Annotation:BhFaca Tú an Starraidhe Dubh (An)

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bhFACA TÚ AN STARRAIDHE DUBH, AN (Did you see the Dark-haired Playboy?). Irish, Air (6/8 time). A Major. Standard tuning (fiddle). ABC. The melody of this air, whose words have not survived, appears in three old collections prior to Bunting's 1840 edition: Holden's Collection of old Established Irish slow and quick Tunes, volume II (1806), under the title "Have you seen my black deceiver?;" Mulholland's Ancient Irish Airs (1810), under the title "A staraidh dubh" (Black Jester (The)); and Neale's Celebrated Irish Tunes (c. 1726, p. 17).

Source for notated version: the Irish collector Edward Bunting records in the index to his 1840 edition that he noted the tune from Hugh Higgins in 1792, however, in the MS original he wrote underneath the tune "From Arthur O'Neill and also from an old Printed Collection."

Printed sources: O'Sullivan/Bunting, 1983; No. 6, pp. 8-9.

Recorded sources:

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