Follow Me Up To Carlow reel

I’ve never heard Follow Me Up To Carlow as a tune before, but I know it very well as a song recorded by Planxty in “the old days” and more recently by Quilty. (So the links in the recordings section refers to the song, not the tune). If I’ve recalled it right, it’s a very old song, the lyrics are referring to Queen Elizabeth I.
It’s about a battle where the Irish beat up the English real bad. The lyrics are hilarious! This is from the third verse:
“From Tassagart to Clonmore, there flows a stream of Saxon gore
Och, great is Rory

Hi,
I thimk I’ve heard it as a hornpipe somewhere sometimes, but I cannot remember that much. So it definitively must have been in a great pub. Anyway it works pretty well as a hornpipe, too.

There’s a great Celtic band in San Francisco what does a bang-up version of this! Their website is sfhounds.com

They’re a great group of guys (and a girl) and really wollop this one.

Follow me up to Carlow
Author: Patrick Joseph McCall

Lift MacCahir Og your face brooding o’er the old disgrace
That black FitzWilliam stormed your place, drove you to the Fern
Grey said victory was sure soon the firebrand he’d secure;
Until he met at Glenmalure with Feach MacHugh O’Byrne.

CHORUS
Curse and swear Lord Kildare
Feagh will do what Feach will dare
Now FitzWilliam, have a care
Fallen is your star, low
Up with halbert out with sword
On we’ll go for by the lord
Feach MacHugh has given the word,
Follow me up to Carlow.

See the swords of Glen Imayle, flashing o’er the English Pale
See all the children of the Gael, beneath O’Byrne’s banners
Rooster of the fighting stock, would you let a Saxon cock
Crow out upon an Irish rock, fly up and teach him manners.

From Tassagart to Clonmore, there flows a stream of Saxon gore
Och, great is Rory Oge O’More, sending the loons to Hades.
White is sick and Grey is fled, now for black Fitzwilliam’s head
We’ll send it over, dripping red, to Queen Liza and the ladies.

Go here for other versions of the tune

https://thesession.org/tunes/5861
https://thesession.org/tunes/4168

Yeah I love Culann’s Hounds version of Carlow. But it sure doesn’t sound anything close to what I’m getting from the ABC here.

Even if I transpose it down to E dorian which sounds like the right key, the melody is waaay different. It’s not even the same rhythm.
In fact I went through all the different versions of Carlow and none of them come close. Hmmmm…. Again my ear is working better than the ABC.

A setting I played at a ceili recently.

Quite different from the version I have.

Wouldn’t it be more constructive to add that version here, then ?

‘more constructive’ than what? If I can ever be bothered to write it out in the silly ‘notation’ you have to use, I might.

More constructive than saying it’s “different from the version I have”, which tells us nothing, and is therefore an utterly pointless comment. If it wasn’t for the “silly notation”, there wouldn’t be any tunes here for you to make “silly” remarks about.

This is a great tune we played. I learned it from Claire Egan. This is a great version.