Munster Cloak: A Song History

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"Munster Cloak" is a slow Irish air, not a jig, known in Irish as An Fhallaingín Mhuimhneach and also called "The Spanish Cloak."[1][2] The Traditional Tune Archive gives it in 3/4 time, usually in D, and observes that players have approached it variously as an air, waltz, mazurka or march; it also reports that P. W. Joyce printed the melody in 1909 under the title "Mantle on Mantle."[1] A story credited to either Seán Ó Riada or Paddy Moloney holds that a shipwrecked survivor of the Spanish Armada brought the tune to Ireland, though the Archive calls the legend rather unlikely.[1] The same source points out resemblances to one of Enrique Granados's Danzas españolas and to part of "The Bonny Black Irish Maid," printed in a 1793 collection.[1]

Pencil drawing of a young woman standing in a long cloak and bonnet

Théodore Chassériau, Portrait of a Young Woman Wearing a Cloak and Bonnet, graphite, 1850. A young woman in a cloak, shown for the cloak of the title; it has no connection to the tune.

The Archive credits the Chieftains with making the air widely known through their self-titled 1964 album on Claddagh Records, where it sits between "The Lark on the Strand" and "Trim the Velvet" in the set that opens the record.[1][3] Among the recordings and printings indexed in Alan Ng's irishtune.info, which concentrates on sources after 1900, that Chieftains track is the oldest; later versions listed there include those of the piper Finbar Furey, the multi-instrumentalist Seamus Egan, and Joanie Madden with Cherish the Ladies.[2] It has also been printed in collections such as Matt Cranitch's The Irish Fiddle Book and Tomás Ó Canainn's Traditional Slow Airs of Ireland.[2][1] Mark Gilston gives "Munster Cloak" a page in Irish Tunes For Dulcimer, Volume 1, the first book of his two-volume Irish set, and the tune index shown on the book's product page sends readers looking for "Spanish Cloak" to the same piece.[4]

Our book that contains the song "Munster Cloak"

Sources

  1. Traditional Tune Archive: "Munster Cloak (The)".
  2. irishtune.info: "Munster Cloak".
  3. Vaughan Williams Memorial Library: "The Chieftains" (Claddagh Records, 1964).
  4. Mark Gilston: "Irish Tunes For Dulcimer, Volume 1".
  5. Image: Théodore Chassériau, Portrait of a Young Woman Wearing a Cloak and Bonnet, graphite, 1850. The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

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