This beautiful air was composed by Thomas Connellan, who was born around 1640 in Cloonamahon, Co. Sligo and died some time after 1717 (in Edinburgh, where he had been made a burgess in that year, or possibly at Lough Gur, Co. Limerick). Thomas and his brother William were celebrated harper-composers and travelled widely.

Molly St George was an heiress from Headford, Co. Galway. (Further information about her below.)

The surviving versions of the tune vary as it belongs to an oral tradition. The setting that Máire plays is her amalgam of the variant published in 1726 in John and William Neal’s Collection of the Most Celebrated Irish Tunes and that published in 1796 in Volume I of Edward Bunting’s Ancient Music of Ireland.

The harp arrangement is also Máire’s own. It was recorded by her with Chris Newman on their 2007 album FireWire (Old Bridge Music OBMCD17).

Available for download only. Choose the format you would like – A4 or US Letter- at checkout.

Description

This beautiful air was composed by Thomas Connellan, who was born around 1640 in Cloonamahon, Co. Sligo. Thomas and his brother William were celebrated harper-composers. The harper and memoirist Arthur O’Neill tells us that Thomas died in Edinburgh, of which city he had been made a burgess in 1717 (although James Hardiman asserts in his Irish Minstrelsy that he died at Lough Gur, Co. Limerick).

According to harper Denis Hempson, Molly was a Connacht heiress who married “a Captain Manshear, … a Munster man of good estate”. A Mary or Molly St George, the illegitimate daughter of General Richard St George of Headford Castle, Co. Galway, did indeed marry a Captain James Mansergh in 1749 and went on to inherit the 7,500 acre Headford estate in 1755. If this is the correct Molly, Thomas Connellan’s song in her honour can only have been composed when she was very young and Connellan very old – which seems unlikely, as the words of the song are addressed to a young lady (‘óig- bhean’) and not a child. However, there was another, earlier, Molly in the family, whose dates suit better. The Hon. Mary St George was born in 1693 and died in 1741 and was the only child and heiress of Lord St George of Headford. She married a Captain John Ussher in 1714, so it seems more than possible that Connellan composed his beautiful song for her and not for the later Molly. (See Dónal O’Sullivan’s edition of Edward Bunting’s Ancient Music of Ireland in the Journal of the Irish Folk Song Society vol. XXII, pp. 43 – 46; and Robert O’Byrne: Tyrone House and the St George Family: The Story of an Anglo-Irish Family.)

The surviving versions of the tune vary as it belongs to an oral tradition. The setting that Máire plays is her amalgam of the variant published in 1726 in John and William Neal’s Collection of the Most Celebrated Irish Tunes and that published in 1796 in Volume I of Edward Bunting’s Ancient Music of Ireland.

The harp arrangement is also Máire’s own. It was recorded by her with Chris Newman on their 2007 album FireWire (Old Bridge Music OBMCD17).

Available for download only. Choose the format you would like – A4 or US Letter – at checkout.