User:Moilleadóir/Óró sé do bheatha abhaile/Joyce

p. 121 The following 34 airs (to “She’s the dear Maid to me”) were sent to me from time to time during 1884 by Mr. Francis Hogan of South Lodge, Brenormore, near Carrick-on-Suir, a good musician and a great enthusiast in Irish music and songs. He must have been then well over seventy years of age. Some of these he wrote from memory, and others he copied from MSS. p. 130 275. ORO, ’SE DO BHEATHA A BHAILE: ORO, WELCOME HOME! A Hauling-home Song.

The “Hauling home” was bringing home the bride to her husband’s house after marriage. It was usually a month or so after the wedding, and was celebrated as an occasion next only in importance to the wedding itself.

The bridegroom brought home his bride at the head of a triumphal procession—all on cars or on horseback. I well remember one where the bride rode on a pillion behind her husband. As they enter the house the bridegroom is supposed to speak or sing:—

Oro, sé do bheatha a bhaile, is fearr liom tu ná céad bo bainne: Oro, sé do bheatha a bhaile, thá tu maith le rátha.

Oro, welcome home, I would rather have you than a hundred milch cows: Oro, welcome home, ’tis you are happy with prosperity [in store for you].

Here is Mr. Hogan’s note on this air:---“This song used to be played at the ‘Hauling Home,’ or the bringing home of a wife. The piper, seated outside the house at the arrival of the party, playing hard [i.e. with great spirit]: nearly all who were at the wedding a month previous being in the procession. Oh, for the good old times!”

This tune is called in Stanford-Petrie an “ancient clan march”: and it is set in the Major, with many accidentals, but another setting is given in the Minor. I give it here as Mr. Hogan wrote it, in its proper Minor form. In several particulars this setting differs from Dr. Petrie’s two versions. It was a march tune, as he calls it: but the March was home to the husband’s house. Dr. Petrie does not state where he procured his two versions.