Maids Of Glenroe: A Song History

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"The Maids of Glenroe" is an Irish double jig in G major, made of two strains that are each played twice.[1] The Traditional Tune Archive credits the title to Francis Roche, who printed the tune as No. 83 in the first volume of his collection in 1912.[1] Roche (1866–1961), a violinist, pianist and dance teacher from Elton in south County Limerick, drew on music he heard played as well as on manuscript books belonging to his father and other musicians; the two volumes of 1912 ran to 4,000 copies, which were soon gone, so a reprint followed.[2]

Etching of a woman bending over a stone well beside a cottage

Charles Jacque, Woman at a Well, etching, 1842. A woman at a well, shown for the tune's other title, "The Maid at the Well"; it has no connection to the tune.

The melody itself travels under many names: irishtune.info files it as "The Maid at the Well" and lists more than a dozen other titles, among them "The Blackthorn Stick," "The Kilkenny Jig," "The Castle Street Jig" and "The Hawk from Dundalk."[3] That Blackthorn Stick title is shared with a separate G-major jig, which irishtune.info catalogues as "The Coach Road to Sligo."[4] Nineteenth-century manuscript versions survive from James Goodman, a County Cork clergyman and uilleann piper who called it "The Black Stripper," and from Stephen Grier of County Leitrim, who entered it without a title around 1883.[5] Francis O'Neill printed it as "Maid at the Well" in 1903 and again in 1907, though he could not recall where he had picked it up.[5] The earliest recording irishtune.info lists is from 1929, featuring Francis Cashin and Tom Cawley, and later ones include versions by Micho Russell, Dervish and Téada.[3]

Martin Mulvihill kept the Glenroe title when he printed the jig in his First Collection of 1986.[1] For mountain dulcimer, the jig is one of the DAD-tuning arrangements in Aaron O'Rourke's Irish Session Tunes, Volume 2, a further Fingers Of Steel book of jigs, reels and polkas from the Irish session repertoire, whose free audio tracks play each tune both slowly and up to speed.[6]

Our book that contains the song "Maids Of Glenroe"

Sources

  1. Traditional Tune Archive: "Annotation: Maids of Glenroe (The)".
  2. Irish Traditional Music Archive: "Francis Roche Collection 1".
  3. irishtune.info: "Maid at the Well".
  4. irishtune.info: "Coach Road to Sligo".
  5. Traditional Tune Archive: "Annotation: Maid at the Well".
  6. Fingers Of Steel: "Aaron O'Rourke, Irish Session Tunes, Volume 2".
  7. Image: Charles Jacque, Woman at a Well, etching, 1842. The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

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