Drawing from the Well for September 2021, features the Hurley Sisters as they explore connections between tunes, songs and stories associated with the famed “Petticoat Loose” of Co. Waterford.

The premiere of “Petticoat Loose: A Wicked Woman of Irish Folklore, Music, and Song” took place Wednesday 15 September 2021. It is now available to view on:

ITMA YouTube

ITMA Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ITMADublin

ITMA IGTV: https://www.instagram.com/itma…

Our investigation of Petticoat Loose began when, after playing the tune together, a half-remembered fragment of a story came to mind. We searched the wonderful resource that is www.duchas.ie which houses the National Folklore Collection UCD Digitization Project, including the Schools Project. A search revealed multiple stories about Petticoat Loose – we read these voraciously and discovered a real woman often named as Mary Hannigan of Co. Waterford, who committed crimes of varying degrees of severity. A common theme is her death and subsequent return to haunt the locality, before being banished for all eternity to undertake a Sisyphean task, like weaving ropes from sand or emptying a lake with a thimble.

These various tales led us deeper into the world of folklore, finding motifs and symbols such as the spirit of Petticoat Loose crying “Pull the Knife and Stick it Again!” as she is stabbed with a black-handled knife – a phrase we know from the title of a jig played by Matt Molloy on his 1976 recording on the Mulligan Label. We located that tune in the Breandan Breathnach collection Ceol Rince na hÉireann Volume 3, the notes of which directed us to an interesting account by Eugene Ó Curry published by George Petrie in Ancient Music of Ireland (1855) of the Cailleach Bhéil Atha (the Hag of Balla) in Co. Clare.

Petrie’s sentiments match our own to some extent as we have deviated from music into folklore: “And although the subject may be considered as not strictly in accordance with the primary purpose of this work, I trust that few of my readers will object to my securing in this place remarks of so much interest”

The following are some excerpts from O’Curry’s account. There was a belief, strongly held at the time of writing, that the “Tuatha de Dananns…were in possession of a mortal immortality — and that they had the power to carry off from this visible world men and women in a living state, but sometimes under the semblance of death.”

Those taken from the living world were often infants, taken for the childless of the Tuatha de Danann, or else young men or women in their prime, often on their wedding days, to be given to an otherworldly lover, or in some cases, “fresh, well-looking nurses for their nurseries”.

The exchanges happened in different ways – in some cases, those taken were swapped for a sickly looking child, or old man or woman as the case may require. In others, the human subject died to all appearances, but people guessed it was not a real death and began to take steps to rescue their loved ones from the good people (i.e. the fairies). In yet more stories, the human is whipped off the brink of a river or lake, or out to sea by a gust of wind – but then taken down to a “noble mansion and plain, over which the water was but a transparent atmosphere”. It was generally believed at the time that “fairy captives are redeemable within a year and a day, but after that they are lost forever”.

“The black-hafted knife was the only formidable mortal weapon in fairy warfare – a single thrust or stab from it was fatal; but a second rendered the first one harmless.”

O’Curry recounts the story of the Cailleach Bhéil Atha (the Hag of Balla) who would watch from her seat in an old fort between Kilkee and Doonbeg, Co. Clare for a passing gentleman to capture. As she leapt onto the horse of one such candidate, the man plunged a black-handled knife into her left side. “Tarraing agus sáigh arís” – draw and plunge again – said the hag. But the man neither answered nor obeyed, and she immediately fell off the horse and disappeared. In the morning, the man returned to the spot with some neighbours, “where they found the black-hafted knife stuck in a small lump of jelly, resembling what the peasantry call a fallen star”.

This article also gives us an insight into O’Curry’s own beliefs, and those of his family – he tells the story of a priest who was drowned around 1812, and whose mother and brothers “who were sensible and well-informed men, continued not only for a year and a day but for seven years, to put in action the available anti-fairy force of the whole province of Munster for his recovery, and this with a confidence that was sickening to my father and mother, who were the only people I ever knew in that country who were total unbelievers in such doctrines. It is hardly necessary to say that poor Fr. Molony never came back”.

As we looked into the tune Petticoat Loose, we discovered printed versions of the tune from 1748 onwards, but one that we selected to play in our episode of Drawing from the Well comes from a collection by a piper named John Murphy, which was published in Edinburgh in 1809 – you can access the score in the archive of Na Píobairí Uilleann.

We also find a version of the tune in the Canon Goodman collections “Tunes of the Munster Pipers” – one in Volume 1 and another in Volume 2. The tune later published in O’Neill’s Waifs & Strays of Gaelic Melody (1922) is similar to the tune in Volume 1, and is another we selected to perform in our episode.

A completely unrelated tune entitled Petticoat Loose can be found in O’Neill’s 1001 Dance Tunes of Ireland – we enjoyed listening to Dermot & Joe McLoughlin playing this tune in this YouTube clip. This is similar to the tunes The Rooms of Dooagh, Brian O’Lynn, and The Maiden that Jigs it in Style; however, it’s the version of this tune that’s found in the P.W. Joyce Collection ‘Old Irish Folk Music and Songs’ under the name ‘The Banks of Glenoe’ that really struck a chord with us – the interactive score can be accessed on the ITMA website here.

We had a great chat with James Kelly about the origins of the title for the reel he calls Petticoat Loop on his 1989 recording Capel Street, a tune he says came from Johnny Doherty. That investigation proved inconclusive in terms of relationships with Mary Hannigan or any of the jigs we’ve previously discussed, but one thing we know is that there is a tune also called Petticoat Loop in the Grier Collection, also in 4/4 time.

