh Seoirse on p.32. There is another group from p.78-90: Mild Mable Kelly, Sliabh Gaillean (Slieve Gallen), Cupán Uí Eaghra (O’Hara’s cup), Caitlín Ní Uallacháin (Kitty Nowlan), Thugamar féin an samhradh linn (with variation), Rois Dilloun / Young Lady Dillon, and Dr. Hart.
This group also includes a tune list on QUB SC MS4.29 p79, titled “From Hugh Higgins”: John Jones Carolan ill Grah ga miste very old Cathleen ne Oullahan Anthony [Mo] [Sonav-] Slumber Maggenis Carolan
Perhaps most intriguing is the notation of Sliabh Gaillean on page 80-81. Page 81 has the unusual variation with a melody played in the bass register. Underneath this, Bunting has written the scale of a harp, and marked out the “sisters”, and the “right hand” in the bass and the “left hand” in the treble. Does this give us the gamut of Higgins’s harp, and did Bunting note down this scale as part of noting down Higgins’s bass variation to Sliabh Gaillean?
Other versions
Tá Mé Mo Chodladh is a lovely traditional song air. There are variants known in Scotland, and there are other related tunes and songs. For our purposes it might be worth noting two other variants of this tune.
As well as his live transcription from Hugh Higgins in 1792, Bunting also made a live transcription, apparently from the playing of Denis O’Hampsey, possibly in 1796. This transcription is on Queen’s University Belfast, Special Collections, MS4.29 page 171/169/178/f84r. It is titled “Tame ma Collad na Duss”, which Pádraigín suggests represents “Tá mé mo chodhladh ná dúis…” (I am asleep, let me not…)
You can see that it is done in a very different writing style, which suggests to me Bunting’s 1796 collecting trip(s). It is also in section 3 of MS4.29, but I don’t know that the sections of the manuscript are organised chronologically at all. This transcription has a lot of notes marked “B” which represents bass notes. In 1798, Bunting developed this p.171 transcription into a piano arrangement (QUB SC MS4.33.3 p56-7) and he writes there, “This setting is exactly set <copied> from Hempson – both Bass & Treble”. Of course it isn’t, as it is a piano arrangement in the key of f major, but it does have spare bass octaves in exactly the places where he has “B” marked in the transcription. There is a more developed piano arrangement frim the 1830s in MS4.27, where it is tagged Dennis a Hempson, Magilligan, 1796; and the published piano arrangement in 1840 is labelled in the index Hempson, Magilligan, 1792. (for all the fame of Bunting’s published books of piano arrangements, there are very few recordings of his arrangements being played on the piano, and I can’t find one at all of Tá Mé Mo Chodladh, no.100 in 1840)
I also was interested to consider a traditional recording of Tá Mé Mo Chodladh as an instrumental slow air. This is Willy Clancy in 1969:
Charlotte Milligan Fox published notation of a similar version, collected by her from “Piper Kelly, an old musician who wanders round the North of Ireland… he said this lament was given to him by “ould Jimmy Joyce, a Galway piper” who had been to the Belfast Convention of Harpers in 1792″.
Journal of the Irish Folk Song Society, volume 1, [1904], p.16
I would say that Higgins and O’Hampsey are much closer to each other, but rather different from Clancy & Kelly, who are much closer to traditional song versions. But I think that O’Hampsey is also “squarer” than Higgins, that Higgins has potentially more of the flavour of Clancy & Kelly. The main difference I am hearing between the harp versions, and the pipe versions, is that the pipers have a sharp 7th whereas the harpers have a flat 7th. I don’t know if this is because of the pipe scale, or if the pipes are following singers, or what the reason is.
Again, I wonder what the connection is between the performance style of our harpers a bit over 200 years ago, and this piper, a bit over 50 years ago. If Bunting tried to make a transcription of Willie Clancy’s playing, and then worked up his transcription into a piano arrangement, what would he end up with? Should we try to understand and interpret the 1792 transcription from the playing of Higgins, through an understanding of Clancy’s recording?
