Annotation:Humors of Loughrea (2)
X:1 T:Humors of Loughrea [2] M:4/4 L:1/8 B:Maguire - Hidden Fermanagh (2003, p. 113) N:From the Gunn Book. K:Edor BE E2 BEdE|BE E2 FDFA|BE E2 BABc|dBAF E2D2:| B/c/def gefd|B/c/ded B2A2|B/c/def gefd|dBAF E2D2| |:B/c/def gefd|B/c/ded B2A2|afge fdec|dBAF E2D2||
HUMORS OF LOUGHREA [2], THE. AKA and see "Middletown Maids (The)," "Pretty Girls of Gorey (The)," "Reel (92)." Irish, Reel (whole time). E Dorian. Standard tuning (fiddle). AAB. The tune appears under this title in The Gunn Book, an important manuscript of more than one hundred and seventy tunes compiled during the mid-nineteenth century by John Gunn, who was reputed to be ‘something of a dandy’ – he dressed in ‘a stovepipe hat … green coat with tails … Coloured waistcoat … britches … stockings’. Cyril Maguire remarks in his note with the tune in his publication Hidden Fermanagh (2003) that collector Brendan Breathnach had the same tune from Johnny Maguire in Belfast in 1966, albeit under the title "Gossan that Beat His Father (The)" and says it appears in Breathnach's Ceol. vol. III, No. 1. However, Fr. John Quinn finds that Breathnach's reel in Ceol is not the same melody. Maguire also notes that Co. Fermanagh flute player Cathal McConnell also had the tune by the "Gossan..." title from his source, Peter Flanagan. There remains some confusion about which tune from Johnny Maguire was really titled "Gossan that Beat His Father." As Fr. Quinn points out, there are several interrelated tunes that bear that title, with similar characteristics but perhaps not cognate relationships.
Researcher Conor Ward finds cognate melodies in County Leitrim musician Stephen Grier's 1883 music manuscript collection as an untitled reel (for which see "Reel (92)," in biography:Rev. Luke Donnellan's "Middletown Maids (The)," and also in wikipedia:James_Goodman_(musicologist)'s mid-19th century music manuscript collection with the title "Pretty Girls of Gorey (The)". The latter tune has a more distanced first strain, with a similar second strain, but still can be considered correspondent melodies.
