O’Farrell’s Welcome to Limerick

This slip jig leads a double life under its names. To pipers it is "O'Farrell's Welcome to Limerick," first printed in O'Farrell's National Irish Music for the Union Pipes around 1804 and credited to its compiler, a London-based Irish uilleann piper who issued several collections between 1797 and 1810 and produced the first tutor for the instrument. To Irish speakers it is "An Phis Fhliuch," a title coarse enough that Willie Clancy rendered it politely as "The Choice Wife." George Petrie noted a setting from the manuscripts of the Cork piper Patrick Carew, and it was from Stanford's edition of Petrie that Seán Ó Riada pulled the tune for a group of traditional players, giving it fresh currency in the revival.