Bridget Cruise: A Song History

← Back to Browse By Song

Bridget Cruise, of the Cruise family of Cruisetown, was a young woman with whom the blind harper Turlough O'Carolan (1670–1738) fell in love; the sources consulted here describe his attachment as unrequited or hopeless.[1][2][3] Writing in 1905, the historian W. H. Grattan Flood dated this episode to between 1693 and 1710, and the connection was still remembered generations later, when the harper Arthur O'Neill recorded calling at the home of Peter Cruise, whom he identified as Bridget's nephew.[2][1]

Pilgrims crowding the shore beside rowing boats at Lough Derg, 1904

Pilgrims landing at St. Patrick’s Purgatory, Saints Island, Lough Derg, Ireland, stereograph, Underwood & Underwood, 1904. Library of Congress. No known restrictions on publication. The pilgrimage of the Carolan legend, photographed nearly two centuries later.

More than one tune carries her name. Francis O'Neill wrote in 1913 that Carolan addressed fifteen pieces to her, while the Traditional Tune Archive today has entries for four airs called "Bridget Cruise," numbered 26 to 29 in the 1984 Complete Collection of Carolan's Irish Tunes.[3][1][4][5][6] Edward Bunting printed one of them in 1809,[4] and he reported that one Bridget Cruise air was reputed to be the first thing Carolan composed, prompted by young love, and very nearly his only attempt at the old style.[1] Not all four are equally secure. Bunting took down the last of them in 1792 from an old man in County Mayo and called it very ancient, its author unknown; Donal O'Sullivan, in his 1958 study of Carolan, judged it not especially old but found no firm proof that Carolan wrote it, and included it out of deference to Francis O'Neill.[6]

The best-known story about her belongs to Carolan's later life. In the version repeated by older writers, Carolan, on pilgrimage to St. Patrick's Purgatory on Lough Derg in County Donegal some two decades after the courtship, happened to take a woman's hand among the pilgrims at the boat and knew by touch alone that it was Bridget's. O'Neill notes that every account of Carolan's life includes the incident, and Grattan Flood says it was vouched for by Charles O'Conor, whom he describes as Carolan's patron; it is best read as a cherished part of the Carolan legend rather than as documented fact.[3][2][7]

Find books with Bridget Cruise for sale →

Sources

  1. Traditional Tune Archive: "Annotation:Bridget Cruise (1)".
  2. Library Ireland: "O'Carolan and his Contemporaries" (W. H. Grattan Flood, A History of Irish Music, 1905).
  3. Bill Haneman (transcription): "Turloch O'Carolan and His Times" (Francis O'Neill, Irish Minstrels and Musicians, 1913).
  4. Traditional Tune Archive: "Annotation:Bridget Cruise (2)".
  5. Traditional Tune Archive: "Annotation:Bridget Cruise (3)".
  6. Traditional Tune Archive: "Annotation:Bridget Cruise (4)".
  7. Early Music America: "Turlough O'Carolan: Bridget Cruise".