Annotation:Margaret Sheehan
MARGARET SHEEHAN. AKA - "Mairgread Ni Seadacain." AKA and see "My Darling Colleen Fune." Irish, Air (3/4 time, "very slow"). G Major. Standard tuning (fiddle). One part. O'Neill (1913) points out that, while the melody is regular in composition, there is no repetition of strains. In his book Irish Folk Music; A Fascinating Hobby (1910), O'Neill states:
There was an industrious weaver and poetaster in Bantry named John Sullivan in the [eighteen] sixties whose prolific muse was never at a loss for a themes. Margaret Sheehan, a likely young girl, who attracted his fancy, was done into verse as follows, attuned to a local melody, which my memory preserved:
M-a was placed the first, with an r before the rest,
G-a-r is the next, and e-t has it proved;
S-h then follows after, with double e in right good order,
And h-a-n is the latter of my Darling Colleen Fune.
Johnny Sullivan, "the poet", as he was best known, has long since ceased to sing, and what is worse, was remembered by only a few of the oldest inhabitants when I visited Bantry in 1906. Such is fame. ... [1] [pp. 71-72].
"'Colleen Fune'", explains Fr. John Quinn, "Anglicisation of “cailín fionn”, i. e., fair maid," and Fr. Quinn finds O'Neill's "My Darling Fair Maid" to be a setting of the "Margaret Sheehan" air in common time[1].
- ↑ Personal email communication 6.29.2021.