Annotation:John Macananty's Courtship
Tune properties and standard notation
JOHN MACANANTY'S COURTSHIP. Irish, Air (3/4 time). D Major. Standard tuning (fiddle). One part. "Both the air and the words of this ballad appear to me to possess much simple beauty and feeling. I learned them from my father when I was a mere child, and I never heard the air with any one else. The ballad embodies one of the many forms of a superstition formerly very prevalent in Ireland, and not quite extinct even at the present day--namely, a belief that the fairies often take away mortals to their palaces in the fairy forts, lisses, and pleasant green hills. Macananty or Macanantan was a fairy king who formerly enjoyed great celebrity in the north of Ireland, and whose fame extended also into the south. There is a hill called Scrabo in the county of Down, near Newtownards, on which is a great sepulchral carn. Under this hill and carn Macananty had his palace; and the place still retains much of its fairy reputation among the people of the district. Macananty himself is remembered in legend; and his name is quite familiar, especially among the people who inhabit the mountainous districts exztending from Dundalk to Newcastle in the county of Down. I find that here they call him in Irish Sheamus Macaneandan--James Macanantan; buy both names, John and James, must have been added in recent times" (Joyce).
Source for notated version:
Printed sources: Joyce (Old Irish Folk Music and Songs), 1909; No. 391, pp. 198-199.
Recorded sources: