I'm finally back to making music after the holidays, so here's a new song for my public domain project. "At the Mid Hour of Night" is an Irish folk song from the 5th volume of Moore's Irish Melodies. The poet, Thomas Moore, and arranger, John Stevenson, selected old Irish tunes and wrote new words and piano accompaniments for them. They began publishing these in about 1807 and the volume with this song was first published in 1813. I used the 1882 edition available at the Petrucci Music Library.

Many classical singers know this song from the collection of folksong arrangements by Benjamin Britten (1913-1976), which is where I first learned of it. The melody is slightly different from Britten's arrangement, which used the melody "O Molly, dear!" collected by Edward Bunting from a harper in 1800. Petrucci Music Library has the Bunting Ancient Music of Ireland collection available, as well. Instead of using Stevenson's accompaniment – it seems a bit too reliant on tonic and dominant chords for this tune – I've made my own simple arrangement for baritone ukulele to highlight the haunting melody.