Annotation:O'Brien of Arra

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O'BRIEN OF ARRA. Irish, March (4/4 time). G Major. Standard tuning (fiddle). AAB. "Arra is a small mountain-tract, south of Lough Deargairt, and north of the Camailte (vulgo the Keeper) hills. It was the seat of a branch of the Thomond princes, called the O’Briens of Arra, who hold an important place in the Munster Annals. "O'Brien of Arra" is also the name of a poem by Thomas Davis (1814–1845)" (Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, 1876). It begins:

Tall are the towers of O’Kennedy,
Broad are the lands of MacCarha,
Desmond feeds five hundred men a-day;
Yet here ’s to O’Brien of Arra!
Up from the Castle of Drumineer,
Down from the top of Camailte,
Clansman and kinsman are coming here
To give him the Cead mile failte.

Source for notated version:

Printed sources: Roche (Collection of Traditional Irish Music, vol. 3), 1927; No. 201, p. 78.

Recorded sources:

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