Humours of Lissadell

The reel takes its name from Lissadell House on the north Sligo coast, the Gore-Booth family seat — childhood home of the revolutionary Constance Markievicz and her sister, the poet Eva Gore-Booth, and the house W.B. Yeats memorialised in the line "The light of evening, Lissadell." The tune spread more widely through a 1937 recording by the Sligo fiddlers Paddy Killoran and Paddy Sweeney, who titled it "The Humors of Lisadell." The alternate title "The Musical Bridge" points to New York fiddler and teacher John McGrath, whose nephew credits him with composing it after a bridge at Belmullet.