Oh, thats awesome! Where I grew up, there's a lot of superstitions. Some of them are really common, like black cats being bad luck, but there are some that are weirdly specific? Like "kill a black snake and hang it over a fence to bring rain" or "wipe a wart with a stolen dishrag then bury the cloth, it'll cure the wart". There's also a bunch of old coal stories from back when the only work was in the mines, but i can't think of any off the top of my head atm (we're a little south of true Coal Country anyway). The most popular ones I can think of are the Tailypo, the Wampus Cat (i'm still pissed as hell at JKR for making the Ilvermorny houses mythical creatures with no actual regard to the cultures they came from but i'll contain that rant), and hoop snakes, and everybody and their brother has a tale about Popcorn Sutton and his moonshine. That's all I can think of atm but I could dig up some more if you're interested!
"Star of the County Down" is the one I was running into. The one we sing it to (strangely, not the one in our hymnals, which is Vox Dilecti) is Thomas Tallis' Third Mode Melody. It seems kind of mournful to me but I like it a lot. You have to be careful not to let it drag, though. Bonus random church music anecdata: our small church used this hymnal, which my mom eventually decided was the cause of all the complaints about hymns being slow and boring. It has some good songs and tunes that I haven't found anywhere else (like this one!) but also some ones that were ... not so good, including Faith of Our Fathers, which is one of only two hymns that I violently hate. But that may be because we sang it like a million times, and not due to any failing on its part, I genuinely can't tell at this point. Anyway, I hope to have many opportunities to listen to you talk about music!
