A History Of Irish Ballads
Irish Ballads and their history, evolution and cultural significance
Irish ballads have been an integral part of the country's history and cultural heritage for centuries. These traditional songs have served as a means of preserving and passing down the stories, customs, and values of the Irish people. They have evolved over time, reflecting the changing social and political landscape of Ireland, and have played a significant role in shaping the country's identity.
The origins of Irish ballads can be traced back to the ancient Celtic bards, who were skilled poets and musicians. They would travel from village to village, singing and reciting tales of heroes, battles, and mythological creatures. These songs were often accompanied by the harp, which was considered the national instrument of Ireland. The bards played a crucial role in preserving the oral tradition of Irish history and culture, as writing was not widely used in Ireland until the arrival of Christianity in the 5th century.
With the introduction of Christianity, the role of the bards diminished, and the new religious authorities took it upon themselves to record and preserve the stories of Ireland. Many of these early ballads had religious themes, such as the lives of saints and the miracles they performed. However, as Ireland was repeatedly invaded and occupied by foreign powers, the ballads also began to reflect the struggles and resilience of the Irish people.
One of the earliest known Irish ballads is 'Óró sé do bheatha abhaile,' which translates to 'Oh-ro You'll Return Home.' This song was written in the 16th century by Irish rebel and chieftain, Grace O'Malley, and was used as a rallying cry for Irish soldiers during the Nine Years' War against English rule. The song continues to be sung today and has become an unofficial anthem of Irish pride and resistance.
The 17th and 18th centuries saw a surge in the popularity of Irish ballads as they were used to spread news, political messages, and rebel songs. During this time, many of the ballads were written anonymously and were often performed in secret to avoid persecution by the British authorities. These songs were a means of resistance and a way for the Irish people to express their longing for independence.
The 19th century saw a revival of interest in traditional Irish music and culture, known as the Celtic Revival. This movement sparked a renewed interest in Irish ballads, and many were collected and published during this time. One of the most influential collectors was Thomas Moore, who published several volumes of Irish Melodies, which included both traditional and newly composed ballads. These collections helped to popularize Irish ballads not only in Ireland but also in other parts of the world.
In the early 20th century, Ireland finally gained independence from British rule, and the ballads continued to play a significant role in the country's cultural and political landscape. During the Irish War of Independence and the subsequent Civil War, ballads were used to rally support for the Irish Republican cause. Songs such as 'The Soldier's Song,' which later became the Irish national anthem, and 'The Foggy Dew,' which recounts the Easter Rising of 1916, are just a few examples of the powerful influence of ballads during this tumultuous time in Irish history.
In the latter half of the 20th century, Irish ballads gained international recognition and popularity, thanks to the emergence of Irish folk bands such as The Dubliners and The Clancy Brothers. These bands, along with solo artists like Christy Moore and Luke Kelly, brought traditional Irish ballads to a wider audience and helped to keep them alive for future generations. Today, Irish ballads continue to be a vital part of the Irish music scene, with numerous contemporary artists incorporating elements of traditional ballads into their music.
Apart from their historical and musical significance, Irish ballads also hold cultural and emotional significance for the Irish people. They serve as a source of pride and a way to connect with their heritage and identity. The lyrics often reflect the struggles, joys, and sorrows of the Irish people, making them relatable and deeply personal to many. They also serve as a means of passing down stories and traditions from one generation to the next, ensuring their preservation for years to come.
In conclusion, Irish ballads have a rich and varied history, evolving from the ancient Celtic bards to the present-day music scene. They have played a crucial role in preserving and shaping Irish culture, serving as a means of resistance, expression, and connection for the Irish people. Their enduring popularity and cultural significance demonstrate the enduring power and impact of these traditional songs, making them an essential part of Ireland's past, present, and future.
Irish ballads have been an integral part of the country's history and cultural heritage for centuries. These traditional songs have served as a means of preserving and passing down the stories, customs, and values of the Irish people. They have evolved over time, reflecting the changing social and political landscape of Ireland, and have played a significant role in shaping the country's identity.
The origins of Irish ballads can be traced back to the ancient Celtic bards, who were skilled poets and musicians. They would travel from village to village, singing and reciting tales of heroes, battles, and mythological creatures. These songs were often accompanied by the harp, which was considered the national instrument of Ireland. The bards played a crucial role in preserving the oral tradition of Irish history and culture, as writing was not widely used in Ireland until the arrival of Christianity in the 5th century.
With the introduction of Christianity, the role of the bards diminished, and the new religious authorities took it upon themselves to record and preserve the stories of Ireland. Many of these early ballads had religious themes, such as the lives of saints and the miracles they performed. However, as Ireland was repeatedly invaded and occupied by foreign powers, the ballads also began to reflect the struggles and resilience of the Irish people.
One of the earliest known Irish ballads is 'Óró sé do bheatha abhaile,' which translates to 'Oh-ro You'll Return Home.' This song was written in the 16th century by Irish rebel and chieftain, Grace O'Malley, and was used as a rallying cry for Irish soldiers during the Nine Years' War against English rule. The song continues to be sung today and has become an unofficial anthem of Irish pride and resistance.
The 17th and 18th centuries saw a surge in the popularity of Irish ballads as they were used to spread news, political messages, and rebel songs. During this time, many of the ballads were written anonymously and were often performed in secret to avoid persecution by the British authorities. These songs were a means of resistance and a way for the Irish people to express their longing for independence.
The 19th century saw a revival of interest in traditional Irish music and culture, known as the Celtic Revival. This movement sparked a renewed interest in Irish ballads, and many were collected and published during this time. One of the most influential collectors was Thomas Moore, who published several volumes of Irish Melodies, which included both traditional and newly composed ballads. These collections helped to popularize Irish ballads not only in Ireland but also in other parts of the world.
In the early 20th century, Ireland finally gained independence from British rule, and the ballads continued to play a significant role in the country's cultural and political landscape. During the Irish War of Independence and the subsequent Civil War, ballads were used to rally support for the Irish Republican cause. Songs such as 'The Soldier's Song,' which later became the Irish national anthem, and 'The Foggy Dew,' which recounts the Easter Rising of 1916, are just a few examples of the powerful influence of ballads during this tumultuous time in Irish history.
In the latter half of the 20th century, Irish ballads gained international recognition and popularity, thanks to the emergence of Irish folk bands such as The Dubliners and The Clancy Brothers. These bands, along with solo artists like Christy Moore and Luke Kelly, brought traditional Irish ballads to a wider audience and helped to keep them alive for future generations. Today, Irish ballads continue to be a vital part of the Irish music scene, with numerous contemporary artists incorporating elements of traditional ballads into their music.
Apart from their historical and musical significance, Irish ballads also hold cultural and emotional significance for the Irish people. They serve as a source of pride and a way to connect with their heritage and identity. The lyrics often reflect the struggles, joys, and sorrows of the Irish people, making them relatable and deeply personal to many. They also serve as a means of passing down stories and traditions from one generation to the next, ensuring their preservation for years to come.
In conclusion, Irish ballads have a rich and varied history, evolving from the ancient Celtic bards to the present-day music scene. They have played a crucial role in preserving and shaping Irish culture, serving as a means of resistance, expression, and connection for the Irish people. Their enduring popularity and cultural significance demonstrate the enduring power and impact of these traditional songs, making them an essential part of Ireland's past, present, and future.
The Ballads From 1798 To Today's Modern Rebel Songs. A brief history of ballads in Ireland and why they were written to explain events taking place around the country.
What Is A Ballad And Where Do They Come From ?
The etymological sence of the word Ballad is ''Dancing Song''. But this description is not entirely acceptable for there are many more songs in use today which we could not call Ballads, perhaps most ballads were not composed to accompany a dance. Another definition currently popular is
''A Ballad Is A Relatively Short Song With A Short Story Line'' divided into verses and sung to a story like melody. Even this definition, close as it may be is still completely accurate. Some ballads extend to only a few lines, while others run into hundreds. The Oxford Dictionary says that a ballad is a simple spirited poem stanzas narrating some popular story. This is much nearer to the ballad as we know
it, but still not completely accurate, as the demand for stanzaic structure is fulfilled only in the ballads of certain countries. Three of the four principle types of European ballads are not stanzaic at all. I am not churning out all this to confuse, but to illustrate just how how difficult it is to classify the ''Ballad''. Bearing the above in mind we have, I feel no option but to use the term
ballad in it's widest sense as meaning any short traditional narrative poem sung with or without accompaniment or dance. I am sure there are still many who will not agree with this definition.
The ballad evolved from the more ancient kind of song narrative, the epic or hero song. Heroic epics were once spread all over The Balkans. They are long songs, some of them taken seven or eight hours for just one song. There are likely to be hundred, even thousands of lines long, telling of Godlike heroes in a whole chain of complex adventures. They move in a supernatural world of magic monsteres. In contrast the ballad is more like a romantic short story, anything from fifty to one hundred lines long telling of a single exploit, involving lifesized figures in a realistic world, true lovers and false ones, fearless soldiers and
treacherous neighbours. Nowadays the epic is found mainly in Albania, Greece and Bulgaria. But all over western and central Europe the old epics have faded away and being replaced with the ballad.
The etymological sence of the word Ballad is ''Dancing Song''. But this description is not entirely acceptable for there are many more songs in use today which we could not call Ballads, perhaps most ballads were not composed to accompany a dance. Another definition currently popular is
''A Ballad Is A Relatively Short Song With A Short Story Line'' divided into verses and sung to a story like melody. Even this definition, close as it may be is still completely accurate. Some ballads extend to only a few lines, while others run into hundreds. The Oxford Dictionary says that a ballad is a simple spirited poem stanzas narrating some popular story. This is much nearer to the ballad as we know
it, but still not completely accurate, as the demand for stanzaic structure is fulfilled only in the ballads of certain countries. Three of the four principle types of European ballads are not stanzaic at all. I am not churning out all this to confuse, but to illustrate just how how difficult it is to classify the ''Ballad''. Bearing the above in mind we have, I feel no option but to use the term
ballad in it's widest sense as meaning any short traditional narrative poem sung with or without accompaniment or dance. I am sure there are still many who will not agree with this definition.
The ballad evolved from the more ancient kind of song narrative, the epic or hero song. Heroic epics were once spread all over The Balkans. They are long songs, some of them taken seven or eight hours for just one song. There are likely to be hundred, even thousands of lines long, telling of Godlike heroes in a whole chain of complex adventures. They move in a supernatural world of magic monsteres. In contrast the ballad is more like a romantic short story, anything from fifty to one hundred lines long telling of a single exploit, involving lifesized figures in a realistic world, true lovers and false ones, fearless soldiers and
treacherous neighbours. Nowadays the epic is found mainly in Albania, Greece and Bulgaria. But all over western and central Europe the old epics have faded away and being replaced with the ballad.
Where Did The Ballad First Evolve ?
If a map of Europe was drawn to show the migration of ballads, it would be criss - crossed in every direction, so that it is extremely difficult to say for certain where the long grim hero songs first softened into the gentler pieces, with the old solid block recitative broken up into stanzas and fitted to song-like tunes. The balled may first have seen the light of day among French and Waloon pearants and gradually spread outwards. Wherever there is no difficult language or cultural frontier to surmount, the traditional ballad is able to travel from mouth to mouth. The dialect used for its performance takes on, slowly, new
characteristics as the song moves over the ground until it reaches the limits of the linguistic area. Then it is substituted not translation which occurs and the stronger part of the ballad, either tune or story survives. As the ballad moved outwards towards Ireland, Scotland and Scandinavia it became longer and more full of fighting and magic, doubtless because the effects of old hero epics lingered longer on the fringes of the ballad area.
If a map of Europe was drawn to show the migration of ballads, it would be criss - crossed in every direction, so that it is extremely difficult to say for certain where the long grim hero songs first softened into the gentler pieces, with the old solid block recitative broken up into stanzas and fitted to song-like tunes. The balled may first have seen the light of day among French and Waloon pearants and gradually spread outwards. Wherever there is no difficult language or cultural frontier to surmount, the traditional ballad is able to travel from mouth to mouth. The dialect used for its performance takes on, slowly, new
characteristics as the song moves over the ground until it reaches the limits of the linguistic area. Then it is substituted not translation which occurs and the stronger part of the ballad, either tune or story survives. As the ballad moved outwards towards Ireland, Scotland and Scandinavia it became longer and more full of fighting and magic, doubtless because the effects of old hero epics lingered longer on the fringes of the ballad area.
Who Created The Ballads ?
Some were made by educated amateurs, some by professional minstrels, but the overwhelming majority were made by European peasants. Usually we can identify the upperclass products by their artificial language, and the minstrel pieces too are easily detectable. They are usually found in books, as they didn't last very long in the mouths of traditional singers. As most of the ballads were peasant creations why then do Lords and Ladies figure so often as the heroes ? One suggestion is, that to the peasant the hero is likely to be more elevated above the rest of local society. Of course there could have been a mischievous reason, because generally the lady with Milk White Skin crimson gown would leave her Lord and dash off with the passing peasant or Gypsy, the stuff of dreams for those with work-hard hands. To those same Lords and Ladies, the ballad, as sung by the peasants, was wild, vulgar and sometimes grudgingly as a sort of poetry. But the ballad clung through centuries without any aid from courtly society or from official literature, contemptuous of such 'Wild Songs.' The ballad only lives in the moment of performance as they move their audience 'more thin a trumpet'It is a glory not achieved by the great artistic poets. There is no personal right arrogated by the author over his ballad, which is the absolute property of each reciter, to shorten, extend, mingle with others as they transmit them. Once launched the ballad is everybody's property.
Some were made by educated amateurs, some by professional minstrels, but the overwhelming majority were made by European peasants. Usually we can identify the upperclass products by their artificial language, and the minstrel pieces too are easily detectable. They are usually found in books, as they didn't last very long in the mouths of traditional singers. As most of the ballads were peasant creations why then do Lords and Ladies figure so often as the heroes ? One suggestion is, that to the peasant the hero is likely to be more elevated above the rest of local society. Of course there could have been a mischievous reason, because generally the lady with Milk White Skin crimson gown would leave her Lord and dash off with the passing peasant or Gypsy, the stuff of dreams for those with work-hard hands. To those same Lords and Ladies, the ballad, as sung by the peasants, was wild, vulgar and sometimes grudgingly as a sort of poetry. But the ballad clung through centuries without any aid from courtly society or from official literature, contemptuous of such 'Wild Songs.' The ballad only lives in the moment of performance as they move their audience 'more thin a trumpet'It is a glory not achieved by the great artistic poets. There is no personal right arrogated by the author over his ballad, which is the absolute property of each reciter, to shorten, extend, mingle with others as they transmit them. Once launched the ballad is everybody's property.
When Did The Ballad Emerge ?
The Russian scholar Zhirmunsky suggests that the ballad emerged in Western Europe, from the thirteenth century onwards. Some would put the date a century earlier. The written word is no sure guide, as these merely indicate when educated people became aware of their existence which were already circulating among the ordinary people. In France the first written records date from the latter part of the fifteenth century. In England the ballad first appeared in print in sixteenth century manuscripts., and by the seventeenth century they had become very fashionable. But they had already being in the possession of the peasants for about four hundred years and were constantly being added to.
The Russian scholar Zhirmunsky suggests that the ballad emerged in Western Europe, from the thirteenth century onwards. Some would put the date a century earlier. The written word is no sure guide, as these merely indicate when educated people became aware of their existence which were already circulating among the ordinary people. In France the first written records date from the latter part of the fifteenth century. In England the ballad first appeared in print in sixteenth century manuscripts., and by the seventeenth century they had become very fashionable. But they had already being in the possession of the peasants for about four hundred years and were constantly being added to.
Is The Ballad Song Or Verse ?
To a large number of people the word Ballad calls to mind. not a folk song, but a poetic text printed in the ''Child Collection'', or elsewhere. Not ment to be sung but recited as a verse the same way as ''The Rime Of The Ancient Mariner'' or ''Dangerous Dan McGrew''Song collectors have raised a cry of protest, they argue that mere verbal text of a ballad is by no means the ''Real Ballad'', and is just a fossil relic, that the native beauthy and charm of the traditional ballad can never be really appreciated apart from its music. Much has been said and written to explain why the ballad has survived through all those centuries of change, and no doubt much more will be said and written to explain the how and why of their survival.
The ballads are and that is their best justification, despit changes of fashion and language they have clung to the peoples memory with a remarkable tenacity. The humble folk who listen with all their ears say ''That's A True Story.'' They won't remark on the song's truth, likeness, it's passionate music and shuddering tragedies or it's nobleness. They have no adjectives to spare for the manner of balladry, the wisest of scribes have followed their example.
Written by Sean Byrne.
To a large number of people the word Ballad calls to mind. not a folk song, but a poetic text printed in the ''Child Collection'', or elsewhere. Not ment to be sung but recited as a verse the same way as ''The Rime Of The Ancient Mariner'' or ''Dangerous Dan McGrew''Song collectors have raised a cry of protest, they argue that mere verbal text of a ballad is by no means the ''Real Ballad'', and is just a fossil relic, that the native beauthy and charm of the traditional ballad can never be really appreciated apart from its music. Much has been said and written to explain why the ballad has survived through all those centuries of change, and no doubt much more will be said and written to explain the how and why of their survival.
The ballads are and that is their best justification, despit changes of fashion and language they have clung to the peoples memory with a remarkable tenacity. The humble folk who listen with all their ears say ''That's A True Story.'' They won't remark on the song's truth, likeness, it's passionate music and shuddering tragedies or it's nobleness. They have no adjectives to spare for the manner of balladry, the wisest of scribes have followed their example.
Written by Sean Byrne.
Irish Ballads From The 16th Century To The 21th Century
There are many nationalist / republican songs on the site, the association of musicians and songwriters with nationalist views has a very long tradition throughout Ireland going as
far back to the Elizabeth conquest. Gaelic musicians such as the Irish harpers and the bards
were prevented from preforming and writing nationalist songs and playing Irish music. There was even a law forbidding it and the musicians were persecuted by the
English administration in Ireland. The first of the republican songs date back to the 1798
when the United Irishmen organised huge political movement with help from the French for an Irish Republic.
Some of the more famous songs from this time were Roddy McCorley [ Lyrics ]and The Croppy Boy [ lyrics ]. These songs were actually written during the rebellion of '98, there are many others that deal with this period of Irish history but were written during the 19, and 20th century, ballads like The Rising Of The Moon by Leo Casey.
There are also numerous Irish tunes, dance sets, that commemorate the events and pay tribute to the French who were on the Irish side during the various battles of '98. These anonymous poets and musicians presented the first native views of the rebellion, and the first musical response to the rising. The ballads and poems of the poets such as "Roddy McCorley," "The Men of the West," "Who Fears to Speak," "Boulavogue [ Lyrics ]" "Kelly the Boy from Killane" were written long after the rising. Many were written as commemorative tributes in 1898 and were to become the most popular songs remembering the rebellion of 1798. They present "the Irish native view of events and people.
Many ballads included here are well known, many not so, but all deserve to be more widely sung. The ballad has carried the stories of the cause of Irish Freedom in every decade, and in many ways the songs and ballads of '98 were the first powerful force of its poetic and literary expression in the English Language. After '98 the Irish Patriotic Ballad takes on a life of its own in the years that followed, it become the voice of the Irish struggle and over the next six generations, every attempt to overthrow or resist English law and rule is well documented in song poem or ballad.
Many ballads here were widely popular. In the early 19th century, with the population double what it is today, they had an appreciative and eager audience, a large peasant population who were anxious to hear the native view, and the ballads were the only means of expression and entertainment of the poor. Consequently, they were therefore placed as Gads on the street around the hearth many ways, the ballad has been as poorly treated as the Irish native poor for whom it carried the hopes and dreams and aspirations. The songs and stories presented here are a huge archive of our ballads and poet literature from 1798 to today.
The ballad singer played a big role in the daily lives of Irish people during the 18th to the 20th centuries. He served as a news service setting out in song form historical events, battles and murders, he also commemorated triumphs and telling the life stories of religious and political leaders of the day.
Not all were about war and murder, some actually told a love story, for example the song Teddy O'Neill told of a young woman pining for her handsome young exiled sweetheart.
Another wave of ballads were born out of the 1916 rising, these songs mainly concentrated on the leaders of the rebellion. Songs like James Connolly where the writer remained anonymous for fear of reprisals. Others include Come Out Ye Black And Tans [ Lyrics ] by Dominic Behan which tells of his father coming home from the pub drunk and taunting The Black And Tans to come and fight him. Many of these ballads were written years after the events of 1916. Dominic Behan and Brian Warfield are credited with writing many of today's modern rebel songs along with Gerry O'Glacain from The Irish Brigade.
There are many nationalist / republican songs on the site, the association of musicians and songwriters with nationalist views has a very long tradition throughout Ireland going as
far back to the Elizabeth conquest. Gaelic musicians such as the Irish harpers and the bards
were prevented from preforming and writing nationalist songs and playing Irish music. There was even a law forbidding it and the musicians were persecuted by the
English administration in Ireland. The first of the republican songs date back to the 1798
when the United Irishmen organised huge political movement with help from the French for an Irish Republic.
Some of the more famous songs from this time were Roddy McCorley [ Lyrics ]and The Croppy Boy [ lyrics ]. These songs were actually written during the rebellion of '98, there are many others that deal with this period of Irish history but were written during the 19, and 20th century, ballads like The Rising Of The Moon by Leo Casey.
There are also numerous Irish tunes, dance sets, that commemorate the events and pay tribute to the French who were on the Irish side during the various battles of '98. These anonymous poets and musicians presented the first native views of the rebellion, and the first musical response to the rising. The ballads and poems of the poets such as "Roddy McCorley," "The Men of the West," "Who Fears to Speak," "Boulavogue [ Lyrics ]" "Kelly the Boy from Killane" were written long after the rising. Many were written as commemorative tributes in 1898 and were to become the most popular songs remembering the rebellion of 1798. They present "the Irish native view of events and people.
Many ballads included here are well known, many not so, but all deserve to be more widely sung. The ballad has carried the stories of the cause of Irish Freedom in every decade, and in many ways the songs and ballads of '98 were the first powerful force of its poetic and literary expression in the English Language. After '98 the Irish Patriotic Ballad takes on a life of its own in the years that followed, it become the voice of the Irish struggle and over the next six generations, every attempt to overthrow or resist English law and rule is well documented in song poem or ballad.
Many ballads here were widely popular. In the early 19th century, with the population double what it is today, they had an appreciative and eager audience, a large peasant population who were anxious to hear the native view, and the ballads were the only means of expression and entertainment of the poor. Consequently, they were therefore placed as Gads on the street around the hearth many ways, the ballad has been as poorly treated as the Irish native poor for whom it carried the hopes and dreams and aspirations. The songs and stories presented here are a huge archive of our ballads and poet literature from 1798 to today.
The ballad singer played a big role in the daily lives of Irish people during the 18th to the 20th centuries. He served as a news service setting out in song form historical events, battles and murders, he also commemorated triumphs and telling the life stories of religious and political leaders of the day.
Not all were about war and murder, some actually told a love story, for example the song Teddy O'Neill told of a young woman pining for her handsome young exiled sweetheart.
Another wave of ballads were born out of the 1916 rising, these songs mainly concentrated on the leaders of the rebellion. Songs like James Connolly where the writer remained anonymous for fear of reprisals. Others include Come Out Ye Black And Tans [ Lyrics ] by Dominic Behan which tells of his father coming home from the pub drunk and taunting The Black And Tans to come and fight him. Many of these ballads were written years after the events of 1916. Dominic Behan and Brian Warfield are credited with writing many of today's modern rebel songs along with Gerry O'Glacain from The Irish Brigade.
