Sí Bheag, Sí Mhór: A Song History

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"Sí Bheag, Sí Mhór" (also printed as "Sheebeg and Sheemore," "Sidh Beag agus Sidh Mor," and in other spellings) is credited to the blind Irish harper Turlough O'Carolan, who was born near Nobber, County Meath, in 1670 and died in 1738.[1][2] The title names two hills in County Leitrim, Sheebeg and Sheemore, near Lough Scur; both carry prehistoric passage tombs, and the names are glossed as little and big fairy, or little and big fairy hill.[1][3][4] The Traditional Tune Archive, citing Donal O'Sullivan's 1958 study of Carolan and tradition, calls it probably his first composition, made as a young man at the house of his first patron, George Reynolds of Lough Scur.[1] In a story repeated by early twentieth-century writers, Reynolds gave him a subject, a supposed battle between the fairies of the two hills; those writers, however, call the resulting piece "The Fairy Queens" and date it to 1693.[5][6]

Photochrom of Lough Gill in the north-west of Ireland, about 1890-1900

Lough Gill, County Sligo, Ireland. Photochrom print, Detroit Publishing Co., about 1890–1900. Library of Congress. No known restrictions on publication. A lake landscape of the north-west, shown for atmosphere; it is not the two hills the tune names.

The melody's own history is tangled. As the early-harp specialist Simon Chadwick traces it, the tune appears in Neal's collection of 1724 simply as "Cuckoo," in a book meant for violin, flute or oboe; Edward Bunting printed it in 1796 under a title close to the hills' names, and a manuscript of 1816 credits it to Carolan.[7] O'Sullivan thought the air an adaptation of an older tune, "The Bonny Cuckoo,"[1] and Bunting himself had made a similar connection in 1840.[7] Chadwick goes further: he doubts it is Carolan's at all, hears a fiddle idiom rather than a harp one, and notes Alasdair Codona's argument that the Carolan poem O'Sullivan matched to this tune fits a different one, "The Fairy Queen," better. The traditional attribution, in short, is not settled.[7]

The tune's modern fame came late. According to the Traditional Tune Archive, Seán Ó Riada took it up, and a recording by the band Planxty is credited with bringing it its present popularity.[1]

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Sources

  1. Traditional Tune Archive: "Annotation:Si Bheag Si Mhor".
  2. Encyclopaedia Britannica: "Turlough O'Carolan".
  3. Logainm.ie (Placenames Database of Ireland): "An tSí Mhór/Sheemore".
  4. The Modern Antiquarian: "Sheebeg".
  5. Library Ireland: "O'Carolan and his Contemporaries" (W. H. Grattan Flood, A History of Irish Music, 1905).
  6. Bill Haneman (transcription): "Turloch O'Carolan and His Times" (Francis O'Neill, Irish Minstrels and Musicians, 1913).
  7. Early Gaelic Harp Info (Simon Chadwick): "Cuckoo".