Re. Connerys...
So...this is roughly my background in music, mostly on guitar... to varying degrees...blues (folk and early), classical, baroque, jazz, flamenco, country, anything else but no Irish music. For Irish music... a friend would sometimes play Bothy Band, The Dubliners would be played sometimes around, Donovan (doesn't count for trad?), the occasional shanty would be sung in company, modern popular versions on radio sometimes... for pipes Scotland the Brave and marches and similar, i.e. what some would call stereotype . Then when I started playing flute it was mostly Irish music. That is two years playing now or so, have listened completely to forty well known songs played by known players, and have learned maybe twenty, of which I play possibly five at ease, but for most I know them but am only able play through them close to how they should be played occasionally. No Na Connery do I remember ever reading or hearing of... that is how uninformed on Irish music I am...
But
I looked it up, there is a nice violin version online that has a similar feel to the above tune but somewhat different melody, then at Irishtuneinfo there are a few clips, and the pipes sound familiar somehow. Then I remember on a mixed tape recording (not Irish music) I had maybe twenty five years ago, which had one pipe tune included, which I found very real every time I listened to it. I can only remember, even trying now, the first two bars of it, but I remember listening to it and being quite caught by it. That was Seamus Ennis, I even remember the name, not the tune. But Na Connery at tuneinfo is played by William Clancy (if I just remember), no Ennis. So I search up Ennis (I actually looked up Seamus Ines at first, had forgotten the spelling) and there is the tune, Trip O'er The Mountain, at tuneinfo, sounding as it first did.
Well, that is funny, because O'er The Mountain does sound like Na Connery, so I search up both tunes and their history, looking for earliest publication and so on. Both seem around early 19th century attribute, Na Connerys with the events of that time, O'er the Mountain by other mention. So I take music score of both and they seem to fit each other in overlap. So same tune different song it would seem, and that is not unusual.
So, did I copy the tune in some way somehow ? I could not say, only that I did not have any tune in mind at all at all at all when playing that. I know for The Horse With the Whistling Lip, it was from ... the horse with the whistling lip... but I also know that at the same time I had in mind a tune sound (not melody) along certain lines shared by various songs that I felt to approach, though in fact for the tune I was playing the first half before thinking it might sound towards like that sort of style. ? .
I have a reply three quarters written to rykirk (if I remember) on a different post but similar topic, in that case how certain tune origins dissappear into the mists of time but are found expressing themselves in different versions according to their need. Will post that sometime.
Well that is just to explain all possible with regard. I don't count any tune as "mine", I didn't invent music and just count myself as fortunate for being able to play. That any music I play/compose is influenced by other goes completely without saying, I don't think there are any musicians around who have never listened to any other music. If it sounds similar I hope that is taken, if anything, as tribute. I accept trying to understand the source of any music. Even near straight copy under different name, or simply renaming, is not uncommon historically either and there are even more recent examples which are accepted without question for one reason or another. Purposefully copying a melody and calling it my own is something I have no intention of doing, and it goes against the idea of creating music.
That all brings to mind one of the best known or liked flute pieces ever, by Men at Work ... and now when we remember it we are told to think they stole it. That seems a real shame, putting an argument between the music and the listener, or tagging it as unworthy somehow ?