I'm trying to move this all to one thread, so I copied and pasted from two other threads where I added this:

To add to this, here is a quote from a book that I received today via internet used bookstore, "Mary O'Hara A Song For Ireland".

"...The Lagan is that well known river on which Belfast is built and so people are apt to assume that 'My Lagan Love' comes from County Antrim in the north-east corner of Ireland. However, some argue that the Lagan in the song refers to a stream that empties into Lough Swilly in County Donegal, not far from Letterkenny, where Herbert Hughes collected the song in 1903. Hughes first heard the tune played on a fiddle and traced it back to a sapper of the royal Engineers working in Donegal in 1870 with the Ordnance Survey of Ireland... " end quote

Previous words sung to the tune were 'The Belfast Maid'. Hamilton Hearty created the classical arrangement that we hear recorded today.

After quoting some background information about My Lagan Love in the thread about the meaning of folk, I checked the lyrics in the DT. The notes at the bottom of the lyrics make guesses about the meaning of "leanán sídhe" based on Scottish words. The song is from Ireland. The author is Joseph Campbell aka Seósamh Mac Cathmahaoil.

To quote from Mary O'Hara's notes on this song, from her book "A Song For Ireland", - "The leánan sídhe (fairy mistress) mentioned in the song is a malicious figure who frequently crops up in Gaelic love stories. One could call her the femme fatale of Gaelic folklore. She sought the love of men; if they refused, she became their slave, but if they consented, they became her slaves and could only escape by finding another to take their place. She fed off them so her lovers gradually wasted away - a common enough theme in Gaelic medieval poetry, which often saw love as a kind of sickness. Most Gaelic poets in the past had their leanán sídhe to give them inspiration. This malignant fairy was for them a sort of Gaelic muse. On the other hand, the crickets mentioned in the song are a sign of good luck and their sound on the hearth a good omen. It was the custom of newly-married couples about to set up home to bring crickets from the hearths of their parents' house and place them in the new hearth."

This mythological femme fatale reminds me of the vilia of Germany, used in the song by Franz Lehar in The Merry Widow opera. Vilia, the spirit woman of the wood, entices the huntsman, and if he sees her he falls in love, which means his death. "vilia, oh, vilia, be tender be true, love me and I'll die for you."

Alice Flynn