Tune Req: Top of Cork Road / Father O'Flynn

Subject: RE: Tune Req: Top of Cork Road / Father O'Flynn
From: The Sandman
Date: 04 Feb 24 - 11:56 AM

there are no words, the only words are for father o flynn

Subject: RE: Tune Req: Top of Cork Road / Father O'Flynn
From: Thompson
Date: 03 Feb 24 - 01:28 AM

It's the words I'm interested in.

Subject: RE: Tune Req: Top of Cork Road / Father O'Flynn
From: GUEST,Peter Laban
Date: 02 Feb 24 - 01:31 PM

78 rpm : Leo Rowsome - Top of Cork Road/ Irish washerwoman

Subject: RE: Tune Req: Top of Cork Road / Father O'Flynn
From: GUEST,jim bainbridge
Date: 02 Feb 24 - 12:31 PM

The McPeake family recorded a tune called Top of the Cork Road'- I think on their early Topic LP- I picked it up then but it's not Fatrher O'Flynn'.
Tim Lyons told me his name for that tune was the 'Prize Jig'

Subject: RE: Tune Req: Top of Cork Road / Father O'Flynn
From: The Sandman
Date: 02 Feb 24 - 11:10 AM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vea01KbQ-_k FATHER O FLYNN TOP OF THE CORK ROAD

Subject: RE: Tune Req: Top of Cork Road / Father O'Flynn
From: Thompson
Date: 02 Feb 24 - 10:33 AM

In Dúchas, the collection of folklore in schools, there's a reference to a Castlelyons, Co Cork poet called James Crowley having written this, which suggests that there are other words than Father O'Flynn.

Subject: RE: Top of the Old Cork Road
From: GUEST,Jennifer
Date: 21 Jan 01 - 10:53 AM

I have seen the tune some people call "Top of the cork Road" and I learned it as "Father O'Flynn." I have a recording of "Father O'Flynn" by Joe Burke on accordian in "Happy to Meet & Sorry to Part" with Michael Cooney & Terry Corcoran from Green Linnet Records. I think it would be pretty easy to find them on the net.The tune is in a set of jigs with "Haste to the Wedding." I learned these tunes when I played with a Ceoli Band.

Subject: RE: Top of the Old Cork Road
From: GUEST,JTT
Date: 21 Jan 01 - 05:17 AM

No, Red River Valley is *like* Take it Down From the Mast, but it's not the same tune.

Top of the Old Cork Road, incidentally, is the tune whistled by, I think, Dick Barrett as he, Liam Mellowes, Rory O'Connor and Joe McKelvey were marched out to be shot by firing squad during the Irish civil war.

Subject: RE: Top of the Old Cork Road
From: Malcolm Douglas
Date: 20 Jan 01 - 11:41 AM

The following is quoted from the entry at  The Fiddler's Companion:

"The title comes from popular lyrics written to the tune "The Top of Cork Road" by Alfred Perceval Graves, first published in 1874.  The original for the priest in Graves' song was Father Michael Walsh, a native of Buttevant, County Cork, who was a parish priest in Sneem, County Kerry, for over thirty-seven years until his death in 1866 (he is buried in the parish church).  Walsh was said to have been a good violinist by one source, but Graves himself identified the clergyman as a piper "who played delightfully" and who had a love for Irish music.  This last statement is borne out by the fact that twenty-seven pieces are credited to him in the Stanford/Petrie collection (1906).

[Also found in England as] The Yorkshire Lasses and Bonny Green Garters... Bayard (1981), in tracing the tune, thinks that it is perhaps not Irish in origin but English, as English (1778) published versions predate the Irish (1798)."

It's often impossible to tell whether a particular tune is originally Scottish, Irish or English, of course, as there has been so much cross-fertilisation between the traditions over the centuries.

Malcolm

Subject: RE: Top of the Old Cork Road
From: GUEST,Martin Ryan
Date: 20 Jan 01 - 04:59 AM

Aha! Try THIS So Top of COrk Road seems to be the old title of the tune.

Regards

Subject: RE: Top of the Old Cork Road
From: GUEST
Date: 20 Jan 01 - 04:55 AM

JTT

Don't know the Top of Cork Road one offhand - but whoever told you that "Take it down " was to the tune of Red River valley" ... was basically right! I'll check on the other if nobody domes with an anser.

Regards

Subject: Top of the Old Cork Road
From: GUEST,JTT
Date: 20 Jan 01 - 04:20 AM

Where would I find a recording of Top of the Old Cork Road? I see some people saying it's "aka Father O'Flynn's" - but then I saw someone saying the tune for "Take it Down From the Mast" was the same as "Red River Valley"...