Caití na gCuach

Bunting wrote a live transcription of a tune into his “Damn your Body” pamphlet in the 1790s. We will look at it very briefly and then move on.

This notation is written on the same page as the transcription of Maidin bhog aoibhinn which I think might have been transcribed live from the singing of Charles Byrne. It is on QUB SC MS4.29 page 195/193/202/f96r. Bunting has written a few attempts at a title above the notation. In the centre at the top is a phonetic attempt at Irish: “Catty na Goach”. To the top left is an English translation, “Catty with the / Cuckoos”. Then on the top stave of the page there is some smudged out writing that I am struggling to read. There is a letter that could be “M” or “W” or something else, and then it seems to say “White” and then there is a loopy design like “ssss”. Then it seems to say “Mark” twice, one over the other, and then it says “the Coockoo”. In the top right is a huge smudge and I can’t see what is written there.

Queen’s University Belfast, Special Collections, MS4.29 page 195/193/202/f96r
Download PDF typeset version or mp3 machine audio

The music notation is also slightly tricky to read. It looks like there are underlying live transcription dots for some of it. On the second staff we see the tune beginning; it seems to be a kind of E minor, though I am often not 100% sure about this kind of thing. My machine audio plays it with F♯. The dots in this first line seem to have been expanded out into notes, and then beamed up with barlines added. Partway through the first line there are some deleted notes and over-writing and a few barlines missing.

On the second line we get basically some repetition of the same motifs, starting with dots and finishing with a neat careful copy which doesn’t look like it is over-written onto dots at all.

Other versions

Donal O’Sullivan, Bunting part 1 1935-6 p.101-104 discusses versions of this tune. Bunting collected a different version, which you can see on QUB SC MS4.29 page 245/243/252/f121r. This transcription apparently from a singer was developed into a piano arrangement as no.28 in 1797. Bunting’s later annotation to the printed version says it was collected at Burke’s, Carrowkeel, which fits with its presence in part 4 of MS4.29, which I think contains items he collected in the summer of 1792 on his collecting trip of the West with Kirwan.

O’Sullivan also lists other tunes with similar or related titles in other collections including Neal (see Carolan facsimile, 2010, p.69 And 93), Stanford-Petrie (313, 512, 1309, 1396).

Song lyrics

O’Sullivan lists some song lyrics with related titles as well, including a song collected by Lynch in County Mayo in 1802, titled “Caiti na ccuach” and beginning “A Chaitigh na gcuagh, non truagh leat”, which you can see on QUB SC MS4.7.199. On the facing page MS4.7.200 is another song titled “Caiti an cul bháin” which begins “A chaiti na ccuach bu mhinic mo chuairt ort”. You can also see Lynch’s English translations, of “Caiti na ccuach” on QUB SC MS4.32.045 beginning “O Kity of the ringlets will you not pity my desease” and of “Caiti an cuil bhain” on MS4.32.194 beginning O Kitty of the ringlets I have frequently visited you”.

O’Sullivan says that the first verse of Lynch’s “Caiti na gCuach” lyric matches the first verse of “Cití ní’ac Aodha” in Amhráin Chearbhalláin p.243 which begins “A Chití na gcuach, an truagh leat mise bheith tinn”. He also offers other potential matches. This is all taking us too far away from our initial transcription notation though.

Because there are so many different related and unrelated lyrics connected to this title, I have no idea what words our informant may have sung. I am presuming our transcription is a song version, because (as you can see on my spreadsheet) most of the items in the Damn your Body section, and especially the items next to our tune on page 195, seems to be from Charles Byrne‘s singing. And also, our transcription doesn’t look very harp-like. But I don’t really know.

Title

Cuach has a few different meanings, including “curl” and “cuckoo”. I think the form “na gCuach” would be correct for both “with/of the cuckoos” and “with/of the curls”.

There are quite a few tune and song title where the woman is called “na gCuach”, of the curls, as a way of praising the appearance of her hair, as we see clearly in Lynch’s English translation of a couple of the different song lyrics. Another song we have looked at before that uses this motif is Nancy deas na gCuach.

I am not sure if other titles such as Kitty Nig Aodha (Magee) might derive from them sounding a bit like na gCuach or the other way around.

Bunting’s other live transcription version of the tune, collected from a singer in Mayo in 1792 (MS29 p.245) is also titled in the transcription page “Catty na Guach”. In his 1797 piano development from it, Bunting gives the title as “Catigh na ccuach – Kitty the Cuckoo”. Was he reading this title translation from our p.195 transcription?

Do we believe that the scribbled words on MS4.29 p.195 are basically a kind of dictation from the tradition-bearer? if so, then Bunting’s informant clearly understood it as “with the Cuckoos”.

Were they having a bit of fun at poor Bunting’s expense?


Many thanks to Queen’s University Belfast Special Collections for the digitised pages from MS4 (the Bunting Collection), and for letting me use them here.


Many thanks to the Arts Council of Northern Ireland for helping to provide the equipment used for these posts, and also for supporting the writing of these blog posts.

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