About this tune

Maid on the Green appears to have been in long circulation on Prince Edward Island, either having been carried there directly by immigrants or indirectly through contact with musicians in such major Irish population centers in North America as Boston and Toronto.

The tune probably goes back to at least the mid-19th century. An early appearance in print was in Ryan’s Mammoth Collection (1882), aka 1000 Fiddle Tunes . It was subsequently republished in O’Neill’s Music of Ireland (1903) and The Roche Collection of Traditional Irish Music (1912). Patsy Touhy recorded a version on uillean pipes in 1919; two Cape Breton fiddlers who recorded the tune are John Campbell and Donald MacLellan.

Notation for this tune as played by “Old Peter” Chaisson is in Fiddle Music of Prince Edward Island.