Banish Misfortune

P. W. Joyce printed it first, in 1873, as "The Bag of Meal." Petrie's collection calls it "Maire Ni Eidhin," after a poem by the blind Connacht poet Raftery praising a girl thought to be the loveliest in Ireland, and the poem is still sung to this air.

Francis O'Neill printed it in 1907 under three different names. His main source was Tipperary fiddler Edward Cronin, whose playing O'Neill recorded on a wax cylinder in the early 1900s, the earliest known recording of the tune. Paul de Grae compared the cylinder with the book and found O'Neill's setting quite accurate. The Mixolydian version most people play now comes from the Chieftains' recording in the late 1960s.