Music from Ireland in Colonial America
Expanded information from the Rogues' Consort CD Booklet

24. Captain O’Kane (2:49) (The Wounded Hussar), written by Carolan for “Slasher O’Kane”, appears in Neale’s 1726 Dublin dance collection. (Our version) CP,SW,SJ,MJ

25. Get Up Early (2:10) Bunting’s version, but the tune dates from the early 18th century. CP,SJ,MJ

26. Rose Connally (2:54) from Bunting, starts with the words

“All you young men and maidens, I pray you take warning by me,
and never court your true love under a Hozier tree...” 

An ozier is a willow tree. Rose Connally lives on (or not) in an American ballad, Down in the Willow Garden, with a variant of the melody in Bunting. MJ, SJ

“Down in the willow garden,
Where me and my love did meet,
There we set a-courting,
My love dropped off to sleep.
I had me a bottle of Burgundy wine,
Which my true lover did not know.
There I poisoned that dear little girl,
Down under the banks below.
Other verses recount the the singer also stabbed her with a dagger and threw her into the river and that the singer's father

"..has often told me, that money would set me free,
If I would murder that dear little girl,
Her name was Rose Connally."

Money does not set him free; and in the last verse his father watches as he sings the final chorus from the scaffold:

"Now he sits at his old cottage door,
A-watching with weeping eye,
Looking at his own dear son,
Upon the scaffold high.
My race is run beneath the sun,
The devil's now waiting for me.
I murdered that dear little girl that I loved,
Her name was Rose Connally.”

We tried to give some tribute to the poor departed Rose, by starting with a flageolet fipple flute solo, before going into Bunting's version.

27. Limerick’s Lamentation (2:17) Bunting’s version, referring to the siege and fall of Limerick to the English in 1691. The tune is sometimes known as Sarsfield's Lamentation, named for the Irish commander. Its Scottish version, Lochaber Nae More, was so moving that "...in the old days, the playing of this nostalgic Gaelic air to the Highland regiments ... abroad had such a profound adverse effect on the morale of the men, that eventually it had to be banned."  CP, SJ, MJ

28. Granu Weal (2:03) (Graina Uaile/ Grainu Mhaol) - Bunting learned this from Macdonnell the piper. It appears in copybooks, and was still a favorite tune of the Irish in Cincinnati before 1820. The name is a corruption of Grace O’Malley, a well-known Irish woman from Elizabethan times, whose name was used allegorically to represent Ireland.  CP, SJ, MJ

29. Give Me Your Hand (2:04) (Tabhair dham do lamh/ Da mihi manum) Composed by Rory dall O’Cahan in 1603, an Ulster harper who performed and composed primarily in Scotland ('dall' means 'blind'). He was offended by a Lady Eglinton, who apologized to him. This tune was his acceptance of her apology. SW, SJ Inspired by Bunting's transcription.