Annotation:Cailín og a Stuair Me
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CAILÍN OG A STUAIR ME ("Little Girl of My Heart for Ever and Ever" or "Young Girl, My Treasure"). AKA and see "Cal(l)ino Casturame," "Colleen Oge Astore," "Calen o custure me," "Charlie Reilly," "Croppy Boy (2) (The)," "I am a Girl from the River Suir," "Newlyn Town," "Robber (The)," "An Irish Tune." Irish, English; Air (6/4 time). C Major (Flood): D Major (Kines): A Major (Chappell). Standard tuning (fiddle). One Part (Flood, Kines): AB (Chappell). Flood (1905, 1906) traces the air's history, asserting that the tune was originally an Irish harp melody of c. 1570. Tomas Ó Canainn (1978) writes that this was the "very first genuinely Irish tune" in collections. Chappell (1859) demurs as to the national origin, and quotes Sir Robert Stewart who, writing on Irish music in Grove's Dictionary, remarks that the piece "seems deficient in the characteristic features of Irish melody." A ballad with this title was entered on the books of the Stationers Company in 1581-82 (an early attempt at copyrighting), and the song to which it is sung was published in Robinson's A Handful of Pleasant Ditties of 1584, in the Anglicized form "Calen o custure me." It appears in the Fitzwilliam Virginal Book (c. 1610, set by the famous early English musician and composer William Byrde) and in William Ballet's Lute Book (c. 1590) under the Latinized title ("Callino Casturame"). It was quoted by Shakespeare in Henry V (act ii, sc. 4) where Pistol addresses the French Soldier:
Quality! Calen o custure me.
In A Handful of Pleasant Delites (1584) the words "Caleno Custurame" are interpolated as a refrain between every line of the poem "When as I view", which begins:
When as I view your comely grace,
Caleno custurame;
Your golden haires, your angel's face,
Caleno custurame. (Kines)
Almost a century after the tune was composed it appears again in Playford's Musical Companion of 1673 set in four parts and titled "An Irish Tune." Some writers (Fuld, for example) note a similarity with the French tune "Malbrouk." Hoffman (1877) published the melody in his arrangement of tunes mostly from the George Petrie collection.
Source for notated version: The Fitzwilliam Virginal Book, c. 1610 [Chappell, Flood].
Printed sources: Chappell (Popular Music of the Olden Times), 1856; p. 84. Flood (The Story of the Harp), 1905; p. 81. Kines (Songs From Shakespeare's Plays and Popular Songs of Shakespeare's Time), 1964; p. 56.
Recorded sources: