The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #1082   Message #2293390
Posted By: Jack Campin
20-Mar-08 - 06:35 AM
Thread Name: Tune Req: Lament for the Lost Harp-Key
Subject: RE: Tune Req: Lament for the Lost Harp-Key
I think it may be in one of Alison Kinnaird's collections. It's known only from Scottish sources, and I've never heard anybody seriously suggest it was Irish (at the other extreme, one author says it is the *only* known early Scottish harp tune). You certainly don't find stuff like that in O'Neill's 1001. Rory Dall's identity is mysterious; there may have been two of him, one Irish and one Scottish, 100 years apart.

It's also known as "Lament for the Harp Tree" - probably a mistake, but people have come up wth the idea that the harp was a "tree of strings" to explain it, hence the title of Kinnaird's major book.