Annotation:Cahirciveen

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X:1 T:Cahirciveen M:6/8 L:1/8 R:Air Q:"Slow" S:O'Neill - Music of Ireland (1903), No. 98 Z:AK/Fiddler's Companion K:G D | G>AG (FGA) | B>AG AD>E | FED (CB,C) | DG{B}A G2D | G>AG (FGA) | BAG AD>E | FED !trill!(CB,C) | DGA G2 || (B/c/) | dBd cBA | GAG F<D (B/c/) | DBd cBA |T(GFG) B2A | G>AG FGA | B>AG AD>E | FED !trill!CB,C | DGA G2 ||

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CAHIRCIVEEN. AKA and see "Old Shady Bohereen (The)," "Cumberland's Crew (The)," "Kerry for me." Irish, Slow Air (6/8 time). G Major. Standard tuning (fiddle). AB. Cazden (et al, 1982) collected a minor key variant of this tune from New York's Catskill Mountains called "The Cumberland Crew," which O'Neill lists as an alternate title. The Confederate CSS Cumberland was a frigate sunk by the Union ironclad Merrimac during the American Civil War. The air was known as "Cahirciveen" around Northwest Cork, according to Sergeant Michael Hartnett (of the Chicago police force, and one of O'Neill's sources), although O'Neill himself learned the tune as a boy in Bantry, west Cork. O'Neill write in his Irish Folk Music, A Fascinating Hobby (1910, p. 73):

An unpublished old Irish air of quaint cadences, to which was sung some verses reciting the adventures of the "Cumberland's Crew", was known as "Cahirciveen" around Northwest Cork, according to Sergeant Mich'l Hartnett. The setting printed in O'Neill's Music of Ireland was mine, but when or where its acquired has escaped my memory.

Paul de Grae, in his notes to the O'Neill collections, remarks that some of the "quaint cadences" are reminiscent of "Beautiful Mary McKeon" .