Source: P.W. Joyce, Old Irish Folk Music and Songs.1

“I copied […] about 1873 from a MS. lent me from near Lough Conn, County Mayo.”

Of possible relevance here is the note regarding the source for the song ‘Owen Core’:

“About twenty years ago a young national teacher from Mayo lent me a music book containing a great number of beautiful Irish airs, extremely well written, and nearly all belonging to Connaught, which had been copied in a district on the shore of Lough Conn. Among these airs I found the present one, and copied it with many others.”2

Erroneously attributed to Carolan, this tune is similar not only in name but also melodically to the far more elaborate Planxty Davis the composer of which as asserted by Hardiman3 likely being Sligo harper Thomas Connellan (c.1640 – 1698).

  1. P.W. Joyce (ed.), Old Irish Folk Music and Songs, A Collection of 842 Irish Airs and Songs Hitherto Unpublished. Longmans, Green, And Co., London, New York, Bombay, And Calcutta. Dublin: Hodges, Figgis, & Co., Ltd. 1909, p144.
  2. P. W. Joyce (ed.), Irish Music and Song: A Collection Of Songs In The Irish Language Set to Music. M.H. Gill and Son, Dublin, 1901, p4.
  3. James Hardiman 1782-1855 (ed.), Irish Minstrelsy, Or Bardic Remains of Ireland With English Poetical Translations, Volume 1, 1831, p179.

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