Annotation:Brown Maid (The)

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BROWN MAID, THE (Cailín Donn (An)). AKA and see "Oh! touch dear maid that string," "Oh! breathe not his name." Irish, Air (4/4 time). F Major. Standard tuning (fiddle). AB. There is a setting of "The Brown Maid" arranged for 'Temperance Band' in The Dublin Magazine (November, 1842, No. 3); instruments included flute, three clarinets (separate parts for each), a horn in F, trumpet in F, and trombone or bass. Alfred Moffat (Minstrelsy of Ireland, 1897, p. 344) notes that another setting of the air is known as "The Brown Irish Maid," to which Thomas Moore wrote his song "By that lake whose gloomy shore" for the fourth volume of his Irish Melodies (c. 1810). "It was a song in Rosina (1783) to verses beginning, "By that fountain's flow'ry side. In the Hibernian Muse (c. 1789) it is entitled 'The Irish Girl.'"

Source for notated version: Chicago Police Sergeant James O'Neill, a fiddler originally from County Down and Francis O'Neill's collaborator [O'Neill].

Printed sources: Clinton (Gems of Ireland: 200 Airs), 1841; No. 38, p. 19. P.M. Haverty (One Hundred Irish Airs vol. 3), 1859; No. 235, p. 114. Hughes (Gems from the Emerald Isle), c. 1860's; No. 93, p. 22. O'Neill (Music of Ireland: 1850 Melodies), 1903; No. 154, p. 27.

Recorded sources:

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