Annotation:Return from Fingal (The)
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RETURN FROM FINGAL, THE (An casad ua Fine-Gall). AKA and see “Battle of Aughrim (3),” “March to the Battle of Aughrim.” AKA – “Fingal March.” Irish, Air or March. E Minor. Standard tuning (fiddle). AABB. O’Neill (1913) states this air was learned by the Irish collector Dr. Petrie from the playing of Munster pipers, and was supposed to have been the march played or sung by Brian Boru’s Munster troops on their return home from their triumph over the Danes at Clontarf in 1014 (in which Boru was killed). Fingal, or in Irish Fine Gall or ‘foreigner’s territory’, is another name for Clontarf, located just north of Dublin.
The march (as "Return from Fingal") was recorded in New York in by The Fingal Trio, consisting of uilleann piper James Ennis, fiddler Frank O'Higgins, and flutist John "Jake" Cawley. Irish bagpipes, fiddle, flute, IZ 195 (Dublin). The Fingal Trio were James Ennis (pipes), John "Jakes" Cawley (flute), and Frank O'Higgins (fiddle). James was the father of Seamus Ennis, the very well-known piper and music collector, also very talented as a singer and storyteller and player of various other instruments. Cawley was from Sligo, O'Higgins from Meath. This is a medley of marches with associations with the 1014 Battle of Clontarf, namely "Brian the Brave," "The Return from Fingal," and "Remember the Glories of Brian the Brave" (as it was titled by 19th century lyricist Tom Moore, using the older air Molly MacAlpin). This was apt given the group's name, James Ennis hailed from the Naul, Co. Dublin, in Fingal, which was an old name for a county comprising modern North Co. Dublin.
The flipside of this recording, a medley of hornpipes, may be heard on the excellent CD "From Galway to Dublin," a collection of Irish music 78s, on the Rounder label.
Source for notated version:
Printed sources: Bulmer & Sharpley (Music from Ireland), vol. 2) , 1974; No. 80 (listed as a march). P.M. Haverty (One Hundred Irish Airs vol. 2), 1858; No. 155, p. 71. Johnson (The Kitchen Musician No. 5: Mostly Irish Airs), 1985 (revised 2000); p. 11. O’Neill (Music of Ireland: 1850 Melodies), 1903; No. 1816, p. 341.
Recorded sources: Folkways FTS 31098, Ken Perlman - "Clawhammer Banjo and Fingerstyle Guitar Solos" (appears as “Return of Fingal”). Regal-Zonophone MR 386 (London), The Fingal Trio
See also listings at:
Jane Keefer’s Folk Music Index: An Index to Recorded Sources [1]
Alan Ng’s Irishtune.info [2]
Hear the Fingal Trio's recording at the Internet Archive [3]