The song is named after the two hills that do exist. Carolan knew of the fairy legend, but was not writing specifically about that. It was also his first "hit" - a tune that he wrote (or more accurately borrowed from a traditional tune) after one of his patron's suggested he might make a better living writing tunes instead of simply playing them.

I gathered this information from Art Edelstein's new book on Carolan. Art will be my guest on Sunday October 21st on WFDU-FM's THE SUNDAY SESSION, 9am eastern time - you can listen in at www.wfdu.fm. I will also try to make the show available here on Mudcat in the radio section with other episodes of the series.

Ron Olesko