Give Me Your Hand

Most session tunes are anonymous; this one carries a composer's name. Edward Bunting's collection credits it to Ruaidhrí Dall Ó Catháin, a blind harper, around 1603. The title comes from a story Bunting and Francis O'Neill both hand down: slighted when a Lady Eglinton imperiously ordered him to play at her Scottish castle, Ó Catháin walked out, then composed "Da Mihi Manum" — "Give Me Your Hand" — as a peace offering once she learned his standing and sought reconciliation. How much of that is history is hard to say; the Latin title first surfaces in the Wemyss manuscript of 1644 and the Balcarres manuscript of 1692, long after the supposed event. Seán Ó Riada brought the tune back into circulation in the late 1960s, and Planxty's setting carried it to a wider audience.