After The Battle Of Aughrim: A Song History

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The tune takes its name from the Battle of Aughrim, where on Sunday 12 July 1691 the Williamite general Godard de Ginkel defeated the Irish Jacobite army, whose French commander, the Marquis de Saint-Ruhe, was killed by a cannonball.[1] That is the Old Style (Julian) date; by the modern Gregorian reckoning the battle fell on 22 July, and the Twelfth of July originally marked Aughrim rather than the Boyne.[2] In the account given by The Oxford Companion to British History, the Jacobite army gave way once Saint-Ruth (as it spells him) had fallen, and Galway capitulated that same month, with Limerick following in October.[3]

Small gilded harp with painted decoration on its pillar and soundbox

John Egan, Portable Harp, wood and various materials, Dublin, 1819. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Public domain (CC0). An Irish instrument of the early nineteenth century, shown for its subject; it has no connection to the tune.

The Traditional Tune Archive traces the title "After the Battle of Aughrim" to a recording by the Chieftains, noting that players more often know the tune simply as "The Battle of Aughrim," and it is usually played as a march, though polka and slow-air settings are also heard.[4] On Chieftains 4 it closes a four-part Aughrim sequence, coming after a song air, the march "Return from Fingal" and a lament.[5] The band's website attributes that whole "Battle of Aughrim" suite to Paddy Moloney.[6] In Irish the tune is called Cath Eachroma, the title under which Breandán Breathnach printed it in the second volume of Ceol Rince na hÉireann.[7][8] The Archive notes that it was the signature tune of the Aughrim Slopes Céilí Band and, citing Breathnach, that in County Clare it served for the last figure of a polka set.[7] In his 1990 study of Irish melody, Cowdery heard in it a reworking of the central motifs of the old air "Boyne Water."[7] Irishtune.info lists 22 recordings, the earliest indexed being by the piper Leo Rowsome around 1959.[8]

Several pieces carry Aughrim titles, and the sources consulted here do not agree on how they relate: the Traditional Tune Archive lists "Lament for the Battle of Aughrim" among this march's alternative titles.[7] Irishtune.info, however, indexes the lament on the Chieftains' album as a separate slow air.[9] The Archive regards a descriptive piper's piece, copied from Joseph Walker's Historical Memoirs of the Irish Bards (1786) and printed in O'Neill's Music of Ireland in 1903, as the original "Battle of Aughrim," and gives it its own entry apart from the march.[10][7] The Traditional Ballad Index and Mainly Norfolk, which document the song "After Aughrim's Great Disaster," do not connect it with this march.[11][12]

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Sources

  1. History Ireland: "The Battle of Aughrim" (Richard Doherty).
  2. The Irish News: "Twelfth of July explained".
  3. Encyclopedia.com (The Oxford Companion to British History): "Aughrim, battle of".
  4. The Traditional Tune Archive: "After the Battle of Aughrim".
  5. Irishtune.info: "The Chieftains, 4" (album index).
  6. The Chieftains: "1970s" (discography).
  7. The Traditional Tune Archive: "Battle of Aughrim (1) (The)".
  8. Irishtune.info: "Battle of Aughrim" (tune #47).
  9. Irishtune.info: "Lament for Aughrim" (tune #2906).
  10. The Traditional Tune Archive: "Battle of Aughrim (2) (The)".
  11. The Traditional Ballad Index: "After Aughrim's Great Disaster".
  12. Mainly Norfolk: "After Aughrim's Great Disaster".