An Buachaill Caol Dubh/The House Keeper
This track is from our 2006 CD, Concert Tour of North America 2006.
Damien learnt this setting of ‘An Buachaillín Bán’from the Baile na nGall singer and accordion player Séamus Ó Beaglaoich. The song has been in the Ó Beaglaoich family singing tradition for many years – Séamus’sister,Eibhlín,also sang this song many years ago.Instrumental settings of this air have been played by Willie Clancy amongst others, while the words of the actual song date back to the mid- eighteenth century to the Munster poet Seán Ó Seanacháin, a native of Tulla in County Clare who settled in Glin by the Shannon estuary in County Limerick.
The House Keeper No.82 occurs in the 1998 Publication Tunes of The Munster Pipers – Irish Traditional Music for James Goodman Manuscripts (Ed. Hugh Shields/Pub ITMA). Born outside Dingle in County Kerry into a family who had been Church of Ireland curates for many years,the young James Goodman spoke Irish and listened to, and subsequently played on uilleann pipes, the tunes he heard around him.Canon Goodman enjoyed a notable reputation as a Gaelic Irish Scholar,becoming a Professor of Irish at Trinity College in Dublin,the latter while acting as rector of Abbeystrewry parish near Skibbereen in West Cork.Goodman’s Manuscripts are contained in four volumes in Trinity College Library.Amongst the mammoth collection of tunes from various different sources are over five hundred tunes which he marked with the letter K,which Goodman described as having ‘transcribed from Munster pipers etc.’Some but not all of these ‘K’tunes appear to have been sourced from Goodman from the Kerry piper Tom Kennedy who visited,or may have stayed with the rector while he was based in the parish of Ardgroom,just outside Beare in West Cork.‘The Housekeeper’features as one of the ‘K’ tune from the 1998 Irish Traditional Music Archive publication and heretofore has long been associated with Munster and various settings of it exist including that favoured by Denis Murphy and other Sliabh Luachra fiddlers.
- Date
- 5 December 2006
- Tune
- An Buachaill Caol Dubh/The House Keeper
- Source
- Concert Tour of North America 2006
| Performers/Subjects | Instruments |
|---|---|
| Damien Mullane | Button Accordion |
