The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #31360   Message #407411
Posted By: GUEST,Bruce O.
27-Feb-01 - 04:15 PM
Thread Name: Edward Bunting - portrait?
Subject: RE: Edward Bunting - portrait?
Wow that 'How old is Irish traditional music' site starts out with 'Callino'. They reproduced the facsimile score of Wm. Ballat (sometimes called Ballet) lute MS from Breandan Breathnach's 'Folk Music and Dances of Ireland' and that's about all they got right.

The Wm. Ballat lute book wasn't published in 1584, (I think most or all of the tunes were translated and published about 1960) that's when the English song to the tune appeared in 'A Handefull of Pleasant Delights'. The tune is in a later part of the Ballat MS now dated c 1593 to 1603. For a correct account of the tune, and the name the English used for it for vroadside ballads for over a century, see "Callino" in file BMADD on my website.

The oldest Irish song with tune is "Shein Sheis Shuus Lum (S/in s/ios agus suas liom)" sung by John Abell at his Stationers Hall concert in London. Three modern Irish works I have say it's in Abell's 'A Collection of Songs in Several Languages', 1701. An error copied from one book into another. Neither song (in any language) nor tune is in that book (I've theme coded all the tunes in the book). The Stationer's Hall concert was in 1716, and the earliest copy of song (and tune) is in the 'Merry Musician', same year, and in the 1730 edition.