Annotation:Margaret Sheehan

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MARGARET SHEEHAN. AKA - "Mairgread Ni Seadacain." AKA and see "My Darling Colleen Fune." Irish, Air (3/4 time, "very slow"). G Major. Standard tuning (fiddle). One part. O'Neill (1913) points out that, while the melody is regular in composition, there is no repetition of strains. In his book Irish Folk Music; A Fascinating Hobby (1910), O'Neill states:

There was an industrious weaver and poetaster in Bantry named John Sullivan in the [eighteen] sixties whose prolific muse was never at a loss for a themes. Margaret Sheehan, a likely young girl, who attracted his fancy, was done into verse as follows, attuned to a local melody, which my memory preserved:

M-a was placed the first, with an r before the rest,
G-a-r is the next, and e-t has it proved;
S-h then follows after, with double e in right good order,
And h-a-n is the latter of my Darling Colleen Fune.

Johnny Sullivan, "the poet", as he was best known, has long since ceased to sing, and what is worse, was remembered by only a few of the oldest inhabitants when I visited Bantry in 1906. Such is fame. ... [1] [pp. 71-72]

Source for notated version:

Printed sources: O'Neill (Music of Ireland: 1850 Melodies), 1903; No. 61, p. 11. O'Neill (Irish Minstrels and Musicians), 1913; p. 115.

Recorded sources:

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