Star Of Munster: A Song History
"The Star of Munster" is an Irish reel, usually played in A Dorian, and it has gathered a long list of other names, among them "The Bright Star of Munster," "Birds in the Bushes," "Kitty's Wishes" and "The Eight O'Clock Train."[1][2] The Traditional Tune Archive reads the "star" of the title as a figure of speech for a beautiful woman, and dates the melody to at least the late nineteenth century.[1] According to the same source, Francis O'Neill learned it from James O'Brien, a Mayo piper who visited Chicago in 1876, and O'Neill later wrote, in 1913, that the Kerry fiddler and piper William F. Hanafin, born in 1875, had picked it up as one of his first reels in boyhood.[1]
Robert Charles Dudley, Foilhummerum Bay, Valentia, from Cromwell Fort: The Caroline Laying the Earthwire on July 21st, 1865, watercolor over graphite with touches of gouache, 1865. Valentia in County Kerry, in the province of Munster, in 1865; the watercolor has no connection to the reel.
O'Neill printed it in The Music of Ireland (1903) and again in The Dance Music of Ireland (1907), and it also appears in Joyce's Old Irish Folk Music and Songs (1909) and Roche's Collection of Traditional Irish Music (1912).[1] The earliest recording indexed by irishtune.info dates from 1916, by John J. Kimmel.[2] Michael Coleman recorded it in New York for Vocalion in April 1922, coupled with "O'Dowd's Favourite," and Paddy Killoran's 1938 Decca disc carried a misprinted title on its label.[1] Collectors have written it down in different shapes, some with two parts played once each and others with repeated parts.[1]
The reel has stayed in steady use: irishtune.info indexes more than fifty recordings stretching from 1916 to 2022, including ones by Kevin Burke, Martin Hayes, Eileen Ivers and The Chieftains, and the Tune Archive notes its popularity at New England contra dances since the 1970s as well as at Irish sessions.[2][1] Among dulcimer books, it appears in Mark Gilston's Irish Tunes For Dulcimer, Volume 1, a sheet-music collection of 41 Irish tunes for mountain dulcimer that also includes "Banish Misfortune" and "Cliffs Of Moher."[3]
Sources
- Traditional Tune Archive: "Star of Munster (The)".
- irishtune.info: "Star of Munster".
- Mark Gilston: "Irish Tunes For Dulcimer, Volume 1".
- Image: Robert Charles Dudley, Foilhummerum Bay, Valentia, from Cromwell Fort: The Caroline Laying the Earthwire on July 21st, 1865, watercolor over graphite with touches of gouache, 1865. The Metropolitan Museum of Art.