Brian O’Lynn jig

Add this to your bread and butter list. It’s pretty easy to pick up. You have quite a few opportunities to customize the tune to your own liking.

If you are playing for the dancers and they need the jig to be played slow - this one does very well.

Another version of the tune: https://thesession.org/tunes/4139

Compare the 1st part of Old John’s https://thesession.org/tunes/57

Heard Liam O’Flynn playing this tune (Brian O’Lynn’s jig) on a Planxty documentary, pretty much exactly like this, but with F sharps instead of F naturals. Sounded great that way too!

I love this tune, I first learned it off East Gaway fiddler Breda Keville. I always pay Garrett Barry’s then go into this, it works really well =] i think played slowly it sounds nicer.

Here it is by Patrick Street

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3PUFXVgsNZ4

play video

This is far from being the only jig or ditty called after the hero, see: http://chivalry.com/cantaria/lyrics/brian_olynn.html for a vibrant demonstration!
See also: http://mudcat.org/thread.cfm?threadid=43706 for related Scottish songs and dots.
In Hillsborough, Co. Down, there’s a plaque by the old court house dedicated to the memory of this local -legend of a- man!

Mary Travers* better known as La Bolduc wrote and recorded a French version of the same, almost a hundred years ago: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ySU5NTh4Ik again set to the 6/8 meter.

play video

*Not the Mary of Peter, Paul &..!

…was now the very rare ‘Johnny Monfarleau’.

… which is, according to The Virtual Gramophone http://www.collectionscanada.gc.ca/gramophone/028011-1038-e.html#b , a corruption of "Johnny McFellow" (?)

Check both tune and lyrics at: https://thesession.org/tunes/5387

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MX4GI8v3Kr8

play video

Vynil available here:
http://www.nostressnetlabel.net/NN_Vinyl001_11_12.html

For several years I’ve been listening to mp3s from what I think was an early Paddy Canny LP, circa 1955, I think. I was listening to a medley the other day: The Luckpenny jig along with a tune which was mislabeled "Father O’Flynn". The second tune sounded so familiar, and I eventually ID-ed it as a version of Brian O’Lynn. Someone probably mis-heard the title. The recordings seemed to be home recordings, with incidental noise and talking in the background.

I think I reproduced Canny’s playing pretty well in this ABC. The setting is pretty close to the way Bobby Casey played the tune, although Casey used more unison "A"s.

Patrick Street’s version, as I hear it…

I know this version as a separate tune, Guiry’s Favourite, no. 10 in O’Neill’s. It’s very similar, but not the same tune. But a good tune anyway.

I love this tune because it reminds me of bagpuss

Taken from ‘A Fine Selection of Over 200 Irish Traditional Tunes for Sessions’, compiled by David Speers with a Forward by Matt Cranitch. A B minor version here rather than the A dorian of the other settings. Nice tune.

Eubonian’s setting had a nice/different variant from all of the previous settings, in the 4th bar of the B Part. So, have transposed X9 to Ador, and combined it with X8.

^**transposed X8 and combined with X7.

From the playing of Sharon Knight.

From the playing of Jack Brennan.

Here’s another version. I think I’ve played this tune so many different ways, I get confused where I got which bit or which bit I got from who!