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The Provenance of the Londonderry Air

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2020

Brian Audley
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Abstract

The internationally known Londonderry Air carries the status of a cultural symbol of Ireland. Both its collector and its publisher claimed in 1855 that the music was very old, a belief which has passed into conventional wisdom. In 1934 and 1979 two writers cast doubts on the tune's age and suggested that its collector had more to do with the moulding of the tune than the process of tradition. Subsequently, doubts about the music have prevailed in academic circles but remained unexamined. This article queries the deductions of these writers and explores the musical origins and evolution of the Air. The methodology is historical and musicological. From an examination of collections of Irish traditional music evidence is presented in support of the tune's age and fashioning by tradition. The lost verses of a song known to have been accompanied by the tune in the nineteenth century are revealed as the likely original words to the music.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of the Royal Musical Association , Volume 125 , Issue 2 , 2000 , pp. 205 - 247
Copyright
Copyright © Royal Musical Association, 2000

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Footnotes

I am indebted to the Special Collections Department, Queen's University Library, Belfast, for helpful assistance during my work with the Bunting Collection and for permission to reproduce a page from the Bunting manuscripts in Figure 1 below. Special thanks are due to members of the Trelawny-Ross family who received me warmly and allowed me access to their archives. I am also particularly grateful to the following: Marjorie Geary of the Irish Library, Coleraine, for her cheerful assistance over the years since this research began in 1993; Colette O'Flaherty of the Irish Department, National Library of Ireland, Dublin; Sandra Tuppen of the British Library, London; and Johanne Trew of the University of Limerick. I have also enjoyed the cooperation of the staffs of the Royal Irish Academy, Dublin; the Music Department, Central Library, Belfast; the National Library of Scotland, Edinburgh; the Library of Trinity College, Dublin; the Irish Traditional Music Archive, Dublin; and the Vaughan Williams Memorial Library, London. Thanks are also due to Irish scholar Tony McCombe, and to John Moulden for access to papers in the Sam Henry Collection, Kilrea, county Londonderry. I also wish to declare my appreciation of the foundations laid by previous researchers Donal O'Sullivan, Anne Gilchrist and Hugh Shields.

References

1 Petrie, George, Ancient Music of Ireland (Dublin, 1855), 57. Petrie published the tune as a harmonized piano arrangement, listing it as an ‘anonymous song air'.Google Scholar

2 Alfred Perceval Graves (1846–1931) was the son of the Protestant bishop of Limerick. He helped found the Irish Literary Society (1891) and the Irish Folk Song Society (1904), both based in London, as well as An Feis Ceoil (1897) in Dublin. Katherine Hinkson (1861–1931) is better known as the poet Katherine Tynan; her song to the Air is entitled Irish Love Song but is sometimes identified by its first line, ‘Would God I were the tender apple blossom'. See below for reference to Graves's songs.Google Scholar

3 Parry, Hubert, The Art of Music (London, 1893); 2nd edn as The Evolution of the Art of Music (London, 1896), 79.Google Scholar

4 Bunting, Edward, A General Collection of the Ancient Irish Music (London, [1797]); idem, A General Collection of the Ancient Music of Ireland (London, 1809); idem, The Ancient Music of Ireland (Dublin, 1840). The year of publication was not printed in Bunting's first book, but in his third (p. 5) he writes that it ‘was the first and only collection of genuine harp music given to the world up to the year 1796'. From this statement it has been assumed that the first book was published in 1796, until recently, when an advertisement was found for its sale in the Belfast Newsletter of 10 November 1797. This latter year is confirmed by a note in Bunting's handwriting at the beginning of a manuscript containing the arranged music of his first volume (Belfast, Queen's University Library, Bunting Collection, MS 33[5]), which reads ‘published in 1797'.Google Scholar

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8 Published by Boosey & Co. Ltd (London, 1913). It is not generally known that the song is given with two titles; the second, Eily Dear, attaches to an appropriate alternative set of lyrics to which Weatherly adds a note saying that these should be used when the song is sung by a man.Google Scholar

9 Recorded for the Victor label in Camden, NJ, on 15 September 1915.Google Scholar

10 Sunday Times, 12 August 1928.Google Scholar

11 Ibid., 26 August 1928.Google Scholar

12 Henry Coleman, ‘The Londonderry Air’, Musical Times, 59 (1918), 349–50.Google Scholar

13 Sam Henry, in his weekly column ‘Songs of the People’ for the Northern Constitution, Coleraine, Northern Ireland, 1 December 1923. He wrote that after the submission of a new set of words for the Air, written by a T. Wray Milnes of Leeds at the request of the collector Frank Kidson, to music publishers Schott & Co. the publishers stated that at the time ‘over eighty sets of words were in use, many of the popular song kind, such as Danny Boy'.Google Scholar

