O’SULLIVAN, Donal. Carolan. The Life Times and Music of an Irish Harper. WITH TYPED LETTER SIGNED FROM THE AUTHOR

In two volumes. I. The Life and Times and The Music. II. The Notes to the Tunes and The Memoirs of Arthur O’Neill. Illustrated with a colour frontispiece, portraits and musical examples. Two volumes. London: Routledge, 1958. First edition. Super royal octavo. pp. (1) xv, 285, (2) xiii, 200. Blue cloth, titled in gilt, harp in gilt on upper cover. Loosely inserted is an interesting TLS on Carolan from Donal O’Sullivan to Dr. Beckett. A very good copy. Scarce.
Turlough O’Carolan (Toirdhealbhach Ó Cearbhalláin) was born in 1670 near Nobber, County Meath and died March 25, 1738 at the home of his patron Mrs. MacDermott Roe in Alderford, County Roscommon. He was the last Irish harper-composer whose pieces have survived in any significant number. Carolan’s father, John, was either a farmer or a blacksmith. The family moved to Ballyfarnon where John Carolan was employed by the MacDermott Roe family. Mrs. MacDermott befriended the boy and gave him an education. In his early youth he was blinded by smallpox and he adopted music as a career. Carolan married Mary Maguire with whom he settled on a farm near Mohill, County Leitrim. They had seven children, six daughters and a son. His wife died in 1733. There is little record of Carolan’s children. His daughter Siobhan married Captain Sudley and his son published a collection of Carolan’s tunes in 1747.
Typed letter sign from the author, on headed paper of University College Dublin, Newman House, St Stephen’s Green, dated 28 September, 1962, addressed to Dr [Edward] Beckett, nephew of Samuel. One page quarto. A substantive scholarly letter by Donal O’Sullivan, pioneering Irish musicologist and Director of the Department of Irish Folk Music and Song at UCD, addressing the scalar organisation of a tune attributed to Turlough O’Carolan (‘Squire Wood’s Lamentation’). O’Sullivan discusses the alteration from F-sharp to F-natural, firmly rejecting later editorial intervention and grounding his authority in close comparison with Neale’s Celebrated Irish Tunes, published c.1726, noting that the F-natural appears in the original source. He further refers Edward Beckett to his own scholarly commentary (vol. II, p. 136), underscoring his editorial methodology. The letter is an illuminating document of mid-20th-century Irish music scholarship, revealing O’Sullivan’s meticulous source criticism and his correspondence with Dr. Beckett of TCD.

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