Brighid Óg

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.

You can check my Carolan Tune Collation spreadsheet to see the different sources and variants of these different tunes.

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.