Other notably ballad writers emerged in the 1970's including Phil Coulter who for a time was producing the Dubliners records. While writing songs Phil had The Dubliners in mind and especially Luke Kelly as the singer of his songs. All of his writings were hits for The Dubliners, including The Town I Loved So Well which is about the City Of Derry where Phil comes from. The song tells of how his native city is torn apart by The Troubles. Phil Coulter didn't write exclusively of The Dubliners. One of his biggest hits, Steal Away [ song lyrics ] was first recorded by The Furey Brothers And Davey Arthur, the ballad tells of two teenagers running away from The Troubles in Belfast.
At the start of the troubles many ballad groups emerged. One of the first were The Barleycorn fronted by Paddy McGuigan. Paddy was imprisoned for writing ballads in the 1970's. The Barleycorn were known for singing the hard rebel songs rather than the folk stuff. Much of their music was banned by radio stations all over Ireland but still their records sold in large quantities. The Wolfe Tones sang many of Barleycorn's songs and made a lot of money of of them. These include The Boys Of The Old Brigade [ song lyrics ] and The Men Behind The Wire.
The Wolfe Tones are the most successful of all the ballad groups ever. They'll be 50 years together in 2013. Most of their songs were written by their 5 string banjo player Brian Warfield. Brian has written hundreds of ballads about most aspect of Irish life. They continue to preform today as a three piece since the departure of Derek Warfield. They still do their tours around the world and play in America most years.
The second most successful ballad group of recent times were The Dublin City Ramblers. Patsy Watchorn was their lead singer for the most part. They had a string of hits in the 1970's and 80's. None of the group were into songwriting in a big way. It was Pete St. John who provided the group with their big hits which included The Rare Auld Times [ song lyrics ] and The Ferryman. Starting out in the 70's The Ramblers included many reel songs in their set list during the 70's but over the years the real hard ballads faded away replaced by more general folk songs.
All of these groups grew out of what was known as The Ballad Boom, which is used to describe the big upsurge of interest in ballads and folk songs during the 1970's and 80's. The inspiration for these groups came from the success of The Clancy Brothers And Tommy Makem who made a big impact in America singing old Irish folk songs. Each of the new groups had their own unique style. In the early 60's a raft of new ballad groups and singers sprung up all over the country and especially the Dublin. Along with The Wolfe Tones there were Emmet Spiceland, Danny Doyle, Sweeneys Men, The Fureys and The Johnstones. These are the ones that made it big time. In almost every pub in Ireland during the 60's and early 70's ballads were the norm.
The Pogues [ song lyrics ] also played their part in keeping the ballads alive. Just like Brian Warfield of The Wolfe Tones, The Pogues songwriter Shane MacGowan has written songs on many subjects. He wrote several rebel songs including The Birmingham Six and Paddy Public Enemy No. 1 which is about Dominic McGlinchey who was the most wanted man in Ireland at one time. Another member of The Pogues who put ink to paper was their mandolin player Terry Woods who wrote Young Ned Of The Hill [ lyrics ] which is about a Tipperary man Edmond Ryan who was a member of The Wild Geese.
The Irish Brigade from Tyrone were born out of the troubles. Their main songwriter is Gerry O'Glacain. The group play mostly rebel songs which consist of new ballads written by Gerry O'Glacain about the most recent past along with older standard ballads. The band have had over 10 albums all of which did not include their faces on the album covers. This is because it was still considered seditious to sing rebel / anti British songs just as it was in 1798.
Christy Moore started his career singing ballads. He was never one to shy away from the rebel songs. From his first album ''Paddy On The Road'' came 2 of his finest, the first being The Ballad Of James Larkin [ lyrics ] followed by The Belfast Brigade. This was the late 60's and Christy was in England singing in folk clubs for a living. It wasn't popular to be singing Irish ballads in England but Christy managed to get away with it. Along came the 1970's and he formed part of the band Moving Hearts, a fast trad/folk group playing a mixture of traditional tunes with a few ballads. During the early 80's Christy lent his support to the H-Block protest. This was at a time very few musicians would even consider such a move.
At the start of the troubles many ballad groups emerged. One of the first were The Barleycorn fronted by Paddy McGuigan. Paddy was imprisoned for writing ballads in the 1970's. The Barleycorn were known for singing the hard rebel songs rather than the folk stuff. Much of their music was banned by radio stations all over Ireland but still their records sold in large quantities. The Wolfe Tones sang many of Barleycorn's songs and made a lot of money of of them. These include The Boys Of The Old Brigade [ song lyrics ] and The Men Behind The Wire.
The Wolfe Tones are the most successful of all the ballad groups ever. They'll be 50 years together in 2013. Most of their songs were written by their 5 string banjo player Brian Warfield. Brian has written hundreds of ballads about most aspect of Irish life. They continue to preform today as a three piece since the departure of Derek Warfield. They still do their tours around the world and play in America most years.
The second most successful ballad group of recent times were The Dublin City Ramblers. Patsy Watchorn was their lead singer for the most part. They had a string of hits in the 1970's and 80's. None of the group were into songwriting in a big way. It was Pete St. John who provided the group with their big hits which included The Rare Auld Times [ song lyrics ] and The Ferryman. Starting out in the 70's The Ramblers included many reel songs in their set list during the 70's but over the years the real hard ballads faded away replaced by more general folk songs.
All of these groups grew out of what was known as The Ballad Boom, which is used to describe the big upsurge of interest in ballads and folk songs during the 1970's and 80's. The inspiration for these groups came from the success of The Clancy Brothers And Tommy Makem who made a big impact in America singing old Irish folk songs. Each of the new groups had their own unique style. In the early 60's a raft of new ballad groups and singers sprung up all over the country and especially the Dublin. Along with The Wolfe Tones there were Emmet Spiceland, Danny Doyle, Sweeneys Men, The Fureys and The Johnstones. These are the ones that made it big time. In almost every pub in Ireland during the 60's and early 70's ballads were the norm.
The Pogues [ song lyrics ] also played their part in keeping the ballads alive. Just like Brian Warfield of The Wolfe Tones, The Pogues songwriter Shane MacGowan has written songs on many subjects. He wrote several rebel songs including The Birmingham Six and Paddy Public Enemy No. 1 which is about Dominic McGlinchey who was the most wanted man in Ireland at one time. Another member of The Pogues who put ink to paper was their mandolin player Terry Woods who wrote Young Ned Of The Hill [ lyrics ] which is about a Tipperary man Edmond Ryan who was a member of The Wild Geese.
The Irish Brigade from Tyrone were born out of the troubles. Their main songwriter is Gerry O'Glacain. The group play mostly rebel songs which consist of new ballads written by Gerry O'Glacain about the most recent past along with older standard ballads. The band have had over 10 albums all of which did not include their faces on the album covers. This is because it was still considered seditious to sing rebel / anti British songs just as it was in 1798.
Christy Moore started his career singing ballads. He was never one to shy away from the rebel songs. From his first album ''Paddy On The Road'' came 2 of his finest, the first being The Ballad Of James Larkin [ lyrics ] followed by The Belfast Brigade. This was the late 60's and Christy was in England singing in folk clubs for a living. It wasn't popular to be singing Irish ballads in England but Christy managed to get away with it. Along came the 1970's and he formed part of the band Moving Hearts, a fast trad/folk group playing a mixture of traditional tunes with a few ballads. During the early 80's Christy lent his support to the H-Block protest. This was at a time very few musicians would even consider such a move.
John Keegan Casey aka. Leo Casey
The Rising Of The Moon - Leo Casey Remembered
Leo Casey whose ballads put spirit into a generation depressed to the point of despair by famine and oppression was born in Mount Dalton Westmeath in 1846.
He was still a boy when he wrote "The Rising Of The Moon." He was only twenty-four when he died. He had his first poem published at the age of sixteen. An eight months
term of cruel imprisonment in 1867 was his death warrant.
He was the victim of brutal Victorian treatment and racial hatred for any patriotic Irishman who expressed his views in ballad form. When he was arrested and imprisoned as a suspect, he was a tall, handsome, athletic youth over six feet high. Eight months later he was released on rendition that he leave Ireland, he was bent and pale with a hacking cough. This sentence of exile or death was given to many a good Fenian man, It was the colonial solution, a policy of
"ship away the problem" "get him out of Ireland." However, he returned to his friends, Doomed but with spirit unbroken he disguised himself as a Quaker, took the name of Harrison and rented an office beside Dublin Castle and continued his writing and publishing, right under the
noses of the Crown authorities. However, his health failed but he survived and lingered for almost three years writing his patriotic ballads. Organizing to strengthen the people's
power of resistance till on St. Patrick's Day, 1870 he died in Dublin.
Just before he drew his last breath he grasped the crucifix and said, "Oh Holy St. Patrick, intercede for me and for my unhappy country." His booklet "Wreath of Shamrock"
was first published in 1866, and "The Rising Of The Moon' first appeared in 1869.
He was only twenty-one when the authorities thought it necessary to have him put out of the way. Here is his own description of the imprisonment: "Since the "Wreath of Shamrocks" made its appearance, have been within the walls of an English Bastille on the simple word of a "village Dog" Berry, and the English authorities kept me locked up and treated are as a convict,
Untried for eight long dreary months when I was denied paper to write on save the official letter per day, denied intercourse with my friends, and as dead to the world as if I did not exist.
Solitude of that nature is not over poetical, particularlyas the use of the mop has to be quickly learned and the number of cell remembered. This accounts to the reader,
for any apparent over bitterness of feeling in some of the verses." When be died 50,000 people attended his funeral, and it was one the largest funerals seen in Dublin, many walked from Westmeath and Longford.
It was a tribute to his patriotism and talent as a poet and a ballad writer that he should have had such a large gathering of admirers.
He is remembered by a nice sculptured monument of a round tower and Ruined Church. Leo Casey was held in Mountjoy Prison without trial for eight months. He also wrote The Wearing Of The Green [ Lyrics ]. Yes indeed, in them days you could be arrested and put in jail for writing songs.
The Following History Of Irish Ballads Is Written By Brian Warfield Of The Wolfe Tones
Have you ever wondered why Irish music and song is so important to the people of Irish decent in Scotland and why they still hold on dearly to their musical heritage? There are many historic reasons for this phenomenon, let me explain. Firstly the History of our people is enshrined in our songs and ballads a story that could not be freely got from other sources. The song was an important source of information and a vehicle for carrying our stories into the cities, towns and homes of the emigrant communities.
There was great hardship suffered by the Irish people over the centuries, wars, invasions, famine, plague, evictions, despotic Governments and oppression but one thing that kept their spirits alive was their love of music. When battles were lost; consolation was taken in musical expression. When their lands were confiscated, the oppressor felt their anger in their songs or in sorrowful ballads of eviction and emigration. The Lough Sheelin Eviction [ song lyrics ] is a good example, The Crossing is another. The so called famine scattered the Irish all over the world but no matter where they made their home there is one thing common to all and that is their great love of Irish music and song.
The Irish emigrants who made their way to Scotland during this period were never fully accepted into Scottish society nor were their ethnic origins recognized there. Treated as strangers or unwelcome intruders in the cities and towns of Scotland they held on dearly to their music and song and it thrived and survived among them. The hero’s of these ballads where those who fought against the aggressor, the outlaws, raparees, Rebels and highwaymen. The villains were the landlords and the oppressive lawmakers and governors that had driven them from their homeland. In songs of emigration those forced to leave recalled the good times their experience and memories of home and homeland in song and dance tunes. It was the song that kept them in touch with their home. It was said that all their wars were merry and all their songs were sad – I don’t know who said it but it’s not true. The songs and music of the Irish are full of expressions of joy, wit, sorrow, anger, pain outrage and could be either inspiring or soothing. Very often the musicians who told these stories were hunted down, tortured or even hung for treason. Music was the universal language and the soul of Ireland, said Thomas Davis and the first faculty of the Irish.
