Planxty Irwin: A Song History
"Planxty Irwin" is credited to the blind harper Turlough O'Carolan (1670–1738), but which Irwin it honors is a tangled question[1]. The Traditional Tune Archive, following Donal O'Sullivan's Carolan of 1958, where it is No. 59, ties it to Colonel John Irwin (1680–1752) of Tanrego House on Ballysodare Bay, County Sligo, and reports O'Sullivan's dating of about 1713, once Irwin was back from soldiering overseas[1]. Harp historian Simon Chadwick argues that O'Sullivan mixed up two different tunes. In his view, Carolan's song for the colonel belongs with a separate air, "Colonel Irwin" (O'Sullivan No. 60), and O'Sullivan himself coined the title "Colonel John Irwin" for No. 59[2]. Chadwick points instead to a late note by the collector Edward Bunting, written into his own copy of his 1809 book, saying the tune was made for Irwin of Streamstown House, also in County Sligo. In his manuscripts Bunting twice linked the name "Kit" with the tune, which Chadwick suspects was the first name of its subject, still unidentified[3].
Thomas Bewick, Men seated around a punch bowl, with a hunter offering a toast, wood engraving, 1790–1828. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Public domain (CC0). Shown for its toast; it has no connection to the tune.
As far as Chadwick can tell, every later source for the tune descends from Bunting, who took it down from a harper. His earliest tag names Charles Byrne of County Leitrim, a later one a harper named Higgins, and his manuscript piano setting of about 1798 dismisses it as "the poorest of Carolan's Planxties"[3]. He printed it in A General Collection of the Ancient Music of Ireland (1809)[1][3]. The Tune Archive lists an earlier Dublin printing by John Lee, but by Chadwick's account Lee's "Colonel Erwyn" is the other Irwin tune, so sources differ on the first printing[1][2]. Thomas Moore later borrowed the air, without credit, for his song "Oh! Banquet Not," and Francis O'Neill included it in O'Neill's Music of Ireland (1903)[1][4].
The word "planxty," attached to many Carolan pieces, has no settled origin. Suggestions include O'Sullivan's derivation from the Latin plangere, shaped by an Irish verb for striking the harp, Irish praise pieces called plearácha, and a corruption of sláinte (health), and O'Sullivan noted that Carolan himself seldom used the word, which later publishers added to titles[5]. In recent times the tune was recorded by the band Planxty on their 1973 album Planxty[6], with Andy Irvine on hurdy-gurdy and Liam O'Flynn on pipes, and it appears in session and fiddle books such as The Fiddler's Fakebook and 100 Vital Irish Session Tunes[4].
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