Have just been playing “The Humours of Lisheen” and it struck me to ask if anyone knows what “humours” means. There are one or two tunes I play that have the word in the title, including “Humours of Ballyloughlin”; one of my favourites.
Any other favourite humours? Are they always jigs?
Seems I’ve read a thread or two about this very thing more than once, who knows. As I recall, I came to the conclusion that it means “the good things about…”
I’ll be interested to see what others come up with!
Reg
Well it’s in the dictionary:
humor > Latin humor, moisture, fluid
1 any fluid of an animal or plant esp any of the four fluids (cardinal humours) formerly considered responsible for health and disposition
2 a person’s disposition or temperament; a mood, state of mind
and I’ve always assumed that “humour” was simply being used in the sense of “state”, “aspect”, or “characteristic” in these tune titles.
I’ve been told it means Memories
eg. ‘Humors of Tullycrine’, ‘Memories of Tullycrine’
Somebody told me it meant “mists,” as in foggy mists.
I’ll be glad to add another theory without attribution. 
The Irish word “fonn” can mean either humour or melody. Could the title have once been something like “Fonn dar Tullycrine” and have been mistranslated?
It’s a great question. O’Neill uses “sugra” (súgradh) to translate “humours”, while Breathnach (CRE) uses mostly “pléaráca” or sometimes “siamsa”. Breathnach also uses “súgradh” to translate “frolics”.
súgradh = frolic, fun, play
pléaráca = romp, revelry, uproar
siamsa = amusement, entertainment, leisure
fonn = enthusiasm, humour, melody, tune, mood
Including fonn, all these words carry the meaning and connotation of: frolic fun, amusement, romp, play, entertainment. So the basic sense of “humours” is simply: a fun tune played for entertainment that will have people frolicking and dancing.
A parallel might be French “divertissement” and Italian “divertimento” applied to amusing dance-like melodies.
It’s a meaning of “humours” that has mostly fallen out of use in English, except in the more specific sense of something that makes us laugh, a “sense of humour”.
Why would that meaning of humour have specific meaning to the tune? Very few tune names are descriptors. Humours of Tulla would mean basically “Good times in Tulla”. Sure, it might be descriptive of the specific tune, but does it have to be?
No, I suppose it doesn’t have to be. But it doesn’t have to not be either.
Some tune name formulas clearly are self-referential. Most obviously “[place] Jig”, “Reel of [place]”, etc. Or “[person]'s Fancy / Favourite / Delight”. “Humours of [place]” strikes me as the corresponding formula for place names: a (fun) tune favored in or associated with [place], at least according to the tune namer.
But it could be just a generic “Fun in [place]”, too.
I thought it was a Greek dip.
I can’t comment on the gaelic derivation, but in English, the term comes from the classical greek physician Hippocrites (of the Hippocratic oath) via the writing of Galen, a second century Roman.
To these guys, there were four ‘humours’, which consisted of four fluids the body contains - blood, phlegm, and Yellow and black bile. Each was associated with certain character types and emotions, and the cause of illness was these getting out of balance. This is the theoretical underpinning of the medical ‘treatment’ of bleeding patients, for instance. We still have a bunch of terms relating to emotions which were derived from this - bilious, choleric, melancholic, sanguine (‘bloody’), etc. Somehow, the term ‘humour’ came to be narrowed down until it became the term for amusement, despite the fact that properly speaking all four of these and the diverse traits they associated with are all properly known as humours.
I suppose I should have looked here first, but the Oxford English Dictionary lists one (obsolete) definition of humour as:
transf. Character, style, ‘vein’; sentiment, spirit (of a writing, musical composition, etc.).
1599 Broughton’s Lett. iv. 14 Of the like Lunaticall humour are your epistles. 1674 PLAYFORD Skill Mus. I. xi. 40 The understanding of the conceit and the humour of the words. 1686 Lond. Gaz. No. 2119/4 Several Overtures or Sonatta’s, containing Variety of Humors, as Grave Aires, Minuetts, Borees, &c. 1717 tr. Frezier’s Voy. 256 The Bass is made in France, to the Humour of the Harp.
The Rumours of Rosslare
it was until the Romans got a hold of it