Honoria Tomkins Galwey
To create an accessible collection of some of Miss Galwey’s tunes – to form a musical resource
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Tunes from ‘Old Irish Croonauns'(1910)- published by Boosey & Co. London
Honoria Tomkins Galwey (1830 – 1925) is an almost forgotten tune collector from Ireland whose published collection of folk music and songs presents a unique snapshot of tunes played around the Inishowen peninsula in Co. Donegal, Eire during the 1830s.
In 2016 the Inishowen Traditional Music Project commemorating local events at the time of the 1916 Easter Rising in their project ‘Freedoms Hill’, uncovered some of her tunes (Filmed by the Irish Traditional Music Archive for the Inishowen Traditional Music Project, permission granted) with further research needed on these valuable ‘musical missing links’ .One of the collected tunes ‘Hudy Macan’s Galoppe is performed here (2016) within a set by Donegal’s Clodagh Warnock and Roisin McGrory.
The mind map below reflects the comments of musicians involved in a project profiling HTG and the table below includes recordings of some of the tunes.. Thank you to musicians -Roisin McGrory, Joleen McLaughlin and Clodagh Warnock from Inishowen peninsula,Co. Donegal for their input with Scottish musicians Sheila Sapkota, Kieran Sapkota, Jenni Borthwick and Tony Manning also supported this venture.. Recordings were mostly done informally in March 2018 at a kitchen type session in Gortgowan House, Moville (where Miss Galwey lived all those years ago) with a hand held device (iPAD).(Thank you to present owner Rosh Warnock).
Mind map key – To help understand the pictorial representation (below) of a sample of quotes from local musicians (as named above) in Co. Donegal regarding Miss G’s tune collection
| TUNE | Source Notes (Galwey 1910) | PDF (original) | PDF (Some musical alteration) | MP3 (original) | Mp3 (some musical alteration) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Blackbird (The) | Learnt from a fiddler- words by Moira O'Neill. It is an ideal song. |  | |  | |
| Dark-haired Girl | Lilted by Mary Cooke, Moville, Co. Donegal. From memory | | Same key but different style | | |
| Hudy Macan's 'Galoppe'. | Learnt from fiddler Hudy Macan 50 years ago - his own composition. | | | | |
| Galoppe/Munster Lasses set | From a very old manuscript book | | | | |
| Pigeon on the Gate | Learnt at Moville in 1849 from a blind fiddler 'Paddy the Slithers'. | | | | |