14 Douglas Hyde was a friend of Alfred Graves and assistant editor of the series The New Irish Library, published by the London-based Irish Literary Society, which Graves helped found.Google Scholar

15 Quoted in Aloys Fleischmann, Music in Ireland (Oxford, 1952), 214. An tOireachtas was founded by the Gaelic League and was established as an annual festival similar to the Welsh Eisteddfodau. Its first president was Douglas Hyde. P. W. Joyce (1827–1914) was an adviser on Irish music to both An tOireachtas and An Feis.Google Scholar

16 Gilchrist, Anne G., ‘A New Light upon the Londonderry Air’, Journal of the English Folk Dance and Song Society, 1 (1934), 115–21. This article has echoes of material contained in Alfred Graves's introduction to his The Irish Song Book (London, 1895).Google Scholar

17 Hugh Shields, ‘New Dates for Old Songs – 1766 to 1803’, Long Room, 18–19 (1979), 34–41 (with music example on inside front cover).Google Scholar

18 Because the vernacular music of Ireland embraces such a breadth of musical and cultural influences it is arguably better to avoid the general term ‘folk music’, which relates to a more narrowly defined culture. The term ‘traditional’ is now often preferred, and it is in this sense that I use it here.Google Scholar

19 Because of a shortage of subscriptions the society published only the one book, though a small supplement to it did appear in 1882.Google Scholar

20 Petrie, Ancient Music of Ireland, 57.Google Scholar

21 Ibid., 78.Google Scholar

22 The Northern Whig, 21 August 1928.Google Scholar

23 Daily Telegraph, 5 September 1963.Google Scholar

24 There is documentary evidence that a significant proportion of Jane Ross's manuscripts were still in the possession of the Trelawny-Ross family in 1954. It is possible that the date, 1851, was learnt from the manuscripts.Google Scholar

25 Photocopied transcription from Revd W. Manning's notebook in the Sam Henry archives, Kilrea, county Londonderry.Google Scholar

26 Gilchrist, , ‘A New Light upon the Londonderry Air’, 117.Google Scholar

27 In The Reliques of Father Prout, Collected and Arranged by Oliver Yorke Esq. (Pseud.) (London, 1836), i, 254, the author of The Bells of Shandon, Revd Francis Mahony (c.1805–1866), is quoted as having used the tune of The Groves of Blarney for his song. Although the song came to be called The Bells of Shandon its original title was The Shandon Bells. He wrote it while he was a young student at the Irish College in Rome, possibly about 1824. C. F. Cronin stated in Gem Selection: Songs of Ireland (Dublin, c.1930), p. xviii, that The Bells of Shandon was first published in Fraser's Magazine in 1834. It became very popular, appearing repeatedly on ballad sheets.Google Scholar

28 The story of the writing of The Groves of Blarney is told in a publication produced by subscription upon the death of its author, Richard Alfred Millikin, entitled Poetical Fragments of the Late Richard Alfred Millikin, with an Authentic Memoir of his Life (London, 1823). Thomas Crofton Croker, a friend of Millikin's, quotes the relevant section in his book Popular Songs of Ireland (London, 1839; repr. as Morley's Universal Library, 40, London, 1886). This article confirms that the tune of Castle Hyde was adopted for the new song. The relevant passage is reproduced in Appendix 1, in the version published by Routledge in 1886, for the light it sheds on the vagary of tradition. By 1859 the song even found its way to Italy. The National Library of Ireland, Dublin, has a manuscript (MS 18412) containing a translation of the words into Italian. A note tells us that it was sung by Garibaldi while in camp near Lake Como on the evening of 25 May 1859. The translation was sent from Paris by Francis Mahony (see above, note 27) on 2 June 1859 at the request of a Mr or Mrs MacCarthy O'Leary. The song is entitled ‘i boschi di Blarnea'. It seems likely that this translation into Italian was the work of Mahony.Google Scholar

29 Petrie, , Ancient Music of Ireland, p. xv. In a note on Thomas Moore's ‘Tis the Last Rose of Summer, Alfred Moffatt, in his book Minstrelsy of Ireland (London, 1897), 285, also asserted the relatedness of this tune to The Young Man's Dream, Castle Hyde and The Groves of Blarney, and reiterated Petrie's statement that the oldest of these is The Young Man's Dream.Google Scholar

