Castletown Conners: A Song History

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“Castletown Conners” (also spelled “Castletown Connors”) is an Irish double jig in E Dorian, with two repeated eight-bar parts.[1][2] The Traditional Tune Archive says the title comes from a town in County Limerick.[1] The Irish placenames database records a Limerick townland called Castletown whose postal town is known in English as Castletown Conyers, a name taken from Conyers, a surname that the database dates to the seventeenth century.[3]

Ink drawing of two Irish carts standing beside a house in a landscape

Cornelius Varley, Irish Cars, pen and ink with gray wash over graphite. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Public domain (CC0). An Irish country scene, shown for its subject; it has no connection to the tune.

Francis O’Neill printed the jig as No. 324 in The Dance Music of Ireland: 1001 Gems (1907), from the playing of John Carey, a Limerick-born fiddler who had lived in Chicago for many years.[1][4] In his 1910 book Irish Folk Music, O’Neill called it “unpublished and new to us.”[1][4] The same melody also appears in O’Neill’s collections, in a different key, as “Condon’s Frolics” (No. 838 in O’Neill’s Music of Ireland, 1903, and No. 100 in the 1907 book), from the playing of Edward Cronin, a Chicago fiddler born at Limerick Junction, County Tipperary.[5] Alan Ng’s irishtune.info treats the two titles as one tune, filed under “Condon’s Frolics,” with a long list of other names.[2]

The earliest recording in irishtune.info’s list is by accordionist Tommy Maguire and Father O’Keeffe on mandolin, on Paddy in the Smoke, a Topic album recorded in 1968.[2][6] Martin O’Connor recorded it on The Connachtman’s Rambles (about 1979), and Dervish, who play it in B minor, recorded it on Harmony Hill.[1][2][5] The name has also attached itself to a different jig, “Tommy Mulhaire’s,” which sources credit either to Tommy Mulhaire of the Eyrecourt area of County Galway or to his son Martin; the Traditional Tune Archive puts the mix-up down to a well-known recording that set the two tunes side by side.[7][8]

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Sources

  1. Traditional Tune Archive: "Castletown Conners (1)".
  2. irishtune.info (Alan Ng): "Condon's Frolics" (tune #374).
  3. Logainm.ie, Placenames Database of Ireland: "Baile an Chaisleáin / Castletown" (Co. Limerick).
  4. Traditional Tune Archive: "Biography: John Carey".
  5. Traditional Tune Archive: "Condon's Frolics".
  6. irishtune.info (Alan Ng): "Paddy in the Smoke" (album).
  7. Traditional Tune Archive: "Tommy Mulhaire's Jig".
  8. irishtune.info (Alan Ng): "Tommy Mulhaire's" (tune #1396).