Leo Casey whose ballads put spirit into a generation depressed to the point of despair by famine and oppression was born in Mount Dalton Westmeath in 1846.
He was still a boy when he wrote "The Rising Of The Moon." He was only twenty-four when he died. He had his first poem published at the age of sixteen. An eight months
term of cruel imprisonment in 1867 was his death warrant.
He was the victim of brutal Victorian treatment and racial hatred for any patriotic Irishman who expressed his views in ballad form. When he was arrested and imprisoned as a suspect, he was a tall, handsome, athletic youth over six feet high. Eight months later he was released on rendition that he leave Ireland, he was bent and pale with a hacking cough. This sentence of exile or death was given to many a good Fenian man, It was the colonial solution, a policy of
"ship away the problem" "get him out of Ireland." However, he returned to his friends, Doomed but with spirit unbroken he disguised himself as a Quaker, took the name of Harrison and rented an office beside Dublin Castle and continued his writing and publishing, right under the
noses of the Crown authorities. However, his health failed but he survived and lingered for almost three years writing his patriotic ballads. Organizing to strengthen the people's
power of resistance till on St. Patrick's Day, 1870 he died in Dublin.
Just before he drew his last breath he grasped the crucifix and said, "Oh Holy St. Patrick, intercede for me and for my unhappy country." His booklet "Wreath of Shamrock"
was first published in 1866, and "The Rising Of The Moon' first appeared in 1869.
He was only twenty-one when the authorities thought it necessary to have him put out of the way. Here is his own description of the imprisonment: "Since the "Wreath of Shamrocks" made its appearance, have been within the walls of an English Bastille on the simple word of a "village Dog" Berry, and the English authorities kept me locked up and treated are as a convict,
Untried for eight long dreary months when I was denied paper to write on save the official letter per day, denied intercourse with my friends, and as dead to the world as if I did not exist.
Solitude of that nature is not over poetical, particularlyas the use of the mop has to be quickly learned and the number of cell remembered. This accounts to the reader,
for any apparent over bitterness of feeling in some of the verses." When be died 50,000 people attended his funeral, and it was one the largest funerals seen in Dublin, many walked from Westmeath and Longford.
It was a tribute to his patriotism and talent as a poet and a ballad writer that he should have had such a large gathering of admirers.
He is remembered by a nice sculptured monument of a round tower and Ruined Church. Leo Casey was held in Mountjoy Prison without trial for eight months. He also wrote The Wearing Of The Green [ Lyrics ]. Yes indeed, in them days you could be arrested and put in jail for writing songs.
The Following History Of Irish Ballads Is Written By Brian Warfield Of The Wolfe Tones
Have you ever wondered why Irish music and song is so important to the people of Irish decent in Scotland and why they still hold on dearly to their musical heritage? There are many historic reasons for this phenomenon, let me explain. Firstly the History of our people is enshrined in our songs and ballads a story that could not be freely got from other sources. The song was an important source of information and a vehicle for carrying our stories into the cities, towns and homes of the emigrant communities.
There was great hardship suffered by the Irish people over the centuries, wars, invasions, famine, plague, evictions, despotic Governments and oppression but one thing that kept their spirits alive was their love of music. When battles were lost; consolation was taken in musical expression. When their lands were confiscated, the oppressor felt their anger in their songs or in sorrowful ballads of eviction and emigration. The Lough Sheelin Eviction [ song lyrics ] is a good example, The Crossing is another. The so called famine scattered the Irish all over the world but no matter where they made their home there is one thing common to all and that is their great love of Irish music and song.
The Irish emigrants who made their way to Scotland during this period were never fully accepted into Scottish society nor were their ethnic origins recognized there. Treated as strangers or unwelcome intruders in the cities and towns of Scotland they held on dearly to their music and song and it thrived and survived among them. The hero’s of these ballads where those who fought against the aggressor, the outlaws, raparees, Rebels and highwaymen. The villains were the landlords and the oppressive lawmakers and governors that had driven them from their homeland. In songs of emigration those forced to leave recalled the good times their experience and memories of home and homeland in song and dance tunes. It was the song that kept them in touch with their home. It was said that all their wars were merry and all their songs were sad – I don’t know who said it but it’s not true. The songs and music of the Irish are full of expressions of joy, wit, sorrow, anger, pain outrage and could be either inspiring or soothing. Very often the musicians who told these stories were hunted down, tortured or even hung for treason. Music was the universal language and the soul of Ireland, said Thomas Davis and the first faculty of the Irish.
,A History Of Irish Songs And Ballads By Derek Warfield Of The Wolfe Tones
Below is a transcript of an interview by Derek. The video is at the end.
I always encourage people that are interested in Irish music to start at the very beginning, to look at the way the music has been expressed for any cities challenge of course inside of Ireland because folk music changes whatever generation and it's also subject to influences from other cultures and traditions and it's never static so you have to recognize that and I always encourage young people are coming to artist music to take what's most powerful the melody read the rhythms and the passion of sound storytelling the history and embrace it all and you'll find yourself what you like best I think that's probably more facilities in Ireland note that when I was young and to learning of music and the practice of music and that was there wasn't around when we were young we gently were all self-talk and in our locality and district learn there will be very very few professional teachers the soul but music always indeed was present in locations in Ireland even through the worst periods of oppression surgery longer and that it survived through all the catastrophic events register the 19th century had a particularly bad effect on our artists music because the audience for its character which were the poor varlet largely disappeared a more staff to death and they were the bulk of the appreciative audience of them understood the did the ballad tradition.
I understood the street performers understood the they have the way songs that were transmitted around the country and they were but there did the audience without and I think George Petry deals with that in his literature and he said famously said the land of song is no more is no longer singing it's silent and if I hear cry it's only the whale for the dead her pet she was absolutely horrified in the 1850s at the demise of meat the musical tradition because of the social effects of the hunger so he he said about to him take around our land and collect the remnants as he said South sod and he said his student a man who helped a mare PW Joyce Patrick Weston rejoice he am between them they collected over five thousand tunes and songs but that would have only been a remnant of what was lost during the the events of the hungry have to imagine you have to understand that them there were almost ten million people are a half of the population at all written in 1845 that says to me the British authorities didn't keep any figures for those who left Ireland went to Britain during that time would you know the people who left Ireland came to America they brought the tradition to America and it enriched the to folk song tradition of Amar of America and you'll find in the eighteen fifties sixties and seventies entertainment in the big cities where the artist scattered there was a lot of artists music the ability to be a good to form a good writer of their songs on topical events a lot of that disappeared with the hunger.
Starvation it had a catastrophic effect on the creativity of them of the music and you see them when you look at the compositions say of the from the eighteen twenties thirties forties in the 50s they become less artistic and less in tune with the air case of the people but the amazing thing about the music is that it it was a it was enjoyed by all strata of society they people at the higher end of the scale loved the music and the lore in the social scale of the music didn't have social borders and that's always been the case even going back to the 18th century when the the nobility were in Ireland they fostered the musicians and the performers and they were a big reason why to happen tradition survived in the 18th century because it was the big houses was the big land or Lords who were patriotic aristocracy you have to remember there were many artists people in Ireland in the 18th century and that believed like the people who founded a revelation that revels near a discontent are in America and that almost there had to be a better way to treat the people and the American Revolution had a huge consequences for our because the British authorities knew they had lost the American colonies because of the Earth's fighting in George Washington's ranks and they were there determined not to lose the the breadbasket which was consider Arland so there was loot las' brutality applying to anybody who em followed the Republican aspirations of George Washington or any of the people in France.
like the reason we called ourselves The Wolf tones after an a man from that period who sought to unite Ireland under the same principles as the founding fathers of this country and they worked on with them I came to America here in 1795 what is very interesting is that he was M entertained before he left Ireland by William bunting bunting actually gathered all the musicians in Belfast to entertain wolf town before he left to America and worked on scene to cultural going alongside the political in other words that he wanted here the people that have been descendants of the English settlers to embrace the artists culture yes English party didn't latest so bunting was written out of history right because of a support for Republican aspirations in Ireland and when he died in the in the 1830s George Petri remarked then he died without award or heard or written in his favor by any pen publication or person though the British had the English authorities had had so powerfully D nationalized the upper classes after the active union that they had T nationalism their plan was to make artists Ireland Irish people English in the 1830s battery along with Eugene or buried channel don't even realize that though although English Authority had suppressed the culture of fishing they hadn't succeeded in his final it was underground now this might come as a shock to you like in the late 18th century in the early 19th century the artists people were far from being illiterate there were head schools all over the country there were penny schools in in towns and cities although the mass of the artists people were denied education way the English authorities, they were far from being literate and to understand them that I would suggest that you get a book called the head schools of Ireland written by a man called Evelyn.
To understand the way education was so revered in our society that they refused to let go refuse to let go it's the most powerful statement of our nationality the most powerful state and the transition from Gaelic into English was a very very gradual process for the first 300 or 400 years all English settlers and normal settlers took up the harsh language artists was the dominant culture it's only when the beingness is tried to him to destroy and mortar all the artists cheated people and I am expelled them from the country that English took over and but it was confined to the cities up until the end of the 17th century and pretending even in the 18th century the Irish language made a comeback because again the underground educational system was it was teaching him Latin Hebrew Greek in schools that were not saved by any government this is a phenomenal case for me and along with that of course you had them they care the Bartok schools had survived right from the very earliest part of civilization and they never really died down on to the 18th century well I I was definitely influenced by the Klan supporters and Tommy Makem and I think Pete Seeger and would have influenced me in the fact that he could speak out and sing out and I I always felt that them like it was part of the aisle and for the fast that it was part of the magic tradition to be able to to write in saying kriti thee of the injustice where you seen it to write and sing about and praise of things that you see him needed to be celebrated and so that was a very old part of our heritage and just wanted to sting changes to remind you George Petry got permission from the English government they funded he got a major lakum set up a year a memoir to collect the folk memory songs stories the to mark all the important sites of of history in the counties of Ireland and the first County that was chosen to do this was County Derry sadly and revealed such a powerful heritage that it closes it reveals such a helpful heritage that was all underground and in an act of racism and an act of hatred the memo was closed down on said it was like a phone's but there was no lack of honest because they had content compensated the slave owners when slavery was abolished in 1843 to the tune of millions Gabe ringless Exchequer was full of money but they didn't want to reveal and all the other counties the powerful nature of the music sound poems education that was in the counties and we'll never know what was lost but one thing was found from County Derry that everybody in America knows and that is the tune of Karen's lament or Danny Boy that was one
of the pieces of music that was found because of air george Pepsi's so you wouldn't have you wouldn't have Danny Boy you wouldn't have that melody one of his people he had around the country okay the blind fiddle are playing dis tune called the cans lament and she she wrote to she took down the notation and she sent it to George Hudson and lots of people wrote wards to them including Fred whoever he who wrote that anybody would order order the singer I always feel and my perspective is to tell the story to reveal the to reveal to the audience there the purpose of the Sun if it's about love if it's about injustice if it's available and what to do it in an entertaining way and you know I'm really a street singer you know that has been because this singer Sunday and that entertained on the streets of our land prior to the hunger and they had to have songs that were topical songs that were entertaining to entertain the crows to make a livin they had to and they would sell the sheets of the walls for a penny and it sell them to the people surrounding the area but the course the image sought to bring in a lot and forbidding the balladeers from selling the seats they used to sell the straw used to bring peace the straw and it would sell the straws for a penny and give the waters free and there's a very famous dublin ballad singer called them sajin was and he used to hold a straw up and said this is no ordinary ira straw this is repeal of the unions from your beloved union was a campaign to have the parliament restore to Dublin by Dan O'Connell who places fatally democratic system but of course the British wouldn't have immunity they eventually humiliated them and they threatened he is the first man in the world to mobilize massive crowds and agitation for political change a million people he brought her to meeting to have the parliament restored and the British snubbed him made little of them and he died a humiliated man they put him in prison and he told him that his last assembly was was put together in Dublin in 1843 that they would open the guns of the British Army and maybe on the assembly people and the blood would be on his hands so when judging was was singing his songs in the thirties and the eighteen thirties he was holding up the straw saying this is no ordinary artist wrong this is repeal of the Union strong it's a penny and he can have the wards free in the in the 1650 and 16 and 17th century the British printed juice the raw team ordered the helpers executed and so the brother-in-law that if any rhymers as they used to call them were caught singing songs of Ireland they would be executed so what they did was the badge decided and they would write the songs in and use a woman as Ireland so we have lots of great patriotic songs that are really about her and would celebrate women's names so that's how they got around up the Conservatoire that existed like in France and in Holland and Germany in Austria and the fostering of the arts we didn't have that in Ireland.
