Annotation:Castleconnell Lasses

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 CASTLECONNELL LASSES. Irish, Reel. D Major ('A' part) & B Minor ('B' part). Standard tuning (fiddle). AB. Castleconnell is near the city of Limerick. It is mentioned in the memoirs of blind harper Arthur O'Neill (1734-1818), originally from County Tyrone, who as a young man first toured Ireland in the late 1750's. "I met a Counsellor Macnamara, then Recorder of Limerick, who invited me to his house about five miles distant, called Castleconnell, where I was very well received. He had a house in Limerick in which was the skeleton of Brian Boru's harp, and in consequence of the national esteem I held for its owner I new strung it and then tuned it. It was made of cedar. It was not strung for upwards of two hundred years before; which when done Counsellor Macnamara requested me to strap it around my neck and play it through that hospitable city, which I agreed to do, being then young and hearty and had no care, as at that period I was not very rebunxious among the women....I was followed by a procession of upwards of five hundred people, both gentle and simple, as they seemed to be every one imbibed with a national spirit when they heard it was the instrument that our celebrated Irish monarch played upon before he leathered the Danes at Clontarf out of poor Erin." Source for notated version: From one of "two very old well-written manuscripts lent to me in 1873 by Mr. J. O'Sullivan, of Bruff, Co. Limerick" (Joyce). Printed sources: Joyce (Old Irish Folk Music and Songs), 1909; No. 233, p. 113. Recorded sources:

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