"James Betagh" is an Irish air in two parts (cut time & 6/8 time) in G Dorian, composed by blind Irish harper Turlough O'Carolan (1670-1738). The first two parts of the air O'Sullivan prints are in cut time and the second two are in jig (6/8) time. The melody was first printed in John and William Neale's Collection of the Most Celebrated Irish Tunes (1742). O'Sullivan gives that the Betaghs were an old Irish family who had been forced to move from Leinster to Connacht by the Settlement under Cromwell. The tune was composed for James Betagh of Drimhill, who married Fanny Dillon, for whom O'Carolan composed another air. It was a fortunate marriage for Betagh, for he acquired the estate of Mannin, near Ballyhaunis, County Mayo, when Fanny's brother John Dillon died in 1731. It was printed in Barnes's English Country Dance Tunes, vol. 2 (2005), O'Sullivan's Carolan: The Life, Times and Music of an Irish Harper (1958) and Ossian's The Complete Works of O'Carolan (1989). For the second part of "James Betagh" click here.