Friday 6 August 2021
Tune of the Day: Doctor O'Neill
Traditional Irish jig
The earliest known appearance of this tune in print is in Francis O'Neill's collection Music of Ireland: 1850 Melodies, published in Chicago in 1903. O'Neill says that the tune “created a sensation” when introduced to Chicago traditional musicians and dancers (“who had never heard” it before) by the elderly fiddler Edward Cronin, originally from Limerick Junction, County Tipperary. O'Neill thinks it “quite probable” the melody had originally been a clan march.