Annotation:Little Harvest Rose (The)

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LITTLE HARVEST ROSE, THE (Ros beag an fogmair). AKA - "Fomhar Rósin." AKA and see "Morning of Life (The)." Irish, Air or Planxty (4/4 time). F Major (Bunting, Haverty, MacLean, O'Neill): B Flat Major (Clinton). Standard tuning (fiddle). AB. The composition is included in a section of tunes credited to blind Irish harper Turlough O'Carolan (1678-1736) by O'Neill (as both "Little Harvest Rose" and "Morning of Life (The)"), however, it does not appear in Donal O'Sullivan's seminal 1958 volume on the bard, and its attribution to the harper is highly questionable. Thomas Moore's song "In the Morning of Life" (Irish Melodies, vol. 6) is set to this tune, as is "Go Edmund join the martial throng", from Smollet Holden's Holden's collection of the most esteem'd old Irish melodies (c. 1808). A song by the title "Little Harvest Rose", dated c. 1745, appears in Patrick Joseph McCall's 1894 collection of folksongs Irish nóiníns (daisies). It begins:

There's a ripple in the waters of our four wide seas;
There's a murmur on the mountains, like at dawning hour;
There's a whisper 'mong the ash trees, as they shake their keys,
And a thrill stirs all the sleepin gland with wond'rous power.
For, the sowing time is coming, with its lingering days,
When the fields no longer slumber 'neath the winter snows,
When we'll plant the Tree of Liberty, 'mid hymns of praise,
And greet, again, our long-lost, little Harvest Rose!

William and Robert Chambers, in their Chambers's Edinburgh Journal (p. 412) relate a legend that accompanies it:

The heroine, 'having wearied herself by gathering flowers, fell asleep; and, behold! the month was changed from sunny June to weeping April: and a mysterious hand held forth to her a tender rose-bud, and a voice whispered in her ear, "It is love!" and the half-blown flower looked so charming, with little globules of dew looking from each fragment of moss, that she longed to take it and place it in her bosom; and so she was about to do, when the fairy who had presided at her birth sprang between her and the proffered gift, exclaiming, "Touch it not, darling of my heart; it is too weak to enjoy a long life; and if you watch, and have patience for a minute, you will see it fade and wither; young love is never lasting."

Source for notated version:

Printed sources: Bunting (The General Collection of the Ancient Irish Music, vol. 1), 1796; No. 43, p. 24. Clinton (Gems of Ireland: 200 Airs), 1841; No. 173, p. 89. P.M. Haverty (One Hundred Irish Airs vol. 2), 1858; No. 170, p. 77. MacLean (The Amateur's Companion), c. 1810-15; No. 13. O'Neill (Krassen), 1976; p. 232. O'Neill (Music of Ireland: 1850 Melodies), 1903; No. 646, p. 116.

Recorded sources: Columbia 33491-F (78 RPM), John Griffin (the Fifth Avenue bus man) (1931)

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