Annotation:Gramachree Molly
GRAMACHREE MOLLY (Grad Mo Croide a Maire). AKA and see "Harp that Once (The) (through Tara's Hall (The)," "Molly Asthore," "Will you go to Flanders," "Little Molly O!," "Gramachree," "Gradh mo chroidhe," "Maid in Bedlam," "Winter Hill Troop." Irish, English; Country Dance or Slow Air (4/4 time). D Major (Thompson): G Major (O'Flannagan, O'Neill). Standard tuning (fiddle). One part (O'Flannagan): AABB (Thompson). 'Gramachree' is an Englished version of the Irish "Gra Mo Croi" (Graidh mo chroidhe), or 'love of my heart.' The song "Gramachree Molly" was originally composed by a young Irishman, George Ogle, when he was in his early 20's (it was the second song written to the tune). Bruce Olson finds that it first appears with the tune in The London Magazine, of Sept. 1774, proved popular, and soon thereafter appears in many songbooks, printed with and without the tune. The melody was also adapted for country dancing.
A fife setting of the tune appears in the John Greenwood Manuscript from the post-Revolutionary period (now kept at the New York Historical Society), and it appears as "Winter Hill Troop, or Gramachree Molly" in the c. 1776-78 music copybook of Framningham, Ct., fifer Thomas Nixon Jr. Greenwood had been a fifer in the Revolution and later became dentist to George Washington, while Nixon was a 13 year old lad when he went to war with his father to Lexington and Concord. The air also appeared in Crotch's Specimens of various styles of music referred to in a Course of Lectures read at Oxford and London, and adapted to keyed instruments by W. Crotch, Mus. Doc., Prof. Mus. Oxon. Crotch, who was Principal of the Royal Academy of Music (London) from 1823-1832 delivered lectures on various types of national music from 1800-1804 and 1820, and had them bound in three volumes, familiarly referred to as "Crotch's Specimens". The Irish "specimens", including this tune, are contained in volume 1.