And had we had we had the ingredients as a problem you know like all the great composers of European composers they used them like the Bois Jacques and the Czech composer the Chopin they all use the default music of the localities but we didn't have that that does Conservatoire thinner to give it an ism Samuel Beckett said the graders they were an author he said it's hard to think about creativity when you're starving in a ditch he said that was the case with the people in the 19th century and we should look up the words of Trevelyan who was the minister in charge of the Irish food during the starvation and he was such a bigot a bigoted idiot a bully and for his walk in tinning the population of Ireland he was of course given a knighthood and you know which really despicable character of the English that it would give a man who is responsible for this human disposal of over a million and a half people there are there are many people in Ireland that see what I do and Burdick people like me as keeping a lie of the history right and it was said of me the journey the troubles in Ireland that if I only stopped singing songs all the conflict will go away with English if I stop saying everything will be grand so the the songs for many people in the artist authority became the object of censorship and because of the powerful nature of our music mañana para nature and the love that the ordinary lawless people have for the songs and this was considered as a trap but so these people were misguided and they followed slave ously the practices that are of control of culture in England you know nothing in England comes from the bottom or nothing everything is controlled from the top down and in Irish society it's always been different things come from the bottom in American society he wouldn't have jazz you wouldn't have the blues if it didn't things didn't come from the bottom there was no government directive say to this or so in them England's very very culturally it's a wasteland in many ways because of that their ability to control and culture and tradition you know so it's it it stifles creativity at a very very local and community level for another and that's you know despite the fact that the the government in Ireland introduced and and banned me from the Airways so I couldn't get on radio because of what I was saying was too truthful and they don't like to hear it you know so and you know any type of censorship in society is the recognition that a community is not a piece with self and will never be so you know we witness many countries around the world we have this Taccone and legislation to prevent speech that is critical or in reminding as I do reminding the artist people of their the proud heritage and also reminding the world of the polished brutality of English suppression a lot of negative forces have been applied to Irish music to promoted just musically without the baggage of wards in other words they have the melodies there don't tell anybody what you say you know and that's you know that's so it does indeed in them who said artistic standards in Ireland and for that reason and a lot of them what I would call a tea parties and the artifact is they don't like to fact that em that very very the commonality of the music comes on the bottom that gives expression sometimes powerful artistic rated creativity and it's been so much part of our heritage for generations it's not going to go away a lot of people in guild and we'll just play the music they won't sing the songs and they they've been conditioned into believing that the that they their songs in some way are offensive to English people they're only offensive dinging these people because of their ignorance of history and they don't know any about thing about Ireland and electing the British government are the English government rather have a have always kept her there the mass of the people in ignorance they they are fed what they want them to feed so the like the mass of the English people I worked in England when I was young and most English people I have no problem with English people like that I'm fine but who never any problem but it's very different on to these people than English authorities English Authority is totally different it the ordinariness people who have sympathies were are and would like to see England's evolved man out of a completely the majority of my young people go and England in our but that's never been given expression by English at home putting this power and you have to understand that and artists people get on very well within these people no problem it's only when it comes to authority the authority is therefore strategic and for interests in our country and it's there'd indeed to promote division to prevent the rise of the country so it's a long it's a policy that's been there for the last 500 years and looking at Theresa May it's not going to change anytime soon.
She's a bully and everyone DC has around as a booty I think Irish poems became part of the way people celebrate because we didn't have as I said the expressions of concert halls Institute's in the 19th century that gave expression to a musical tradition and the Pope became a place of their performance when I was young you couldn't sing a song in the Dublin book they wouldn't allow you to sing a song our most popular songs like a nation once again the the soldier saw our national anthem we're all balanced they were all written by ordinary people and so you know when artists people celebrate they don't sing you too they sing our songs if they want to celebrate their identity they sing our song so we never know what we owe to our music because I believe this is my own personal statement them I believe that we are great here for music and strengthened our nationality it has in many ways it has preserved or a entity it has followed us around here every part of the world and we're artists people settle Australia, America, Canada and what do you name it you'll find artists music and you know I say it every night other nations have great monuments of stone to celebrate their heritage and tradition we celebrate it in music because of a colonial past our monuments are our music our monuments are our songs our balance and they could never be taken away from the artist people but it costs nothing except the lips of those who would say and the ears of those who listen.
Below is a transcript of an interview by Derek. The video is at the end.
I always encourage people that are interested in Irish music to start at the very beginning, to look at the way the music has been expressed for any cities challenge of course inside of Ireland because folk music changes whatever generation and it's also subject to influences from other cultures and traditions and it's never static so you have to recognize that and I always encourage young people are coming to artist music to take what's most powerful the melody read the rhythms and the passion of sound storytelling the history and embrace it all and you'll find yourself what you like best I think that's probably more facilities in Ireland note that when I was young and to learning of music and the practice of music and that was there wasn't around when we were young we gently were all self-talk and in our locality and district learn there will be very very few professional teachers the soul but music always indeed was present in locations in Ireland even through the worst periods of oppression surgery longer and that it survived through all the catastrophic events register the 19th century had a particularly bad effect on our artists music because the audience for its character which were the poor varlet largely disappeared a more staff to death and they were the bulk of the appreciative audience of them understood the did the ballad tradition.
I understood the street performers understood the they have the way songs that were transmitted around the country and they were but there did the audience without and I think George Petry deals with that in his literature and he said famously said the land of song is no more is no longer singing it's silent and if I hear cry it's only the whale for the dead her pet she was absolutely horrified in the 1850s at the demise of meat the musical tradition because of the social effects of the hunger so he he said about to him take around our land and collect the remnants as he said South sod and he said his student a man who helped a mare PW Joyce Patrick Weston rejoice he am between them they collected over five thousand tunes and songs but that would have only been a remnant of what was lost during the the events of the hungry have to imagine you have to understand that them there were almost ten million people are a half of the population at all written in 1845 that says to me the British authorities didn't keep any figures for those who left Ireland went to Britain during that time would you know the people who left Ireland came to America they brought the tradition to America and it enriched the to folk song tradition of Amar of America and you'll find in the eighteen fifties sixties and seventies entertainment in the big cities where the artist scattered there was a lot of artists music the ability to be a good to form a good writer of their songs on topical events a lot of that disappeared with the hunger.
Starvation it had a catastrophic effect on the creativity of them of the music and you see them when you look at the compositions say of the from the eighteen twenties thirties forties in the 50s they become less artistic and less in tune with the air case of the people but the amazing thing about the music is that it it was a it was enjoyed by all strata of society they people at the higher end of the scale loved the music and the lore in the social scale of the music didn't have social borders and that's always been the case even going back to the 18th century when the the nobility were in Ireland they fostered the musicians and the performers and they were a big reason why to happen tradition survived in the 18th century because it was the big houses was the big land or Lords who were patriotic aristocracy you have to remember there were many artists people in Ireland in the 18th century and that believed like the people who founded a revelation that revels near a discontent are in America and that almost there had to be a better way to treat the people and the American Revolution had a huge consequences for our because the British authorities knew they had lost the American colonies because of the Earth's fighting in George Washington's ranks and they were there determined not to lose the the breadbasket which was consider Arland so there was loot las' brutality applying to anybody who em followed the Republican aspirations of George Washington or any of the people in France.
like the reason we called ourselves The Wolf tones after an a man from that period who sought to unite Ireland under the same principles as the founding fathers of this country and they worked on with them I came to America here in 1795 what is very interesting is that he was M entertained before he left Ireland by William bunting bunting actually gathered all the musicians in Belfast to entertain wolf town before he left to America and worked on scene to cultural going alongside the political in other words that he wanted here the people that have been descendants of the English settlers to embrace the artists culture yes English party didn't latest so bunting was written out of history right because of a support for Republican aspirations in Ireland and when he died in the in the 1830s George Petri remarked then he died without award or heard or written in his favor by any pen publication or person though the British had the English authorities had had so powerfully D nationalized the upper classes after the active union that they had T nationalism their plan was to make artists Ireland Irish people English in the 1830s battery along with Eugene or buried channel don't even realize that though although English Authority had suppressed the culture of fishing they hadn't succeeded in his final it was underground now this might come as a shock to you like in the late 18th century in the early 19th century the artists people were far from being illiterate there were head schools all over the country there were penny schools in in towns and cities although the mass of the artists people were denied education way the English authorities, they were far from being literate and to understand them that I would suggest that you get a book called the head schools of Ireland written by a man called Evelyn.
To understand the way education was so revered in our society that they refused to let go refuse to let go it's the most powerful statement of our nationality the most powerful state and the transition from Gaelic into English was a very very gradual process for the first 300 or 400 years all English settlers and normal settlers took up the harsh language artists was the dominant culture it's only when the beingness is tried to him to destroy and mortar all the artists cheated people and I am expelled them from the country that English took over and but it was confined to the cities up until the end of the 17th century and pretending even in the 18th century the Irish language made a comeback because again the underground educational system was it was teaching him Latin Hebrew Greek in schools that were not saved by any government this is a phenomenal case for me and along with that of course you had them they care the Bartok schools had survived right from the very earliest part of civilization and they never really died down on to the 18th century well I I was definitely influenced by the Klan supporters and Tommy Makem and I think Pete Seeger and would have influenced me in the fact that he could speak out and sing out and I I always felt that them like it was part of the aisle and for the fast that it was part of the magic tradition to be able to to write in saying kriti thee of the injustice where you seen it to write and sing about and praise of things that you see him needed to be celebrated and so that was a very old part of our heritage and just wanted to sting changes to remind you George Petry got permission from the English government they funded he got a major lakum set up a year a memoir to collect the folk memory songs stories the to mark all the important sites of of history in the counties of Ireland and the first County that was chosen to do this was County Derry sadly and revealed such a powerful heritage that it closes it reveals such a helpful heritage that was all underground and in an act of racism and an act of hatred the memo was closed down on said it was like a phone's but there was no lack of honest because they had content compensated the slave owners when slavery was abolished in 1843 to the tune of millions Gabe ringless Exchequer was full of money but they didn't want to reveal and all the other counties the powerful nature of the music sound poems education that was in the counties and we'll never know what was lost but one thing was found from County Derry that everybody in America knows and that is the tune of Karen's lament or Danny Boy that was one
of the pieces of music that was found because of air george Pepsi's so you wouldn't have you wouldn't have Danny Boy you wouldn't have that melody one of his people he had around the country okay the blind fiddle are playing dis tune called the cans lament and she she wrote to she took down the notation and she sent it to George Hudson and lots of people wrote wards to them including Fred whoever he who wrote that anybody would order order the singer I always feel and my perspective is to tell the story to reveal the to reveal to the audience there the purpose of the Sun if it's about love if it's about injustice if it's available and what to do it in an entertaining way and you know I'm really a street singer you know that has been because this singer Sunday and that entertained on the streets of our land prior to the hunger and they had to have songs that were topical songs that were entertaining to entertain the crows to make a livin they had to and they would sell the sheets of the walls for a penny and it sell them to the people surrounding the area but the course the image sought to bring in a lot and forbidding the balladeers from selling the seats they used to sell the straw used to bring peace the straw and it would sell the straws for a penny and give the waters free and there's a very famous dublin ballad singer called them sajin was and he used to hold a straw up and said this is no ordinary ira straw this is repeal of the unions from your beloved union was a campaign to have the parliament restore to Dublin by Dan O'Connell who places fatally democratic system but of course the British wouldn't have immunity they eventually humiliated them and they threatened he is the first man in the world to mobilize massive crowds and agitation for political change a million people he brought her to meeting to have the parliament restored and the British snubbed him made little of them and he died a humiliated man they put him in prison and he told him that his last assembly was was put together in Dublin in 1843 that they would open the guns of the British Army and maybe on the assembly people and the blood would be on his hands so when judging was was singing his songs in the thirties and the eighteen thirties he was holding up the straw saying this is no ordinary artist wrong this is repeal of the Union strong it's a penny and he can have the wards free in the in the 1650 and 16 and 17th century the British printed juice the raw team ordered the helpers executed and so the brother-in-law that if any rhymers as they used to call them were caught singing songs of Ireland they would be executed so what they did was the badge decided and they would write the songs in and use a woman as Ireland so we have lots of great patriotic songs that are really about her and would celebrate women's names so that's how they got around up the Conservatoire that existed like in France and in Holland and Germany in Austria and the fostering of the arts we didn't have that in Ireland.
