Mrs. Judge: A Song History
"Mrs. Judge" is a piece by the blind Irish harper Turlough O'Carolan (1670–1738), numbered 68 in Donal O'Sullivan's 1958 study Carolan: The Life, Times and Music of an Irish Harper.[1] It is in E minor and is also known as "Abigail Judge" and "Madam Judge."[2] Sources differ on the shape of its closing section, sometimes titled on its own as "Planxty Judge": the Traditional Tune Archive describes four strains with the last two in jig time, while irishtune.info lists two strains followed by a coda in 3/4.[1][2]
Edward Workman, Pair of dishes, silver, Dublin, 1714. Dublin silver of the years when Mrs. Judge married; it has no connection to her family.
O'Sullivan identified the subject as the wife of Thomas Judge of Grangebeg, County Westmeath, and corrected the earlier writer Hardiman, who had placed her in County Sligo.[1] The Traditional Tune Archive's page on Carolan's companion tune for her husband, "Thomas Judge" (O'Sullivan No. 67), names her as Abigail, daughter of Thomas Smyth of Drumcree, and dates the marriage to 1707.[3] Edward Bunting printed the music in his Ancient Music of Ireland of 1809 as two separate tunes, the first noted from the harper Daniel Black and the second, a jig, from Hugh Higgins.[1]
Recordings include the Chieftains' Boil the Breakfast Early (about 1979), Brendan Mulvihill and Donna Long's The Morning Dew from the early 1990s, and Máire Ní Chathasaigh and Chris Newman's The Carolan Albums.[1][2] On the mountain dulcimer, it is one of three O'Carolan pieces in Linda Brockinton's Simply Dulcimer, a self-published collection of her fingerstyle arrangements of mostly Scottish and Irish classics.[4]
Sources
- The Traditional Tune Archive: "Mrs. Judge".
- irishtune.info: "Mrs. Judge".
- The Traditional Tune Archive: "Thomas Judge".
- Linda Brockinton: "Simply Dulcimer".
- Image: Edward Workman, Pair of dishes, silver, Dublin, 1714. The Metropolitan Museum of Art.