Thursday 20 January 2022
Tune of the Day: All Covered with Moss
Traditional Irish jig
This tune appears in Francis O'Neill's collection Music of Ireland, published in 1903. It was played by fiddler Edward Cronin, born in County Tipperary in the 1830s, although he had no name for it. A member of O'Neill's traditional Irish music circle in Chicago, Sergeant Early (an uilleann piper and member of the Chicago police force), upon hearing Cronin play, remarked “with evident appreciation, ‛Ah, that's well covered with moss’ — alluding to its ancient strains”. O'Neill seized upon the remark as a convenient title.