Annotation:Mountcashel's Brigade
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MOUNTCASHEL'S BRIGADE. AKA - "Mount Cashel's Brigade." AKA and see "Dog and Gun," "Enrico, "Fountain's Hornpipe." Irish, March (4/4 time). D Major (Roche): A Major (Laufman). Standard tuning (fiddle). AB (Laufman): AABBCC (Roche). Mountcashel's Brigade; or, The Rescue of Cremona (1882) was an historical novel by Charles Graham Halpine (1829-1868), born in Oldcastle, Co. Meath. Halpine was a Young Irelander who worked briefly in London before emigrating to America, where he became proprietor of The New York Citizen. He is also known for his comic works. The title of his novel refers to the exodus of Irish troops in 1690 during the Williamite Wars. In exchange for a French contingent, around 5,000 Irish soldiers sailed from Kinsale to Brest in France under the command of Justin MacCarthy, Viscount Mountcashel. This group formed a foreign brigade within the French army, and received a higher rate of pay than the average French soldier. In 1702, while defending Cremona, the Irish foiled a surprise attack by Prince Eugene and the imperial army, perhaps their best-known engagement while in the service of King Louis XIV.
Phillip Heath-Coleman finds "Mountcashel's Brigade" to be a version of the English tune "Enrico," popular at English sessions. The latter two strains of "Mountcashel's Brigade" are the two strains of "Enrico." Fr. John Quinn further identifies the first strain of "Mountcashel's" as belonging to the 18th century march "Dog and Gun," and also finds a cognate with the "Enrico" strains in the mid-19th century music manuscript collection of County Cork uillean piper and cleric James Goodman under the title "Fountain's Hornpipe" and as an untitled tune in the 1883 music manuscript collection of County Leitrim fiddler and piper Stephen Grier.
Source for notated version:
Printed sources: Laufman (Okay, Let's Try a Contra, Men on the Right, Ladies on the Left, Up and Down the Hall), 1973; p. 5 (as "Mount Cashel's Brigade"). Roche (Collection of Traditional Irish Music, vol. 3), 1927; No. 198, p. 77.
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