Innis Oirr, Innisfree: A Song History
"Inisheer" is a modern composition by the Dublin accordion player Thomas Walsh, and its title is the English form of Inis Oírr, one of the Aran Islands off the coast of Galway.[1] Irishtune.info, which files it under the alternate titles Inis Oírr and Inish Iar, likewise credits Thomas P. Walsh and notes that it is also played as a waltz.[2] Quoted in a 2007 article in the magazine FolkWorld, Walsh recalled writing it the day after returning from a holiday on the island, while walking in Dublin's Phoenix Park; no year of composition was found in the sources consulted here, but the same article reports that a sung version was recorded in 1985.[3]
Alexandre Père & Fils, Accordion, wood, metal, tortoiseshell and mother-of-pearl, 1850–55. A nineteenth-century French accordion, shown for the composer's instrument; it has no connection to the tune.
The tune caught on fast, and FolkWorld observes that it came to be treated as a traditional Irish piece, though exactly when is hard to pin down.[3] According to a report the magazine passes on, Joanie Madden and Eileen Ivers of Cherish the Ladies taught it at Irish Week workshops in Augusta, West Virginia, in 1987, the same year Séamus and Manus McGuire and Jackie Daly recorded it as Buttons & Bows on The First Month of Summer.[3] Irishtune.info also lists that 1987 album as its earliest recording, followed by Cherish the Ladies (1993), Danú (1996, though the list in FolkWorld gives 1997), and Joe Derrane, Frankie Gavin and Brian McGrath (2001).[2][3] Walsh's own first recording of it came on his 2003 album Ethnic Tears, yet the article remarks that his name is seldom mentioned with the tune, and that some bands have even credited it to other people.[3]
The "Innisfree" of this page's title appears to be one more name the tune has picked up: FolkWorld says it has reportedly also gone by "Inisfree."[3] The places themselves are different, since the Innisfree of W. B. Yeats's 1890 poem is a small island in Lough Gill, County Sligo.[4] National Dulcimer Champion Linda Brockinton includes it, listed as "Innis Oirr, Innisfree," in Simply Dulcimer, a 37-page book of her fingerstyle arrangements of mostly Scottish and Irish classics, which she published herself.[5]
Sources
- Traditional Tune Archive: "Inisheer".
- Irishtune.info: "Inisheer".
- FolkWorld: "Inisheer, oh Inisheer: The Story of an Irish Air" (Issue 33, May 2007).
- EBSCO Research Starters: "The Lake Isle of Innisfree by William Butler Yeats".
- Linda Brockinton: "Simply Dulcimer".
- Image: Alexandre Père & Fils, Accordion, wood, metal, tortoiseshell and mother-of-pearl, 1850–55. The Metropolitan Museum of Art.