And had we had we had the ingredients as a problem you know like all the great composers of European composers they used them like the Bois Jacques and the Czech composer the Chopin they all use the default music of the localities but we didn't have that that does Conservatoire thinner to give it an ism Samuel Beckett said the graders they were an author he said it's hard to think about creativity when you're starving in a ditch he said that was the case with the people in the 19th century and we should look up the words of Trevelyan who was the minister in charge of the Irish food during the starvation and he was such a bigot a bigoted idiot a bully and for his walk in tinning the population of Ireland he was of course given a knighthood and you know which really despicable character of the English that it would give a man who is responsible for this human disposal of over a million and a half people there are there are many people in Ireland that see what I do and Burdick people like me as keeping a lie of the history right and it was said of me the journey the troubles in Ireland that if I only stopped singing songs all the conflict will go away with English if I stop saying everything will be grand so the the songs for many people in the artist authority became the object of censorship and because of the powerful nature of our music mañana para nature and the love that the ordinary lawless people have for the songs and this was considered as a trap but so these people were misguided and they followed slave ously the practices that are of control of culture in England you know nothing in England comes from the bottom or nothing everything is controlled from the top down and in Irish society it's always been different things come from the bottom in American society he wouldn't have jazz you wouldn't have the blues if it didn't things didn't come from the bottom there was no government directive say to this or so in them England's very very culturally it's a wasteland in many ways because of that their ability to control and culture and tradition you know so it's it it stifles creativity at a very very local and community level for another and that's you know despite the fact that the the government in Ireland introduced and and banned me from the Airways so I couldn't get on radio because of what I was saying was too truthful and they don't like to hear it you know so and you know any type of censorship in society is the recognition that a community is not a piece with self and will never be so you know we witness many countries around the world we have this Taccone and legislation to prevent speech that is critical or in reminding as I do reminding the artist people of their the proud heritage and also reminding the world of the polished brutality of English suppression a lot of negative forces have been applied to Irish music to promoted just musically without the baggage of wards in other words they have the melodies there don't tell anybody what you say you know and that's you know that's so it does indeed in them who said artistic standards in Ireland and for that reason and a lot of them what I would call a tea parties and the artifact is they don't like to fact that em that very very the commonality of the music comes on the bottom that gives expression sometimes powerful artistic rated creativity and it's been so much part of our heritage for generations it's not going to go away a lot of people in guild and we'll just play the music they won't sing the songs and they they've been conditioned into believing that the that they their songs in some way are offensive to English people they're only offensive dinging these people because of their ignorance of history and they don't know any about thing about Ireland and electing the British government are the English government rather have a have always kept her there the mass of the people in ignorance they they are fed what they want them to feed so the like the mass of the English people I worked in England when I was young and most English people I have no problem with English people like that I'm fine but who never any problem but it's very different on to these people than English authorities English Authority is totally different it the ordinariness people who have sympathies were are and would like to see England's evolved man out of a completely the majority of my young people go and England in our but that's never been given expression by English at home putting this power and you have to understand that and artists people get on very well within these people no problem it's only when it comes to authority the authority is therefore strategic and for interests in our country and it's there'd indeed to promote division to prevent the rise of the country so it's a long it's a policy that's been there for the last 500 years and looking at Theresa May it's not going to change anytime soon.
She's a bully and everyone DC has around as a booty I think Irish poems became part of the way people celebrate because we didn't have as I said the expressions of concert halls Institute's in the 19th century that gave expression to a musical tradition and the Pope became a place of their performance when I was young you couldn't sing a song in the Dublin book they wouldn't allow you to sing a song our most popular songs like a nation once again the the soldier saw our national anthem we're all balanced they were all written by ordinary people and so you know when artists people celebrate they don't sing you too they sing our songs if they want to celebrate their identity they sing our song so we never know what we owe to our music because I believe this is my own personal statement them I believe that we are great here for music and strengthened our nationality it has in many ways it has preserved or a entity it has followed us around here every part of the world and we're artists people settle Australia, America, Canada and what do you name it you'll find artists music and you know I say it every night other nations have great monuments of stone to celebrate their heritage and tradition we celebrate it in music because of a colonial past our monuments are our music our monuments are our songs our balance and they could never be taken away from the artist people but it costs nothing except the lips of those who would say and the ears of those who listen.
Lisa O'Neill From The Irish Traditional Music Archive Writes About Irish Ballads
In Arthur Griffith's words, a ballad history is welcome to childhood for its rhymes, its higher coloring, and its aptness to memory. As we grow into boyhoods and girlhoods, the violent passions, the vague hopes, and the romantic sorrow of patriot ballads are in tune with our fitful and luxurious feelings. In adulthood, we prize the dense narrative, the grave firmness, the critical perspective, and the political way of balancing. And in old age, they are doubly dear—the companions and reminders of our lives, the toys and teachers of our children and grandchildren—every generation finds its account in them. They pass from mouth to mouth like salutations.
As one can recall the starry heavens, we cannot revive the form of a single constellation. [Music] okay well firstly I've been invited to investigate art of Griffith to write a song about him the year that's in it or the year that we're heading into 2022 and because 100 years ago Arthur Griffith along with some others signed the Irish treaty it's also the 100 year anniversary of his debt so I'm writing a song for the national concert hall for December and this has been perfect to come and work here in the archive it's really helped me with my research you know more than i could imagine think about Arthur Griffith you might imagine you'll find them in the national library or in U.C.D. folklore library but he's here in I.T.M.A because he had such a love for for song for lyric he hosted um so many different
mediums for others to write and sing their songs, and I was a big believer in the importance of it, but Arthur Griffith wrote songs himself, and that's what I'm excited about unveiling here today. I mean, I want to say that the great poet, songwriter, and philosopher Ivor Cutler wrote The Scotsman Looking for the Truth with a Pin. I personally have always felt really intimidated by libraries in that sense. It feels like I know there are pearls in here and I know there's treasure in here, but the mass of information intimidates me so much that I don't know where to begin, and I've just found this experience here with IPMA eye-opening and so helpful because, um, you guys, the people in here, have helped me open the doors, and there's just so much to find. So what did you find? What have you got? Have I
I don't know um i found truth um well first of all we've got this this little song book, God I wish I had the year and here I'm sure it is but i should have prepared before this and these are songs that Arthur Griffith wrote song ballads and recitations by famous Irishmen there is a little knowledge out there that he wrote 20 men from Dublin town and a song called the 13th lock or the lay of the thirteenth lock but after that I've never heard anyone talk about the writing of art or Griffith but we've several songs in here I'm gonna sing one of them for you today another interesting thing to tell you about Griffith is that he went under a pseudonym called Coogan and among his friends he was known as dan and from what I read his friends knew and loved them deeply
and very well and then I guess from the media's perspective of them we're getting quite a passive shy man who they can't figure out you know so it's intriguing and the few people i asked um over the last little while people i taught may know a little about Griffith because they you know they maybe they may specialize in history or politics the general feeling is people don't know much about them and that makes us more exciting for me this investigation what have I found um i found songs poems essays and a great knowledge of of Ireland that goes back to the beginning of when people started writing things down you know paddy dear there's wealth before you come and take the con or lands come and help us kill the boar united
Come along and don't be shy. Take it to your face. You needn't stay to say goodbye. Soon you'll come. [Music] When we've raised the Lord, be praised. [Music] Jack honeycomb, we'll quickly teach you a murder theft don't be afraid human law can never reach you won't you join the black brigade call me willing take the shilling in your fist and always well cross the water robin slaughter please old heckety queen of hell come be willing [Music] Please all the heckity queen of heaven . He went over to South Africa. The Boer War was a war that was happening in South Africa again against the British Empire, who were digging their healing and
he went in 1897 as a printer and while he was there he was observing and he was writing songs i don't think his songs were very welcome or published over there because they were written in English he returned a year later in 1898 he was invited back by his friends to edit the first edition of the united Irishman and the war had properly started by then and he knew that in other irish newspapers it was full of ads trying to recruit trying to recruit Irish people Irish citizens to go and fight for the british army in the boer war and you know this was a very clever little move to publish this song which is pretty much saying why would you want to go lads you know um so cheeky again there's a better word
for it but very smart and his papers were full of songs uh poems like that from himself and from from others other writers you know and a lot of these writers as well for different reasons weren't getting published some of them were not getting published because nobody knew who they were because they were women because their material was controversial and Griffith was publishing it like he came from a republican family actually his people were Calvin people from hills and his father was a republican that doesn't mean they were singing the ballads and the songs but I think a lot of families were but we know for sure that when he was 14 years old he was awarded two books he was a member of the young Ireland society and he must have been impressive i don't know why he won these books but anyway they gave him Barry's songs of Ireland and a collection of ballads and poetry by Don Cahill which we have over here and I'm looking forward to having a first look now soon I think Barry
himself was definitely a believer that the song can carry many messages but a political message and you know songs are powerful in that sense because they get into a different part of the mind they can nearly sneak in a passerby may hear a message in a song where they would not hear it the conversation and that's my own understanding of the power of song they're cheeky uh you can slip things in there you know and with feeling and emotion and gusto and and I think river knew that and most singers at the time and most singers do know that ballads popular poetry I'm just going to have a little quick browse through it come to me dearest joseph Brennan we were Brennans i mean my feeling is you want to do an investigation on someone who's passed and gone don't just read what they wrote but we read what they read
[Applause] this proposal in his first edition as well the ballot history of Ireland he proposed this to the readers that they start to write a valid history of Ireland which is a history of Ireland via ballads you know and that history of ireland he's talking about goes way back i mean it goes of course back to 1798 with vinegar hill but it goes further back he's right back to the two to the danun and um i'm pretty sure he's tapping into the Bretton laws as well that's so exciting for someone like me to to think that that was happening back then and to to read into it but also the importance that he put on this that this was a necessary education for the people to understand their history through the medium of song because no matter how dark the song is there's boldness in there you know you're allowed to let the devil in and that's often when the message really really punches through and in this edition i have here in front
of me one of the poems that just it stood out to me as soon as I read it i thought it's beautiful and i thought i'd sing that you know and it's written by a woman called Winford Patton or maybe painting I'm not sure how to would pronounce that um really beautiful i'm going to read it to you and I'm going to sing it for you today as well Winford was a dairy woman an ulster woman um griffith was a volster people as well and she emigrated to London when she was 16.So, I mean, that tells us something as well, the connections that the united Irishmen were having with the diaspora who'd left the country as well who felt so much importance for the pulse
He was an advocate for women's rights as well, and some of the people he published in these papers were talking about James Joyce and James Stevens Yates, and they were all about 10 years younger than him, and they all looked up to him. Yeah, TB is in London, and look at the United Irishman; it wasn't the only place to publish Star, but because her life was short, it means more that papers like this did publisher, you know, and I wonder if it's called Kitty.
and I wonder—I can't help thinking about Kitty O'Shea Parnell's lover—could it be about Kitty and I wonder—I can't help thinking about Kitty O'Shea Parnell's lover—could it be about Kitty O'Shea? When my cat speaks, the air seems filled with music and the rush of wings. The sweetest birds grow mute to hear her. When my cat sings, the world grows glad, forgetting all its old-time grief. When Kitty walks down the dingy street, it transforms into the presence of a queen. Such graces in my dearest blend with stateliness and royal meaning. When Kitty prays, our gentle saint in treating God through flame-bright days, I shall not dread the afterworld if I am named.
