Annotation:Dear Catholic Brother

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DEAR CATHOLIC BROTHER. AKA and see "Poor Catholic Brother." Irish, English; Air (3/4 time). A Minor. Standard tuning (fiddle). One part. In Wales the tune is known as "Difyrrwch Gwyr Dufi" (Delight of the Men of Dovey (The)), printed in 1781 in Musical Relicks of the Welsh Bards. Half of the tune was employed by Thomas D'Urfey for his song "Dear Catholic Brother," published in his Pills to Purge Melancholy, vol. VI (1719-20, p. 277), and was used for a song in Musical Miscellany (1731, vol. VI, p. 171) beginning: "Come, take up your Burden, ye Dogs, and away." Sabine Baring-Gould et al (Songs and Ballads of the West, 1892, p. xiii, notes on "The Hunting of Arscott of Tetcott") concludes the air is much older than D'Urfey's era; "it probably belongs to an early stock common to the Celts of Wales and Cornwall."

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