Annotation:Planxty Davis
PLANXTY DAVIS ("Pleraca Daibis" or "Plearaca Daiti"). AKA and see "Killicrankie (2)," "Battle of Kilicrankie." Irish, Hornpipe or Long Dance (2/4 time). D Major. Standard tuning (fiddle). AB (O'Neill/Krassen): AABB (O'Neill/1001). "Planxty Davis" is listed as one of the supposed seven or eight hundred compositions of the ancient harper Thomas O'Connellan[1], almost all of which are lost. Whether O'Connellan was the composer is possible, but unverifiable, and no factual support has surfaced to bolster the assertion. The melody is occasionally attributed to Turlough O'Carolan, but it is highly unlikely that O'Carolan was mature and skilled enough to have composed it, based on the dates of the tune's appearance in Scotland as “Battle of Kilicrankie/Killicrankie (2).” The "Killiecrankie" title was used in Scots and English publications some 100 years before it appears in an Irish volume as "Planxty Davis," and Keith Sanger suggests the Irish title could be a mistake, transferred from O'Carolan's "Two William Davises."
See also note for “Breach of Aughrim” for more on O'Connellan.
- ↑ Dates of birth are variously given as 1620, 1625 and 1640, and death as 1685, 1689, 1698 and 1700. Details of his life are similarly contradictory and vague.