Planxty George Brabazon: A Song History
"Planxty George Brabazon" bears the name of a man the Traditional Tune Archive describes only as a young bachelor, and it has been credited to the Irish harper Turlough O'Carolan (1670–1738).[1] "Planxty" was a label attached to lively Carolan pieces honoring patrons, although Donal O'Sullivan judged that no single explanation of the word holds up and observed that later publishers, more than Carolan himself, applied it.[2] Two distinct tunes share this title: O'Sullivan's 1958 edition of Carolan's music prints a 6/8 piece in G as No. 6 and a separate air in G as No. 7.[3][1] The dulcimer setting discussed below appears to be the second of these, since its book's index sends readers looking for "Twa Bonnie Maidens" to it, and irishtune.info lists that name among the titles of the second air.[4][5]
Richard Parkes Bonington, Loch Lomond, lithograph, 1826. A Scottish loch, shown because the air was printed in Scotland; it has no connection to the tune.
Carolan's authorship of this air is uncertain: O'Sullivan printed it but noted that nothing firmly proves the harper wrote it, and irishtune.info assigns the melody to Scotland before Carolan's time.[1][4] In Scotland it appeared as "Isle of Sky" in Gow's Complete Repository (1802), about a century before Francis O'Neill included it in his Music of Ireland (1903); after the Jacobite rising it was renamed there "Prince Charlie's Welcome to the Island of Skye," and in Scotland it is also found as the tune of the song "Twa Bonnie Maidens."[1] The Archive notes the view that O'Neill's eagerness to claim tunes for Carolan explains the attribution, while adding that the style does sound like Carolan's.[1]
The Chieftains recorded the air on Chieftains II in 1969, and the Archive calls it the first Carolan work the band recorded; John McCutcheon included it on his 1977 album The Wind That Shakes the Barley, later reissued by Rounder with the subtitle Hammered Dulcimer Music.[1][4] For mountain dulcimer, Mark Gilston gives it its own page in Irish Tunes For Dulcimer, Volume 1, the opening book of his two-part set of Irish melodies, which he publishes himself and sells as a 52-page PDF with a separate file for each tune.[5]
Sources
- Traditional Tune Archive: "George Brabazon (2)".
- Traditional Tune Archive: "Planxty (Form)".
- Traditional Tune Archive: "George Brabazon (1)".
- Irish Traditional Music Tune Index (irishtune.info): "Planxty George Brabazon".
- Mark Gilston: "Irish Tunes For Dulcimer, Volume 1".
- Image: Richard Parkes Bonington, Loch Lomond, lithograph, 1826. The Cleveland Museum of Art.