Annotation:Mary My Bright Pet
MARY, MY BRIGHT PET (Peatad Geal a Máire). Irish, Air (6/8 time, "spirited"). A Dorian. Standard tuning (fiddle). AB. Researcher Fr. John Quinn believes that "Mary, My Bright Pet" is one of a number of "corrections" made (either by James O'Neill or Francis himself) to tunes found in Charles Villiers Stanford's edition of artist and antiquarian George Petrie's (1790-1866) manuscript collections, issued after the publication of O'Neill's Music of Ireland (1903), but prior to his Dance Music of Ireland (1907), which omitted the air section of the former publication. In this instance, Fr. Quinn finds Petrie's "incomplete" untitled tune of 12 bars, SP224 and SP 485 to be the source of O'Neill's "corrected" sixteen bar air, given the title "Mary, My Bright Pet." Petrie himself had the 12 bar air from another collector, P.W. Joyce (1827-1914), who obtained it from his brother, Mr. M. Joyce.
