Donnybrook Fair

The fair this jig takes its name from ran at Donnybrook, in Dublin, on a licence King John granted in 1204; by the early nineteenth century it had become less a market than a fortnight of August drinking and brawling, and "donnybrook" passed into English as a word for a brawl. The Committee for the Abolition of Donnybrook Fair bought out the licence in 1855 and the fair came to an end. The jig goes by several names: an eighteenth-century broadside ballad, "The Humours of Donnybrook Fair," shares the title, and O'Neill printed the tune as "Joy of My Life," the name it still carries in some collections.