Annotation:Mall Rua
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MALL RUA (Red-Haired Moll). AKA and see "B'fhearr liomsa ainnir gan guna," "Come Under My Dimity," "Ditherum Doodle," "Her Blue eyes they gleam and they twinkle," "I'll Take a Glass with a Friend," "Jig an dá Thuistiún," "Late on a Saturday Night," "Moll Roe (1)," "Moll Roe in the Morning," "Munsterman's Flattery," "Night of the Fun (3) (The)," "One Bumper at Parting," "Though late was I plump." Irish, Single Jig. E Minor. Standard tuning (fiddle). AA'B. Breathnach (1985) reports that Clare folklore has it that Mall Rua (Mall Roe) killed "three or four" of her husbands. Mall (a variant of Molly or Mary) was red-haired, and thus the appellation rua, or red, and was proprietress of Leimneach Castle in north Clare, an edifice which still stands. The 'castle' is actually a seventeenth-century mansion grafted onto a fifteenth-century tower. The mansion part was probably begun in 1639 when its owner, Conor O'Brien, married the famous Maire Ruadh, 'Red Mary', daughter of Sir Tirlogh McMahon. This was the second marriage for Mary, and it lasted some twelve years until, in 1651, Conor was killed by troops under Cromwell who had been sent to besiege Leamaneh. The story goes that when his body was brought home by his retainers, Mary refused to admit them, declaring "We need no dead men here." It seems she felt a live lord was the best protection for her and her infant son, and since the Cromwellian forces were in the ascendance, she betook herself to Limerick to find a husband among her former husband's foes. In this she was successful, and her next husband was a Cornet named John Cooper. Unfortunately for Cooper, he had occasion to disparage his matrimonial predecessor, Conor O'Brien, and Mary, furious at the slight, threw him out an upstairs window where he plummeted to his death. Cooper perhaps had some inkling as to her temper (and his peril), for other stories about Mary relate that she hung servants from the corbels of the castle-men by the neck and women by the hair. She kept a famous blind stallion who was so fierce that the grooms had to hide in specially constructed niches when they let him out of his stall. Caoimhin Mac Aoidh reports that she was the target of a curse due to her many offenses which foretold that she would "die roaring with her legs in the air". This damnation was fulfilled when she was thrown from her horse into a broken tree trunk. Mac Aoidh says he heard older people in Clare use this curse verbatim in a joking manner. Several songs were written to the tune; see Breathnach's note in CRÉ II.
Source for notated version: whistle player Art O'Keefe, 1960 (Co. Kerry, Ireland) [Breathnach].
Printed sources: Breathnach (CRÉ II), 1976; No. 93, p. 48.
Recorded sources: