Annotation:Arrah My Dear Eveleen

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ARRAH MY DEAR EVELEEN (Ara Mo Eiblin Dileas). AKA and see "Silent O Moyle!" "Song of Finnula/Fionnuala." Irish, Air (4/4 time). A Minor (Haverty, O'Neill): E Minor (Clinton). Standard tuning (fiddle). AB. Thomas Moore (1779-1852) set his song "Song of Finnula" (about the daughter of the god Lir) to this air (which also supplies the other alternate title, derived from the first line: "Silent, oh Moyle! be the roar of thy water"). Alfred Moffat determined that "Arrah My Dear Eveleen" was first published in Holden's Collection of Old Established Irish Slow & Quick Tunes (1805, p. 21, as "Arah my dear Ev'leen"), supplied by collector George Petrie, and thought it was the source for the version in Moore's Irish Melodies, published the next year (1807). A later editor of Moore's work, Charles Villiers Stanford (1852-1924), was of the opinion that the sharpening of the seventh degree of the scale destroyed the original, preferable, form of the tune. However, musicologist Aloys Fleischmann in his Sources of Irish Traditional Music c. 1600-1855 (1998), found an earlier version of the melody in E. Light's A Select Collection of Scottish & Irish Airs for the Voice, No. 5, vol. II (1790).

Printed source:

Source for notated version:

Printed sources: Clinton (Gems of Ireland: 200 Airs), 1841; No. 72, p. 36. P.M. Haverty (One Hundred Irish Airs vol. 3), 1859; No. 231, p. 112. O'Neill (Music of Ireland: 1850 Melodies), 1903; No. 376, p. 65.

Recorded sources:

See also listing at:
See The Contemplator site for more on more's lyric [1]

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