Annotation:Edmund McDermot Roe
Tune properties and standard notation
EDMUND MACDERMOTT ROE. AKA - "Edmond MacDermott Roe." Irish, Planxty (6/8 time). F Major. Standard tuning (fiddle). AB. Composed by blind Irish harper Turlough O'Carolan (1670-1738). O'Neill (1922) remarks: "Among Carolan's many distinguished friends and patrons, no one was more generous and loyal than Mrs. McDermot Roe, of Alderford House, County Roscommon. At the outset of his professional career in 1693, it was she who equipped him with a horse and an attendant harper; and it was to her hospitable home he directed his feeble footsteps in his declining days. Exceptionally honored in death, Carolan's remains were interred near the family vault of his benefactress." However, Donal O'Sullivan (1958) could find no person named Edmond/Edmund in the MacDermott Roe family, although he acknowledged there was no satisfactory pedigree. Similar settings of the tune are found in the Hibernian Muse (1787) and John Lee's collection (1780).
Source for notated version: copied from the Hibernian Muse (1787) [O'Neill]; John Lee's A Favourite Collection of the so much admired old Irish Tunes, the original and genuine compositions of Carolan, the celebrated Irish Bard (Dublin, 1780) [O'Sullivan].
Printed sources: Complete Collection of Carolan's Irish Tunes, 1984; No. 85, pg. 69. O'Neill (Waifs and Strays of Gaelic Melody), 1922; No. 72 (appears as "McDermot Roe"). O'Sullivan (Carolan: The Life, Times and Music of an Irish Harper), 1958; No. 85, p. 147.
Recorded sources: