Annotation:Humors of Castlelyons (The)

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HUMORS OF CASTLE LYON(S)/CASTLELYONS (Sugra Caislean Ua Leaocain/Liatain). AKA and see "Killashandra Lasses (The)," "Judy McFadden's." Irish, Double Jig. G Major. Standard tuning (fiddle). AABB (Cole, Kerr): AABB' (O'Neill). O'Neill (Irish Folk Music: A Fascinating Hobby, 1910, p. 105) says the tune is "probably not a very ancient composition. It was not known, evidently, to any collectors of Irish folk music before Dr. Hudson obtained a setting of it from a noted piper named Sullivan, in the County of Cork (a rival of another musician called Reilaghan). The tune has found its way into American collections of harmonized melodies." O'Neill references Dublin collector Henry Hudson (1798-1889) who collected in the first half of the 19th century and amassed seven music manuscript collections. Some of Hudson's collected tunes were printed in the mid-19th century periodicals The Citizen and The Dublin Monthly Magazine, from which O'Neill probably obtained this tune. Boston publisher Elias Howe's c. 1865 printing of the tune is nearly identical to the 'Castlelyon' jig in Hudson's manuscripts (save for the first bar of the second strain, which Paul de Grae suggests may have been an error in Howe). A version of the first strain of jig appears in the Howe firm's later volume Ryan's Mammoth Collection (1883) under the title "Judy McFadden's," but the second strain differs. O'Neill's "Killishandra Lasses (The)" is a closer variant, finds de Grae. See also "Rakes of Invercairn," a reworking of similar melodic material in major mode and reel time.

Source for notated version: A piper named Sullivan [The Dublin Monthly Magazine]:

Another pipe-jig--a regular Munster man, by name and by nature--"The Humours of Castle Lyons,"-- picked by at Glean-na-b-fraocan last summer, in the time of the rick-making, from one Sullivan, a piper.

Printed sources: Cole (1000 Fiddle Tunes), 1940; p. 65. The Dublin Magazine, August, 1842; No. 28. P.M. Haverty (One Hundred Irish Airs vol. 1), 1858; No. 72, p. 31. Howe (Musician's Omnibus, No. 2), c. 1865; p. 107. Kerr (Merry Melodies, vol. 2), c. 1880's; No. 259, p. 28. O'Neill (Music of Ireland: 1850 Melodies), 1903; No. 959, p. 178. O'Neill (Dance Music of Ireland: 1001 Gems), 1907; No. 182, p. 44. Ryan's Mammoth Collection, 1883; p. 96.

Recorded sources:




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