Kitty Tyrell waltz

A pretty air rather than a waltz. I like this tune.

Kitty Tyrell - I can’t recall where I got this tune from - but I like it more every time I hear it on AUDIO.

Tune number 336 from the original edition of O’Neill’s Music of Ireland

A setting of this is already here under the title ‘Kitty Tyrell’.

Going just by the name, I believe it is the tune, Caitlin Triall, from Breton musician Alain Stivell’s 1971 album, Renaissance of the Celtic Harp; in itself a major milestone in the swell of Celtic and other harp music and musicians in Europe and further. However, though sheet music for the tune is set at metronome 100, and regardless of how fast Stivell actually plays it, in my rarely humble (!) opinion, it sounds fabulous as a slow air - strip the meter out entirely. More importantly though, the melody as played by Stivell and as written and published in that book of the entire album, is radically different from what I see and hear here. Does anyone have that sheet music (published in book form also in the early 1970’s)? Or might that tune be in The Session under a different name? Thank you!

Khandro : re Caitlin Triall - here is a rather different version in G major:-

G>E ||: D3 E G2 | G2 A2 B2 | B2 g2 f2 | e g3 e2 |
d3 B G2 | B A3 G2 [1 E6 | E4 G>E :|| ] [2 G6 || ]
G4 de/f/ | g3 f g2 | e d3 B2 | g3 f g2 | e g3 e2 |
d3 B G2 | B A3 G2 | E6 | E4 G>E | D3 E G2 | G2 A2 B2 |
B2 g2 f2 | e g3 e2 | d3 B G2 | B B3 A2 | G4 (3AGF | G4 |]

This one is attributed to Carolan. It’s very similar to the tune ‘Caitlin Triall’ I found in “Traditional Slow Airs of Ireland” (Tomas O Canainn) - publ. Ossian in 1995, a nice book.

This version was arranged by Beethoven in his 25 Irish Songs, WoO 152, No. 9, and set by George Thomson, his editor, to lyrics by Thomas Campbell. Original key is E-flat major; I have changed it E major as a key allowed by the Session.

Lyrics by Thomas Campbell (1777 - 1844):
Our bugles sung truce, for the night-cloud had low’r’d,
And the Sentinel stars set their watch in the sky,
And thousands had sunk on the ground, overpow’r’d,
The weary to sleep, and the wounded to die.
When reposing that night om my pallet of straw,
By the wolf-scaring faggot that guarded the slain,
At the dead of the night a sweet vision I saw,
And thrice ere the morning I dreamt it again.

Methought from the battlefield’s dreadful array,
Far, far I had roam’d on a desolate track;
’Twas autumn, and sunshine arose on the way
To the home of my fathers, that welcom’d me back.
I flew to the pleasant fields travers’d so oft
In life’s morning march, when my bosom was young;
I heard my own mountain goats bleating aloft,
And knew the sweet strain the cornreapers sung.

Then pledg’d we the wine-cup, and fondly I swore.
From my home and my weeping friends never to part;
My little ones kiss’d me a thousand times o’er,
And my wife sobb’d aloud in her fullness of heart.
Stay, stay with us, rest, thou art weary and worn;
And fain was their war-broken soldier to stay;
But sorrow return’d with the drawing of morn,
And the voice in my dreaming ear melted away.

Transposing X:2 to G major for easier playing on D whistles.

I’m pretty sure this an O’Carolan tune, although I may be wrong. It certainly has a harpy feel to it.

It’s old enough to be from the harpers’ era, but O’Carolan was not the only harper then. So it’s above my music history pay grade to know if it is or isn’t by O’Carolan himself. But sources seem to say not.

The version that susan k put in the comments but never formally added as a setting at the time.

Version “Caitlín Triall” in “110 Ireland’s Best Slow Airs” by Waltons Publishing.

There is a poem by Robert Tannahill called Kitty Tyrrell, it was recorded by Brian O’Headhra to a similar melody as this tune on The Complete Songs of Robert Tannahill Volume 2 (2010):

The breeze of the night fans the dark mountain’s breast,
And the light bounding deer have all sunk to their rest;
The big sullen waves lash the laugh’s rocky shore,
And the lone drowsy fisherman nods o’er his oar.
Though pathless the moor, and though starless the skies,
The star of my heart is my Kitty’s bright eyes,
And joyful I hie over glen, brake, and fell,
In secret to meet my sweet Kitty Tyrrell.

Ah! long we have lov’d in her father’s despite,
And oft we have met at the dead hour of night,
When hard-hearted Vigilance, sunk in repose,
Gave Love one sweet hour its fond tale to disclose;
These moments of transport, to me, oh how dear!
And the fate that would part us, alas, how severe!
Although the rude storm rise with merciless swell,
This night I shall meet my sweet Kitty Tyrrell.

"Ah! turn, hapless youth! see the dark cloud of death
"Comes rolling in gloom o’er the wild haunted heath;
"Deep groans the scath’d oak on the glen’s cliffy brow,
“And the sound of the torrent seems heavy with woe.”
Away, foolish seer, with thy fancies so wild,
Go tell thy weak dreams to some credulous child;
Love guides my light steps through the lone dreary dell,
And I fly to the arms of sweet Kitty Tyrrell.