30 In MS 29, p. 41, Bunting lists the tune as one of a number collected from Hampsey in 1795–6. The notated tune first appears on p. 45 of the manuscript. Bunting was the first person in Ireland who systematically collected music and songs directly from musicians. He began at a Belfast festival of harpers in 1792 when, at the age of 19, he was employed by the organizing committee to notate the music faithfully; Hampsey was one of the harpers at the gathering. Bunting travelled the country for many years thereafter, continuing to gather music and songs from a variety of traditional musicians. The music was presented in his books as piano arrangements, but his faithfulness to the original notations is sometimes breached in small ways.Google Scholar

31 Hampsey was born in county Londonderry about 1695 and died there in 1807. At the harpers’ gathering in 1792 he was approximately 97 years old and, exceptionally, played in the manner of the ancient tradition, with long fingernails. Bunting subsequently visited him at his home at Magilligan, between the city of Londonderry and the town of Coleraine, and continued collecting the music of the old harpers from him. Bunting has much to say about him in his 1840 book. See also Brian Audley, Denis O'Hampsey, the Harper: c1695–1807 (Belfast, 1992).Google Scholar

32 A General Collection of the Ancient Irish Music, 9.Google Scholar

33 Over a 13-year period Donal O'Sullivan took on the task of re-editing the tunes in Bunting's publications using the manuscripts. O'Sullivan's interpretations of the manuscript notations, with notes, were published in the London-based Journal of the Irish Folk Song Society, 22–5 (1927–39). Shields ('New Dates for Old Songs’, 38) refers to O'Sullivan's interpretation in this publication (22 (1927), 57). My reading from Bunting's original manuscript version differs slightly from both Shields and O'Sullivan in the interpretation of some note durations. I have been guided by Bunting's printed versions and close examination of the manuscript. Figure 1 (see below, p. 232) is a photograph of the manuscript version. The final note of the first phrase, the g’, is a blotted minim; Shields somehow sees this note as a dotted crotchet. Although I have highlighted the correlation of pitches in this example and subsequent ones, similarities extend beyond this and in most cases will be best understood if played.Google Scholar

34 The Ancient Music of Ireland, 17.Google Scholar

35 Bartlett Cooke, A Selection of Twenty-One Favourite Irish Airs (Dublin, 1793).Google Scholar

36 MS 29, pp. 228–9.Google Scholar

37 The Scots Musical Museum, 2 vols. (Edinburgh, 1787), ii, tune no. 126 (p. 131). Printed and sold by James Johnson, who is also listed as the engraver. This work was expanded and reprinted a number of times during the following century; by 1803/4 it comprised six volumes. The collection contains a number of Irish tunes.Google Scholar

38 Ibid., tune no. 146 (p. 153), transposed here into G major to facilitate comparison. Henry Grattan Flood refers to this notation as a ‘Scotch variant’ of Eamonn an cnuic, which he regards as the progenitor of The Young Man's Dream (A History of Irish Music, Dublin, 1905, 207).Google Scholar

39 Cronin, C. F., in a note on ‘Tis the Last Rose of Summer, Gem Selections, p. xviii.Google Scholar

40 Shields, ‘New Dates for Old Songs’, 38.Google Scholar

41 Gilchrist, ‘A New Light upon the Londonderry Air’, 116.Google Scholar

42 The latest date we have of Bunting visiting either county Donegal or county Londonderry is 1811 when, according to the index of airs in his 1840 book, he collected the tune Rose Connolly in Coleraine.Google Scholar

43 The popularity of the music associated with The Young Man's Dream and Castle Hyde is further suggested by items such as the following: As a Beam o'er the Face of the Waters may Glow (A Selection of Irish Melodies, i/1 [Dublin, 1807], 46–9), for which Thomas Moore adapted Hampsey's music; Oh When that Mild Eye is Beaming (Crosby's Irish Musical Repository [London, 1808], 259–61), an anonymous adaptation of the same music; Sad and Luckless was the Season (Select Collection of Original Irish Airs, ed. George Thomson, ii [Edinburgh, 1816], 80), an arrangement by Beethoven of the music of The Groves of Blarney, and The Kiss Dear Maid thy Lip has Left, from the same publication, an imitation in 4/4 of ‘Tis the Last Rose of Summer, also arranged by Beethoven. The music of The Groves of Blarney was also incorporated in Flotow's opera Martha.Google Scholar

44 Dublin, Royal Irish Academy. Both these men were active collectors in Munster between 1840 and 1850. Forde also acquired material from Ireland's north-western counties, but not Donegal and Londonderry. These manuscripts contain many entries extracted from, or given by, other collectors, some of which were originally gathered earlier than 1840 and from other parts of the country.Google Scholar