Her merry laugh puts joy in the air and gives the saddest hearts relief when Kitty walks down the dingy street and becomes the pleasantness of a queen. Such graces in my dearest blend with stateliness and royalty, which means when kitty prays, a gentle saint intercedes for her with God through flame-bright days. I shall not read the afterworld if I am named when Kitty prays. [Music] Well Arthur Griffith loved Dublin, you know, and I'm hearing this through his friends—not that they're alive still, but thankfully there are interviews out there—and, um, people who knew him adored him, looked up to him, trusted him, and took advice from him, and he must have been a great listener as well as a man who shared a welter of knowledge and wisdom, but he was very humble.
vocal about how much he loved Dublin and he was poor his whole life he didn't move towards building his life up in that kind of way you know didn't want to be rich and i think i really feel like saying that and what I've learned so far and I'm really soaking up the essence of this man and he wasn't in any of this for himself and apparently to take a walk around Dublin with Arthur Griffith was a wonderful journey because he knew everything about every street and every place and all the characters the graveyards everything and he had a motorbike that he absolutely loved as well and he called it the hummingbird he liked to go swimming naked in the 40-foot and then afterwards he would sunbathe on the Martello Tower it's an interesting this type of stuff later on turned up in James Joyce's work not to go off on one here but I've read in a couple of different places and can't say I've read Ulysses yet but i i listen to it parts of it from time to time and i hope in my lifetime I'll soak
it up but those who who Joyceans do say that Griffith was written into Ulysses more than once um so in a way he's he's everywhere like you know he's in so many places he's there are segments of Griffith to be found yes you know there were there were pubs that they used to gather and to sing ballads talk about ballas one was the brazen head which is still there another one was McCall's tavern on St. Patrick street which is gone now isn't it a great thing for a man to love his city i get it i love Dublin too i i was personally delighted to find out that this man James Stevens um was one of Arthur Griffith's best friends because before i discovered Griffith or started doing my digging you know i really very taken by this fella's work and just shows you how small Dublin is you know that they were knocking about together visually I'd love to have seen
the two of them walking around Dublin together because they're both very short men. Griffith maybe not that short um very short in comparison to that aim and develop fella they used to call him the long fella but good things come in small packages and this James stevens was a shorter again than even myself but he was a wonderful writer with an amazing imagination and they all they all adored him he'd had enough upbringing as well they shared a lot and after Griffith died James Stevens a couple of very interesting quotes one of them was you know he was they used to talk about the the the measurement of success in life and James Stephens felt that um to be loved by by a man by men is success and of course by women as well but i think he was going deeper into the idea of respect from his friends and after Griffith died Oliver saying John Gogery actually said
This is in an essay where the question was out there, you know, with historians, about how many men loved Griffith. You know this word, love, for this man? I think it's worth listening to. You know, we don't often talk like that these days, but they really did love him. how many men love Griffith, and he said I'd like to quote James Stevens: I love Griffith as much as I've ever loved any man. I think that's quite strong and says a lot, but anyway, after Arthur Griffith died far too early as far as I'm concerned at the age of 51, 10 days before Michael Collins died, it was very strange. Um, James Stevens said that Arthur Griffith was an enigma; he lived with a secret and died with a secret. So I'm still digging, and I'll have the song in December, but
I'm going to finish up this evening with a beautiful poem written by James Stevens, another man that Art of Griffith published, and that is my connection here today. This is called I Am a Writer, and it's short, but I think it's full of space to journey in the imagination. I am a writer, and I know nothing that is false or true. I only care to take its soul, make it sing, and make it new. If it's pleasing to you, say I've done a useful thing, as your servant ought to do. nothing
That is false or true, I only care to take it on its own and make it sing and make it new and make it sing [music]. Wait if it's pleasing to you. Say, I've done a useful thing as your servant all to do and make it new and make it sing when if it's pleasing to you. (Music) Say I've Done Something Beneficial [music] [Laughter] As your servant ought to do
In Arthur Griffith's words, a ballad history is welcome to childhood for its rhymes, its higher coloring, and its aptness to memory. As we grow into boyhoods and girlhoods, the violent passions, the vague hopes, and the romantic sorrow of patriot ballads are in tune with our fitful and luxurious feelings. In adulthood, we prize the dense narrative, the grave firmness, the critical perspective, and the political way of balancing. And in old age, they are doubly dear—the companions and reminders of our lives, the toys and teachers of our children and grandchildren—every generation finds its account in them. They pass from mouth to mouth like salutations.
As one can recall the starry heavens, we cannot revive the form of a single constellation. [Music] okay well firstly I've been invited to investigate art of Griffith to write a song about him the year that's in it or the year that we're heading into 2022 and because 100 years ago Arthur Griffith along with some others signed the Irish treaty it's also the 100 year anniversary of his debt so I'm writing a song for the national concert hall for December and this has been perfect to come and work here in the archive it's really helped me with my research you know more than i could imagine think about Arthur Griffith you might imagine you'll find them in the national library or in U.C.D. folklore library but he's here in I.T.M.A because he had such a love for for song for lyric he hosted um so many different
mediums for others to write and sing their songs, and I was a big believer in the importance of it, but Arthur Griffith wrote songs himself, and that's what I'm excited about unveiling here today. I mean, I want to say that the great poet, songwriter, and philosopher Ivor Cutler wrote The Scotsman Looking for the Truth with a Pin. I personally have always felt really intimidated by libraries in that sense. It feels like I know there are pearls in here and I know there's treasure in here, but the mass of information intimidates me so much that I don't know where to begin, and I've just found this experience here with IPMA eye-opening and so helpful because, um, you guys, the people in here, have helped me open the doors, and there's just so much to find. So what did you find? What have you got? Have I
I don't know um i found truth um well first of all we've got this this little song book, God I wish I had the year and here I'm sure it is but i should have prepared before this and these are songs that Arthur Griffith wrote song ballads and recitations by famous Irishmen there is a little knowledge out there that he wrote 20 men from Dublin town and a song called the 13th lock or the lay of the thirteenth lock but after that I've never heard anyone talk about the writing of art or Griffith but we've several songs in here I'm gonna sing one of them for you today another interesting thing to tell you about Griffith is that he went under a pseudonym called Coogan and among his friends he was known as dan and from what I read his friends knew and loved them deeply
and very well and then I guess from the media's perspective of them we're getting quite a passive shy man who they can't figure out you know so it's intriguing and the few people i asked um over the last little while people i taught may know a little about Griffith because they you know they maybe they may specialize in history or politics the general feeling is people don't know much about them and that makes us more exciting for me this investigation what have I found um i found songs poems essays and a great knowledge of of Ireland that goes back to the beginning of when people started writing things down you know paddy dear there's wealth before you come and take the con or lands come and help us kill the boar united
Come along and don't be shy. Take it to your face. You needn't stay to say goodbye. Soon you'll come. [Music] When we've raised the Lord, be praised. [Music] Jack honeycomb, we'll quickly teach you a murder theft don't be afraid human law can never reach you won't you join the black brigade call me willing take the shilling in your fist and always well cross the water robin slaughter please old heckety queen of hell come be willing [Music] Please all the heckity queen of heaven . He went over to South Africa. The Boer War was a war that was happening in South Africa again against the British Empire, who were digging their healing and
he went in 1897 as a printer and while he was there he was observing and he was writing songs i don't think his songs were very welcome or published over there because they were written in English he returned a year later in 1898 he was invited back by his friends to edit the first edition of the united Irishman and the war had properly started by then and he knew that in other irish newspapers it was full of ads trying to recruit trying to recruit Irish people Irish citizens to go and fight for the british army in the boer war and you know this was a very clever little move to publish this song which is pretty much saying why would you want to go lads you know um so cheeky again there's a better word
for it but very smart and his papers were full of songs uh poems like that from himself and from from others other writers you know and a lot of these writers as well for different reasons weren't getting published some of them were not getting published because nobody knew who they were because they were women because their material was controversial and Griffith was publishing it like he came from a republican family actually his people were Calvin people from hills and his father was a republican that doesn't mean they were singing the ballads and the songs but I think a lot of families were but we know for sure that when he was 14 years old he was awarded two books he was a member of the young Ireland society and he must have been impressive i don't know why he won these books but anyway they gave him Barry's songs of Ireland and a collection of ballads and poetry by Don Cahill which we have over here and I'm looking forward to having a first look now soon I think Barry
himself was definitely a believer that the song can carry many messages but a political message and you know songs are powerful in that sense because they get into a different part of the mind they can nearly sneak in a passerby may hear a message in a song where they would not hear it the conversation and that's my own understanding of the power of song they're cheeky uh you can slip things in there you know and with feeling and emotion and gusto and and I think river knew that and most singers at the time and most singers do know that ballads popular poetry I'm just going to have a little quick browse through it come to me dearest joseph Brennan we were Brennans i mean my feeling is you want to do an investigation on someone who's passed and gone don't just read what they wrote but we read what they read
[Applause] this proposal in his first edition as well the ballot history of Ireland he proposed this to the readers that they start to write a valid history of Ireland which is a history of Ireland via ballads you know and that history of ireland he's talking about goes way back i mean it goes of course back to 1798 with vinegar hill but it goes further back he's right back to the two to the danun and um i'm pretty sure he's tapping into the Bretton laws as well that's so exciting for someone like me to to think that that was happening back then and to to read into it but also the importance that he put on this that this was a necessary education for the people to understand their history through the medium of song because no matter how dark the song is there's boldness in there you know you're allowed to let the devil in and that's often when the message really really punches through and in this edition i have here in front
of me one of the poems that just it stood out to me as soon as I read it i thought it's beautiful and i thought i'd sing that you know and it's written by a woman called Winford Patton or maybe painting I'm not sure how to would pronounce that um really beautiful i'm going to read it to you and I'm going to sing it for you today as well Winford was a dairy woman an ulster woman um griffith was a volster people as well and she emigrated to London when she was 16.So, I mean, that tells us something as well, the connections that the united Irishmen were having with the diaspora who'd left the country as well who felt so much importance for the pulse
He was an advocate for women's rights as well, and some of the people he published in these papers were talking about James Joyce and James Stevens Yates, and they were all about 10 years younger than him, and they all looked up to him. Yeah, TB is in London, and look at the United Irishman; it wasn't the only place to publish Star, but because her life was short, it means more that papers like this did publisher, you know, and I wonder if it's called Kitty.
and I wonder—I can't help thinking about Kitty O'Shea Parnell's lover—could it be about Kitty and I wonder—I can't help thinking about Kitty O'Shea Parnell's lover—could it be about Kitty O'Shea? When my cat speaks, the air seems filled with music and the rush of wings. The sweetest birds grow mute to hear her. When my cat sings, the world grows glad, forgetting all its old-time grief. When Kitty walks down the dingy street, it transforms into the presence of a queen. Such graces in my dearest blend with stateliness and royal meaning. When Kitty prays, our gentle saint in treating God through flame-bright days, I shall not dread the afterworld if I am named.
