Annotation:Crodh laoigh nam bodach

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CRODH LAOIGH NAM BODACH ("The Old Man's Calf" or "The old man's calving cows"). AKA and see "Plundering the Lowlands." Scottish, Air (3/4 time). D Dorian. Standard tuning (fiddle). One part (Martin): AB (Heymann). The air is found in a music manuscript of the early 19th century by the Maclean-Clephane sisters at Torloisk on the Isle of Mull, Scotland. It was taken from the "playing of {Echlin?} O'Kain by Mr. {Patrick} Macdonald." Heymann (1988) states that the traveling Irish harper Echlin O'Cathain was known to have spent time in Scotland. O'Cathain was born in 1729 and became a student of Cornelius Lyons, a famous harper. Besides Denis Hempson, he was the only surviving harper by the end of the 18th century to cultivate long fingernails in the ancient manner. Captain Simon Fraser prints a version of the melody in his Airs and Melodies (1815), and noted that the tune may have come from just south of Loch Ness, and was said to have commemorated a Highland cattle raid into the Lowlands.

"Crodh laoigh nam bodach" is also the name of a port-à-beul song that begins:

Crodh-laoigh nam bodach
Crodh-laoigh nam bodach
Crodh-laoigh nam bodach
Gan togail ri gleann

Translation:
The old man's calving cows
The old man's calving cows
The old man's calving cows
Being reared in the glen

Source for notated version:

Printed sources: Heymann (Secrets of the Gaelic Harp), 1988; p. 91. Martin (Traditional Scottish Fiddling), 2002; p. 64.

Recorded sources:

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