Annotation:Carolan's Dream
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CAROLAN'S DREAM. AKA and see "Maud O'Dowd," "Molly MacAlpin," "Moll Halfpenny," "O'Carolan's Farewell to Music." Irish, Air. A Minor. Standard tuning (fiddle). AAB (O'Neill): AABB (O'Farrell, O'Sullivan). The tune has been attributed by some to blind Irish harper Turlough O'Carolan (1670-1738), although Donal O'Sullivan (1958) says that it was actually composed by William Connellan , "on the authority of the old harpers." O'Sullivan states that it was a favorite of O'Carolan's and that it may have added his own adaptations. The title "Carolan's Farewell to Music", sometimes applied, is an incorrect one, found with the tune in Thomas Mooney's History of Ireland (Boston, 1846, vol. 1, p. 75) and copied by Francis O'Neill into his Music of Ireland (1903, No. 700).
If it was Connellan's air, it belies the story (as told by O'Neill in Irish Minstrels and Musicians, 1913) that the air was the last composition of the ailing, blind, sixty-eight year old Irish harper Turlough O'Carolan, who died March 25th, 1738, soon after he returned to Alderford House, Co. Roscommon, seat of the McDermott Roe family and home of his great patroness Mrs. McDermott Roe. O'Neill states: "Shortly before his death he called for his harp, and with feeble fingers wandering among the strings, he evolved his last composition, the weirdly plaintive wail, 'O'Carolan's Farewell to Music.'"
Source for notated version: O'Farrell (1804) [O'Sullivan]; Mooney's History of Ireland [O'Neill].
Printed sources: Complete Collection of Carolan's Irish Tunes, 1984; No. 187, p. 129. O'Farrell (National Irish Music for the Union Pipes), 1804; p. 27. O'Neill (Krassen), 1976; p. 246 (as "O'Carolan's Farewell to Music"). O'Neill (Music in Ireland: 1850 Melodies), 1903; No. 700, p. 129 (as "O'Carolan's Farewell to Music"). O'Neill (1913), p. 76 (as "O'Carolan's Farewell to Music"). O’Sullivan (Carolan: The Life, Times, and Music of an Irish Harper), 1958; No. 187, p. 207.
Recorded sources: Green Linnet Records SIF 3034, "Triona ne Dhomhnaill" (1984).