{"id":441,"date":"2026-10-13T15:11:37","date_gmt":"2026-10-13T15:11:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lawvpractice.ie\/?p=441"},"modified":"2026-10-16T16:56:49","modified_gmt":"2026-10-16T16:56:49","slug":"nelly-of-the-flowing-locks-the-person-and-the-property-behind-an-eighteenth-century-planxty","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lawvpractice.ie\/index.php\/2026\/10\/13\/nelly-of-the-flowing-locks-the-person-and-the-property-behind-an-eighteenth-century-planxty\/","title":{"rendered":"“Nelly of the flowing locks”: the woman – and the lawsuit – behind an eighteenth-century planxty."},"content":{"rendered":"\n

To those with an interest in the history of Irish music, the name Turlough Carolan<\/a> \u2013 commonly known as \u2018Carolan\u2019 \u2013 will be familiar. The celebrated harper was born in Nobber, County Meath, to a family that lost their lands in the Cromwellian plantation. With little prospect of recovering their estates, they moved to Roscommon in the 1680s, where Carolan\u2019s father was employed by the MacDermott Roe family.[1]<\/a> After being blinded by smallpox at eighteen, Carolan was apprenticed to a harper. He was not considered to be a gifted performer, but his talent for composition took him all over Ireland, writing music for wealthy patrons, one of whom was Eleanor Plunkett.[2]<\/a> Eleanor was born into an Old English Catholic family in the late seventeenth century; like the Carolans, the Plunketts lost lands in County Meath under Cromwell, but the family reestablished themselves around the barony of Kells after the Restoration of Charles II.[3]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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A portrait of Carolan from R.B. Armstrong “The Irish and Highland Harps”<\/em> (Edinburgh, 1904).<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

\u2018Nelly an Ch\u00fail Craobhaigh\u2019<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The lyrics of the song that Carolan composed for Eleanor survive in two written versions: the better known of the two, titled \u2018Neill\u00ed Pluinc\u00e9ad\u2019<\/a>, was published by Tom\u00e1s \u00d3 M\u00e1ille<\/a> in 1915.[4]<\/a> There is also a nineteenth-century manuscript version of Carolan\u2019s lyrics, titled \u2018Nelly an Ch\u00fail Craobhaigh\u2019 [\u2018Nelly of the flowing locks\u2019], alongside a version of the harper\u2019s tune, both of which were transcribed by James Cody and form part of the Edward Bunting Collection<\/a> in QUB\u2019s Special Collections.[5]<\/a> That tune was published by Donal O\u2019Sullivan<\/a> in 1958,[6]<\/a> although professional harper Simon Chadwick notes (in this blog post<\/a>) that it does not easily accommodate the lyrics published by \u00d3 M\u00e1ille. Chadwick also suggests that the tune published by O\u2019Sullivan as \u2018Madam Keel\u2019 is \u2018Nelly an Ch\u00fail Craobhaigh\u2019 by another name, with the confusion arising because Eleanor Plunkett\u2019s married name was Cahill (U\u00ed Chathail).[7]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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