Description
The celebrated song, Tiarna Mhaigh Eo [‘Lord Mayo’], is a rare example of a song from the harping tradition that combines a beautiful melody with the work of a highly accomplished lyricist, skilled in the art of accentuated Gaelic poetry. The lyrics also provide a unique insight into the social interaction between Gaelic harpers and their aristocratic patrons in a period when this ancient tradition of patronage of the poets and harpers was coming to an end.
The song has been attributed to the 18th-century harper, Dáibhí Ó Murchadha [David Murphy], and consists of an apology and offer of reconciliation to the harper’s patrons: the sixth Viscount Mayo, Theobald Bourke and his wife, Lady Mary. We are told that Ó Murchadha fell out with his patrons and absented himself from their presence for some years. He returned, however, to their ancestral seat, Caisleán an Bhúcaigh [Castlebourke] on Christmas Eve night to perform this beautiful composition.
In his three sessions, singer, piper and scholar, Éamonn Ó Bróithe, will teach you how to sing the song, explaining the meaning of the words in detail, guiding you in the pronunciation of these and the vocal phrasing implied by the lyrics. He will also explain how the metre of the verses should inform your performance.
In her three sessions, harpist and musicologist, Siobhán Armstrong, will get you ‘singing’ the song with your fingers on your harp, guided by what you have already learned by studying and singing the song. You will also get to explore the many – and very interesting – surviving manuscript and early printed sources for the melody: from a version in the first ever collection of Irish music printed in Ireland (1724), through a 19th-century source from the Hebrides in Scortland, to an archive recording from 1903, amongst others. In the final session, Siobhán may also introduce you to a gorgeous slow-air variant of Tiarna Mhuigh Eo collected by Séamus Ennis in Donegal in 1943, and recorded by the Donegal fiddler Frank Cassidy, among others, in the 1970s.
All harps welcome!