Source: “Morrison’s Fancy” in Waifs and Strays of Gaelic Melody.¹
Audio clip: James Morrison (fiddle), John Muller (piano), ‘Mist on the Meadow, Castlebar Races’. Okeh 21009, 1922, 78rpm disc. (The full track can be heard here).

The title references “one of the most ignominious defeats in British military history”² in Castlebar during the failed Irish Rebellion of 1798. Around 900 French forces and 1100 Irish rebels under the command of General Jean Joseph Amable Humbert routed 6000 British troops in what was to become known as the “Races of Castlebar” or “Castlebar Races”.

1. Francis O’Neill (ed.), Waifs and Strays of Gaelic Melody, 2nd. ed (Chicago: Lyon & Healy, 1922), p109.
2. T. Pakenham, The Year of Liberty: The Great Irish Rebellion of 1798, (London : Hodder and Stoughton), 1969.