Annotation:Lament for Kilcash
X:0 T: No Score C: The Traditional Tune Archive M: K: x
LAMENT FOR KILCASH (Caoine Cill Cair/Cais/Cháis). AKA and see "Dungarvan (1)," "Alas my bright lady," "Fair at Dungarvan (The)," "Nelly My Love and Me," "Rose Connolly," "There is a beech-tree grove," "Were you ever in sweet Tipperary?." Irish, Air. A Jacobite song written about 1710. Kilcash was the old mansion of the Butler family (an old Norman family, long assimilated by the gaels) and the home of Margaret Butler, Viscountess Iveagh ("Lady Iveagh" or "Lady Veagh"), the heroine of the song. Her first husband, the attainted Jacobite Brian Maginnis (Mac Guinness), having died in the Austrian service, she married Colonel Thomas Butler of Kilcash Castle, a nominal Protestant who connived at her sheltering of Catholic bishops and priests there. It was set to its tune in 1745 by a Father Lane, who had been sponsered and educated for the priesthood by the Lady, who died in July 1744.
O'Neill (1913) records that Kilcash is also the ancient seat of the Ormondes, a few miles northeast of Clonmel. Several songs were written to the melody, including "Fair at Dungarvan (The)."