45 MS 24.0.22(7), tune 529.Google Scholar

46 Gilchrist, ‘A New Light upon the Londonderry Air’, 116.Google Scholar

47 James Goodman (1828–96). Collection held in Dublin, Trinity College Library.Google Scholar

48 Patrick Weston Joyce (1829–1914). Collection held in Dublin, National Library of Ireland.Google Scholar

49 Henry Hudson (1798–1889). Collection held in Boston, MA, Public Library; photocopy held in Dublin, National Library of Ireland.Google Scholar

50 Halliday Sparling, Irish Minstrelsy (London, 1888). In a note (p. 504) on Richard Millikin, the writer of the song The Groves of Blarney, Sparling states that Castle Hyde was written by a weaver named Barrett about 1790. As stated by Thomas Crofton Croker (see Appendix 1), though, its author was reportedly an intinerant poet. Crofton Croker attributes yet another occupation to its writer, calling the song a ‘lyric production of a drunken cobbler’ in his Researches in the South of Ireland (London, 1824), 129.Google Scholar

51 MS 5, unnumbered page; a note says ‘From Mrs Houston, Greenville. This should be in 3/4'. The notated key is E; I have transposed it to G for ease of comparison. A note in this manuscript book, in Bunting's handwriting, reads ‘Edward Bunting's Irish Airs. Collected in 1805 to 1810'. Greenville was the Belfast estate of the Houston family who resided on the outskirts of old Belfast and at Ballywalter in county Down.Google Scholar

52 Leighton, Samuel, ‘The Londonderry Air: Story of its Discovery’, The Northern Whig, 18 August 1928.Google Scholar

53 The notated key is F; I have transposed it to G for ease of comparison. Its original collector, John Windele (1801–65), was an antiquary of Cork. While Forde did his collecting and borrowing in the 1840s, Windele may have collected the tune earlier than this.Google Scholar

54 Holden, Smollet, A Collection of Old Established Irish Slow and Quick Tunes, 2 vols. (Dublin, 1806), i.Google Scholar

55 Gilchrist, , ‘A New Light upon the Londonderry Air’, 120.Google Scholar

56 Shields, , ‘New Dates for Old Songs’, 38.Google Scholar

57 Ibid., 38.Google Scholar

58 Holden, , A Collection of Old Established Irish Slow and Quick Tunes, i. The Groves of Blarney was the tune (and Holden's the specific notation) which inspired Moore to write ‘Tis the Last Rose of Summer. When Moore wrote the latter song (Irish Melodies, iii/5, Dublin, 1813, 15) he included one sharpened note outside the scale. In Bunting's 1840 notation of The Young Man's Dream (p. 17) the same feature is introduced at the same point; this was not present in his previously printed and manuscript versions of the tune, and this may indicate a less than scrupulous adherence to his collected material than might be wished.Google Scholar

59 Croker, , Popular Songs of Ireland, 142–4. In later ballad sheets the phrase was printed as ‘Oh! Illaloo &c'.Google Scholar

60 The tune appears in MS 12(2). It is on an unnumbered page with The Jolly Ploughman, James Plunket and The Fiddler's Lament, and is notated between the first two of these. No source is given for any of these tunes, but in Bunting's 1840 book he lists The Jolly Ploughman and James Plunket as having been taken from harper James Duncan in 1792. It seems safe to assume that this Castle Hyde was also taken from Duncan. He was one of the harpers who played at the Belfast harpers’ gathering in 1792 (see above, note 30).Google Scholar

61 MS 29, pp. 228–9. Beneath the tune is the title The Young Man's Dream.Google Scholar

62 MS 12, unnumbered page. The title is given as Colladh an Oigfir. The Young Man's Dream (or Slumbering).Google Scholar

63 MS 29, p. 45. The tune also has an alternative title, in Irish, appended to it: Collad an Oigfir. When Bunting published the tune in 1797 the alternative Irish title was printed as Aislean an oigfir. In his 1840 version the Irish title is given as AISLING AN OIGFIR.Google Scholar

64 Bunting MS 7, no. 166. These verses and a translation can be found in O'Sullivan's article (see above, note 33).Google Scholar

65 Forde-Pigot Collection, MS 24.0.22, p. 215, and copied by Pigot on p. 786.Google Scholar

66 O'Neill, Francis, Music of Ireland (Chicago, 1903), tune no. 188. It also appears as Drimoleagtte Fair (tune no. 316) which, apart from having the lowest note flattened, is the same as Petrie. Drimoleague is in south-west Cork.Google Scholar

67 Bunting, The Ancient Music of Ireland, 97. The index says that he took Little Black Rose Bud from a peasant at Cushendall, county Antrim, in 1804.Google Scholar

