Castle Kelly: A Song History
"Castle Kelly" (Irish Caisleán Uí Cheallaigh) is an Irish reel, usually played in A Dorian.[1][2] It also turns up as "Kelly's Castle" and "Cumar na Cathrach," and Bobby Gardiner recorded it in 1970 as "The Darkhaired Maid."[1][2] Ireland has more than one Castle Kelly, including one near Tallaght in County Dublin and an O'Kelly castle in Galway linked with O'Carolan's air "Mabel Kelly."[1] The earliest published version consulted here ties the reel to the Tallaght site in its heading.[3]
Alexander Cozens, Ruined Castle and Trees, ink and wash, ca. 1762. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Public domain (CC0). Not Castle Kelly; shown for atmosphere, and it has no connection to the tune.
The Traditional Tune Archive finds the reel, without a title, in Book 2 of the large manuscript collection of Leitrim fiddler and piper Stephen Grier, dated around 1883.[1] P. W. Joyce printed it as No. 359 in Old Irish Folk Music and Songs (1909), one of five reels he had taken down years earlier from a Mr. M. Flanagan, a union piper at the Hibernian Military School in Dublin's Phoenix Park, who had learned them in north Kildare.[3] Francis Roche included it as "Cumar na Cathrach" in the third volume of his collection (1927), and Breandán Breathnach put it in Ceol Rince na hÉireann 1 (1963), from the playing of accordionist Sonny Brogan.[1][2]
Brogan also played on what researcher Philippe Varlet identifies as the earliest recording, a 1941 disc by the Lough Gill Quartette.[1][2] Later versions include Paddy Glackin's slow setting from his time with the Bothy Band, John Whelan and Eileen Ivers on Fresh Takes (1987) and the Chieftains on Water from the Well.[1] It is a well-known session reel today, with some 280 irishtune.info members listing it among their tunes; players sometimes take it into other keys as well.[2]
Find books with Castle Kelly for sale →