More recent recordings of the tune we commonly think of as Petticoat Loose include Conal O’Gráda’s rendition on his 1990 album The Top of Coom – we enjoyed his sleeve notes in which he says “The tune is also known as Strop the Razor. I learned it from Séamus Glackin, a member of the fiddle playing family from Dublin, when we shared a caravan at the All Ireland Fleadh Ceoil in Ennis. This was long before either of us had use for a razor or any knowledge of petticoats, loose or otherwise.”

Further immersion in the many books in the ITMA Reading Room led us to uncover the mention of a song, along with the lyrics, in an article on Petticoat Loose by Professor Pádraig Ó Macháin in An Linn Buí, Iris Ghaeltacht na nDéise, Uimhir 5. The song was listed as being in manuscript 23 E 1 in the Royal Irish Academy from the James Hardiman collection – collected by an unnamed scribe for Hardiman, likely in 1834, but no earlier.

The lyrics of the song place it in Dromana, a few miles from Cappoquin, in County Waterford. It features many recognisable elements of the story from our earlier explorations of the Schools’ Collection. Petticoat Scaoilte is represented as a handsome, well-dressed pub landlady, with an appetite for drinking and dancing. Her ‘layabout’ husband sits at home, awaiting her return, and when he enquires as to her whereabouts for the night, she replies ‘I’ve been drinking and revelling, and I’ve paid the reckoning!” Our priest figure features here too, and we’re told that there isn’t a brother, priest or clergy in the land who wouldn’t dearly love to absolve Petticoat of her sins.

We were delighted to learn about this song, and even more so when we got access to the Royal Irish Academy to uncover a further manuscript which combined lyrics and printed music for ‘Peticóat Sgaoilte’. This revealed that the song was sang to a melody very similar to the tune first printed in London as Petticoat Loose in the mid 1700s. It is unclear whether the tune originated there, or was perhaps brought to London by travelling Irish musicians, but at the very least we can see that this melody of Petticoat Loose was conflated with the story of the wild, wicked Petticoat Loose in Co. Waterford by the early 1800s.

Over the course of our research, we noted the many parallels between the ways the tunes and folklore have varied over time and in different regions. While hugely indebted to those who worked to preserve our tradition, any understanding we can piece together today is also undoubtedly shaped by the influence of the collectors and scribes of our oral tradition.

We thought that a good place to end this reflection might be with some words from Micho Russell, found in the introduction to his book of tunes ‘The Piper’s Chair’:

“Anybody learning these tunes is free to play them their own way. I’ve given you what you call the bones of the tunes, but everybody is free to make up different versions. You can doctor it up yourself. Just be sure you use the correct time”.

Mairéad & Deirdre Hurley – September 2021

Click here to view a zine featuring Petticoat Loose, created by Mairéad Hurley, including illustrations by Ríona Ní Riagáin. 

Sisters Mairéad and Deirdre Hurley grew up in a musical household in Ballymote, Co. Sligo, and were immersed in the music of their locality from a young age.

Mairéad was the winner of the All-Ireland senior concertina title at Fleadh Cheoil na hÉireann in 2006. She has performed on stages and taught concertina master classes in Ireland and the UK, as well as in various locations across Europe, North America, Australia and New Zealand. In 2014, she was the resident Irish music tutor at the Gaelic Club in Sydney, Australia. In 2016, Mairéad, John Blake and Nathan Gourley released a trio album entitled The Truckley Howl, the name coming from an enigmatic phrase uttered by legendary piper Séamus Ennis.

Deirdre has also performed extensively at home and abroad, including appearances in Áras an Uachtaráin, Liberty Hall and further afield in Switzerland, Lithuania and Slovakia. She appears on The Thursday Sessions album released by The Cobblestone Pub, where she has been a regular feature on the session scene for a number of years. She has also made appearances as a singer at NPU’s Session with the Pipers, as well as at the Frank Harte and Sean-Nós Cois Life festivals.

Both sisters have made numerous television appearances, and performed together as part of Slí na mBeaglaoich on TG4 in 2021.

Drawing from the Well is a monthly series connecting artists with archival material to inspire new art. It is supported by Bank Of Ireland Begin Together Arts Fund in partnership with Business to Arts.

Find information on artists who have featured in the series and upcoming artists https://www.itma.ie/drawingfromthewell

The Drawing from the Well series is supported by Bank of Ireland #Begintogetherarts fund in partnership with Business to Arts.

Every donation, no matter the amount, helps support the preservation of Irish traditional music, song and dance. If you would like to help, please click to support us https://www.itma.ie/contact/support

Sisters Mairéad and Deirdre Hurley grew up in a musical household in Ballymote, Co. Sligo, and were immersed in the music of their locality from a young age.. Mairéad was the winner of the All-Ireland senior concertina title at Fleadh Cheoil na hÉireann in 2006. She has performed on stages and taught concertina master classes in Ireland and the UK, as well as in various locations across Europe, North America, Australia and New Zealand. In 2014, she was the resident Irish music tutor at the Gaelic Club in Sydney, Australia. In 2016, Mairéad, John Blake and Nathan Gourley released a trio album entitled The Truckley Howl, the name coming from an enigmatic phrase uttered by legendary piper Séamus Ennis.

Both sisters have made numerous television appearances, and performed together as part of Slí na mBeaglaoich on TG4 in 2021.