The Fairies' Hornpipe

Piper Seamus Ennis used to introduce this hornpipe with a story. A young man walking home tired from a dance lay down in a field to sleep, woke in the dark to see the fairies dancing, and learned the tune their piper played. Nobody in his village believed him until he played it, and not even the oldest of them had heard it before.

The tune actually comes from an air in duple time that P. W. Joyce collected in the 19th century as "Mór Chluana," More of Cloyne, in County Cork. Joyce linked the name to Mór of Munster, a woman of legend said to have been carried off by the fairies in her youth. Francis O'Neill printed the hornpipe in 1907.