68 Henry, Sam, ‘Song-Hunting in Ulster’, Northern Constitution, 24 November 1934. Henry lived, worked and collected in county Londonderry and beyond. Throughout his life he was extremely interested to know all there was about the Londonderry Air. He corresponded with Jane Ross's descendants and with Kidson, the authority on English folksong, requesting information.Google Scholar

69 Coleman, , ‘The Londonderry Air’, 350. The Joyces to whom Galwey refers are the family of Patrick Weston Joyce. The harmonization was, in fact, done by one of Petrie's daughters.Google Scholar

70 Trelawny-Ross archives, letter dated 6 September 1963. The Trelawny-Ross genealogical records show that Galwey, through her mother, was distantly related to the Rosses.Google Scholar

71 Ibid., letter dated 12 September 1963.Google Scholar

72 Galwey's obituary in the Londonderry Sentinel, 31 January 1925, tells us that ‘She sent a number of [tunes] to composers for arrangement. Dr Villiers Stanford arranged a number of them.’ It quotes her as having once written: ‘Fiddles, pipes, concertinas, Jew's harps (or trumps), lasses lilting, lads whistling, to each and all I am indebted.’ Although she died at the age of 95, the writer tells us that ‘such was the vitality which remained to her that until little more than a month ago she was able to sit at the piano and play some of the haunting melodies in her collection'. The obituary ends: ‘Miss Galwey, as might be expected, was an authority regarding the origin of many old Irish melodies, and it may be mentioned that she claimed that the Londonderry Air belongs as much to county Donegal as to county Derry.’Google Scholar

73 Dr Annie Patterson was the first woman to gain a doctorate in music from The Royal University of Ireland, in 1889. In addition to her work with An Feis Ceoil she contributed to the organization of An tOireachtas.Google Scholar

74 Leighton, , ‘The Londonderry Air'.Google Scholar

75 A draft copy of the BBC script exists in the Sam Henry archives, Kilrea, county Londonderry. It is unlikely that he got this information from Galwey's lips, for had he done so he would almost certainly have learnt her claim that Oh Shrive Me Father was the original song to the Air and in the broadcast he admits his ignorance concerning the original words.Google Scholar

76 O'Sullivan, Donal, ‘Aisling An Oigfhir (The Young Man's Dream)’, Journal of the Irish Folk Song Society, 22 (1927), 57.Google Scholar

77 Fitzsimons, Edward, Irish Minstrelsy: A Selection of Original Melodies of Erin with Characteristic Words by Edward Fitzsimons, Esq. and Symphonies and Accompaniments by Mr. J. Smith (Dublin, 1814), 41. Two copies of this book are held in the National Library of Ireland, Dublin. The one with the shelf number JM 4674 is a complete copy. The other, with the shelf number IR 780941 S 1, lacks the page on which the full song is printed.Google Scholar

78 Bunting includes music to this title in his 1840 book (p. 104). The index says he took the tune from Hampsey in 1796. A note at the top of the page says ‘The Var: by Lyons in 1698'. ‘Var:’ refers to variations in the music; Lyons was an Irish harper and composer.Google Scholar

79 Ibid., 45. There are two footnotes to the song: (1) ‘This song will serve as an antidote to whatever there may be of bane, in a foregoing ballad, concerning Devorgilla'; (2) ‘“But afterward she gan him soft to shrieve, / And wooe with faire entreatie to disclose, / Which of the nymphes his heart so sore did mieve.” Fairy Queen, B.iv. – Cap. 12, Stanza 26'.Google Scholar

80 O'Neill, Music of Ireland, tune no. 229.Google Scholar

81 Stanford, The Complete Collection of Irish Music as Noted by George Petrie, tune no. 632.Google Scholar

82 Holden, A Collection of Old Established Irish Slow and Quick Tunes, i, 14.Google Scholar

83 MS 12(1). Bunting included the tune in his 1797 book (p. 6) as Old Truagh; in his 1807 book (p. 42) as The Old Truigha;, and in his 1840 book (p. 17) as The Green Woods of Truigha.Google Scholar

84 Bunting, Ancient Music of Ireland, 16.Google Scholar

85 Flood, History of Irish Music, 208. The refrain's origin and use are not elucidated by any of the above songs since the music of none of them, other than The Young Man's Dream and Castle Hyde, contains it.Google Scholar

86 Thumoth, Burk, Twelve Scotch and Twelve Irish Airs with Variations (London, [c.1742]). Bunting Collection.Google Scholar

87 A Collection of the Most Celebrated Irish Tunes Proper for the Molin, German Flute or Hautboy (Dublin, 1724). Bunting Collection.Google Scholar