This little Irish love song has quite a back story. To trace its origins, we have to travel back in time to a very subversive harp festival, dig into the Irish harper tradition and follow the fortunes of some proper characters. There’s a tiff between an Irish and an English poet, a moody watcher on a hillside, and what does Judy Garland have to do with it all?

Find out in our brand new episode!

Music

The Airy Bachelor, tune collected in Donegal by Herbert Hughes

The Coolin, traditional Irish tune

The Pretty Girl tune as arranged by Edward Bunting in A General Collection of the Ancient Music of Ireland, 1796

Dinogad’s Smock, 12th Century Welsh tune

Eleanor Plunkett, Turlough O’Carolan

Judy Garland sings The Pretty Girl in “Little Nellie Kelly” (1940): Judy Garland: A Pretty Girl Milking Her Cow

Percy Grainger’s version of The Pretty Girl: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LPpQ4h26lBM

Beethoven, "Sweet Linnet": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Zpz94lzCoE

Song: The Pretty Girl Milking Her Cow / Lament for Owen Roe O’Neill (according to Clannad)

Sources and references

A general collection of the ancient Irish music: containing a variety of admired airs never before published, and also the compositions of Conolan and Carolan. Edward Bunting (1796) https://archive.org/details/generalcollectio00bunt/page/n11/mode/2up

The Song of O'Ruark, Prince of Breffni https://www.musicanet.org/robokopp/eire/thevalle.htm

Thank you to the contributors to the Mudcat Café whose discussions 25 years ago gave me most of the research I needed for this podcast: mudcat.org: Info: Pretty Maid (Girl) Milking a Cow

Thank you to Stones Barn in Cumbria and the Barnstoners who set me on this course and kept me going.