Annotation:Gage Fane

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GAGE FANE. Irish, Air (3/4 time). G Major. Standard tuning (fiddle). One part. Thomas Moore set his song "The origin of the hart" to this air. Francis O'Neill (Irish Folk Music, 1910, p. 195) explains that the title is a phoentic rendering of the Irish "Gaedhana Fiadhaine (An)" or "Wild Geese (The)."

Bunting says this fine melody was composed as a farewell to the gallant remnant of the Irish army who upon the capitulation of Limerick, in 1691, preferred an honorable exile to remaining in the country after their cause was lost. The mystifying "Gage Fane" confronts us in Smith's Irish Minstrel, Moore's Irish Melodies, and Moffat's Minstrelsy of Ireland and many less pretentious publications. It was a relief to find that Perceval Graves in The Irish Song Book, issued in 1895, finally broke the monotony of error by printing the correct Irish name.

Grattan Flook in A History of Irish Music tells us that Smollet Holden in his Collection of Irish Tunes, published in 1804-6, was primarily responsible for this ridiculous error, which has been copied for nearly a century without question or correction.

Source for notated version:

Printed sources: Clinton (Gems of Ireland:200 Airs), 1841; No. 80, p. 40.

Recorded sources:

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