Snowy-Breasted Pearl

An Irish love song translated into English by the collector George Petrie from the Irish-language “Péarla an Bhrollaigh Bháin,” opening “There’s a colleen fair as May, for a year and for a day I have sought by every way her heart to gain.” The melody is considerably older than the English words, appearing in Edward Bunting’s General Collection of the Ancient Irish Music (1796), where it is credited to Carolan. The song became a fixture of the Irish tenor repertoire through John McCormack and was later recorded by Paddy Reilly and the Wolfe Tones, while the air also circulates instrumentally as the barndance “The Pearl of the White Breast.”