Her merry laugh puts joy in the air and gives the saddest hearts relief when Kitty walks down the dingy street and becomes the pleasantness of a queen. Such graces in my dearest blend with stateliness and royalty, which means when kitty prays, a gentle saint intercedes for her with God through flame-bright days. I shall not read the afterworld if I am named when Kitty prays. [Music] Well Arthur Griffith loved Dublin, you know, and I'm hearing this through his friends—not that they're alive still, but thankfully there are interviews out there—and, um, people who knew him adored him, looked up to him, trusted him, and took advice from him, and he must have been a great listener as well as a man who shared a welter of knowledge and wisdom, but he was very humble.
vocal about how much he loved Dublin and he was poor his whole life he didn't move towards building his life up in that kind of way you know didn't want to be rich and i think i really feel like saying that and what I've learned so far and I'm really soaking up the essence of this man and he wasn't in any of this for himself and apparently to take a walk around Dublin with Arthur Griffith was a wonderful journey because he knew everything about every street and every place and all the characters the graveyards everything and he had a motorbike that he absolutely loved as well and he called it the hummingbird he liked to go swimming naked in the 40-foot and then afterwards he would sunbathe on the Martello Tower it's an interesting this type of stuff later on turned up in James Joyce's work not to go off on one here but I've read in a couple of different places and can't say I've read Ulysses yet but i i listen to it parts of it from time to time and i hope in my lifetime I'll soak
it up but those who who Joyceans do say that Griffith was written into Ulysses more than once um so in a way he's he's everywhere like you know he's in so many places he's there are segments of Griffith to be found yes you know there were there were pubs that they used to gather and to sing ballads talk about ballas one was the brazen head which is still there another one was McCall's tavern on St. Patrick street which is gone now isn't it a great thing for a man to love his city i get it i love Dublin too i i was personally delighted to find out that this man James Stevens um was one of Arthur Griffith's best friends because before i discovered Griffith or started doing my digging you know i really very taken by this fella's work and just shows you how small Dublin is you know that they were knocking about together visually I'd love to have seen
the two of them walking around Dublin together because they're both very short men. Griffith maybe not that short um very short in comparison to that aim and develop fella they used to call him the long fella but good things come in small packages and this James stevens was a shorter again than even myself but he was a wonderful writer with an amazing imagination and they all they all adored him he'd had enough upbringing as well they shared a lot and after Griffith died James Stevens a couple of very interesting quotes one of them was you know he was they used to talk about the the the measurement of success in life and James Stephens felt that um to be loved by by a man by men is success and of course by women as well but i think he was going deeper into the idea of respect from his friends and after Griffith died Oliver saying John Gogery actually said
This is in an essay where the question was out there, you know, with historians, about how many men loved Griffith. You know this word, love, for this man? I think it's worth listening to. You know, we don't often talk like that these days, but they really did love him. how many men love Griffith, and he said I'd like to quote James Stevens: I love Griffith as much as I've ever loved any man. I think that's quite strong and says a lot, but anyway, after Arthur Griffith died far too early as far as I'm concerned at the age of 51, 10 days before Michael Collins died, it was very strange. Um, James Stevens said that Arthur Griffith was an enigma; he lived with a secret and died with a secret. So I'm still digging, and I'll have the song in December, but
I'm going to finish up this evening with a beautiful poem written by James Stevens, another man that Art of Griffith published, and that is my connection here today. This is called I Am a Writer, and it's short, but I think it's full of space to journey in the imagination. I am a writer, and I know nothing that is false or true. I only care to take its soul, make it sing, and make it new. If it's pleasing to you, say I've done a useful thing, as your servant ought to do. nothing
That is false or true, I only care to take it on its own and make it sing and make it new and make it sing [music]. Wait if it's pleasing to you. Say, I've done a useful thing as your servant all to do and make it new and make it sing when if it's pleasing to you. (Music) Say I've Done Something Beneficial [music] [Laughter] As your servant ought to do
Irish Folk Songs By Hugh Shields
This brief guide is for students, whether they are writing theses, publishing research, or educating themselves in other ways, formal or informal. It does not offer advice to singers except indirectly and by rejoicing at the outset that scarcely any such advice has been published. It would have almost certainly been bad. Much of what we do have occasion to include is bad enough, whether written from the 'outside' or the 'inside'. The objective stance, though scholarly in intention, was an affliction to early writers - Bunting and even Petrie - inasmuch as their detachment from popular culture bordered on remoteness and incomprehension. In contrast was the misplaced national and didactic zeal which, towards the turn of the century, tended to identify itself with the 'folk' and to imply that such identity was both an essential and a sufficient condition of omni science. The two attitudes are far from extinct. The notorious Flood combined something of each. Writings on Irish folk music present an uncertain land scape of bog and meadow over
which you go warily, catching up your coat-tails and floundering in untried morasses before you come to a firm footing.
This publication, like the rest, expresses a personal view and may offend by its omissions as much as' by what it says (offence for which the publishers have no corporate responsibility). But it implies no theory and lays down no law. It just tries to compile as much helpful information as may be put in so compact a form about the history and present state of traditional song and its practice in Ireland, both in Irish and English. Useful comment and documentation have been contributed by Nicholas Carolan and Brendan Breathnach. The necessary details of bibliography have all gone into a single alphabetical list, which follows a critical but concise account of the subject in several sections. The account refers to the list by very frequent use of the names of authors or the num bers of items or both, as befits. For special conventions of presentation.
Hugh Shields
This brief guide is for students, whether they are writing theses, publishing research, or educating themselves in other ways, formal or informal. It does not offer advice to singers except indirectly and by rejoicing at the outset that scarcely any such advice has been published. It would have almost certainly been bad. Much of what we do have occasion to include is bad enough, whether written from the 'outside' or the 'inside'. The objective stance, though scholarly in intention, was an affliction to early writers - Bunting and even Petrie - inasmuch as their detachment from popular culture bordered on remoteness and incomprehension. In contrast was the misplaced national and didactic zeal which, towards the turn of the century, tended to identify itself with the 'folk' and to imply that such identity was both an essential and a sufficient condition of omni science. The two attitudes are far from extinct. The notorious Flood combined something of each. Writings on Irish folk music present an uncertain land scape of bog and meadow over
which you go warily, catching up your coat-tails and floundering in untried morasses before you come to a firm footing.
This publication, like the rest, expresses a personal view and may offend by its omissions as much as' by what it says (offence for which the publishers have no corporate responsibility). But it implies no theory and lays down no law. It just tries to compile as much helpful information as may be put in so compact a form about the history and present state of traditional song and its practice in Ireland, both in Irish and English. Useful comment and documentation have been contributed by Nicholas Carolan and Brendan Breathnach. The necessary details of bibliography have all gone into a single alphabetical list, which follows a critical but concise account of the subject in several sections. The account refers to the list by very frequent use of the names of authors or the num bers of items or both, as befits. For special conventions of presentation.
Hugh Shields
'Song' in our title is meant to include any kind of music produced vocally, ranging from funeral lament and heroic lay to mouth music and nonsense rhymes. Neither the musical nor the poetic element has a long written history (149). Gaelic Ireland had no music notation, though a recent ingenious attempt has been made to show something of the sort (128). The few Irish liturgical manuscripts of the late Middle Ages
- of European tradition - are unlikely to throw light on our subject. The oldest airs reputedly Irish in origin - all of doubtful historical value - go back to Elizabethan and Jaco bean England, the best known being 'Callino custure me'. In the eighteenth century a few songs in Irish gained theatrical currency in London and Dublin and were printed as a result (13,189,201). But insights into the native practices of singing are rare in early documents and come for the most part from references by travelers to things which surprised them, chief of which was the practice of funeral lamentation or keening (158-9).
Scholarly and antiquarian interest in Gaelic Irish song (song in English comes much later) really dates from the 1780s:the aftermath of Ossian. It focussed first on poetry Wilson, Walker, Brooke, Hardiman a little later on music: Beauford, Bunting (20). The two elements thus separated have often since then been kept apart in scholarship, which is thereby depleted. Even to the present it is common practice to edit song-texts in Irish with out their airs or even perhaps
a reference to them. Many wax cylinders containing recordings of songs were wiped after notation of the words alone during the penny-pinching years in which the Folklore Commission was founded (for surviving archival sound recordings see the DISCOGRAPHY). Airs with out words, on the other hand, have become less common currency today, though Petrie's disdain for the offerings in English of the Dublin ballad sellers has persisted in neglect of the broadside tradition, while it is rare at any epoch to find much appreciation of the value of strict text-editing methods .
Beyond the words and music little has been written on folk song in its traditional environment (10,104,202) and nothing serious on its modern revival. Old styles survive unevenly; when they meet a new public in the more conservative kinds of folk club, festival or session, the acculturative quality of these events may pass unnoticed by commentators as much as by exponents. Folk song is not often perceived as part of a cultural whole. It is commonly ignored by folklorists (though not by 0 Danachair or Glassie). Academic ethnomusicology flourishes only in Belfast, implanted in a department of Social Anthropology but not yet more than marginally addressed to Irish music in particular.
Meanwhile the revival has been accompanied by an impressive and on the whole satisfying increase in publishing. It is true that much of this is mainly documentary. Some of it, too, conceals a commercial or promotional intention by engaging in 'research' which bears no more than the label.
- of European tradition - are unlikely to throw light on our subject. The oldest airs reputedly Irish in origin - all of doubtful historical value - go back to Elizabethan and Jaco bean England, the best known being 'Callino custure me'. In the eighteenth century a few songs in Irish gained theatrical currency in London and Dublin and were printed as a result (13,189,201). But insights into the native practices of singing are rare in early documents and come for the most part from references by travelers to things which surprised them, chief of which was the practice of funeral lamentation or keening (158-9).
Scholarly and antiquarian interest in Gaelic Irish song (song in English comes much later) really dates from the 1780s:the aftermath of Ossian. It focussed first on poetry Wilson, Walker, Brooke, Hardiman a little later on music: Beauford, Bunting (20). The two elements thus separated have often since then been kept apart in scholarship, which is thereby depleted. Even to the present it is common practice to edit song-texts in Irish with out their airs or even perhaps
a reference to them. Many wax cylinders containing recordings of songs were wiped after notation of the words alone during the penny-pinching years in which the Folklore Commission was founded (for surviving archival sound recordings see the DISCOGRAPHY). Airs with out words, on the other hand, have become less common currency today, though Petrie's disdain for the offerings in English of the Dublin ballad sellers has persisted in neglect of the broadside tradition, while it is rare at any epoch to find much appreciation of the value of strict text-editing methods .
Beyond the words and music little has been written on folk song in its traditional environment (10,104,202) and nothing serious on its modern revival. Old styles survive unevenly; when they meet a new public in the more conservative kinds of folk club, festival or session, the acculturative quality of these events may pass unnoticed by commentators as much as by exponents. Folk song is not often perceived as part of a cultural whole. It is commonly ignored by folklorists (though not by 0 Danachair or Glassie). Academic ethnomusicology flourishes only in Belfast, implanted in a department of Social Anthropology but not yet more than marginally addressed to Irish music in particular.
Meanwhile the revival has been accompanied by an impressive and on the whole satisfying increase in publishing. It is true that much of this is mainly documentary. Some of it, too, conceals a commercial or promotional intention by engaging in 'research' which bears no more than the label.
COLLECTIONS AND COLLECTORS
Those commonly called 'the great collectors' of Irish folk music were mainly compilers of repertories of melody. The oldest collection of melodies entitled 'Irish' was less assuming, that of the Neales (1726); similarly addressed to a popular urban public were those of the Clonmel piper O'Farrell (c. 1800* Bunting's three collections from Ulster and Connaught, in 1796, 1809 and 1840, became progressively more ambitious. His manuscripts survive in QUB and together with the Gaelic texts collected for him but excluded from his editions they have been re-edited by O'Sullivan, the last part unsatisfactorily after the latter's death. Bunting was followed by Hudson, some of whose melodies appeared, not as a collection, but in a magazine series of the 1840s. The next to publish a volume drawing on MS melodies was Petrie (1855),after whose death an independent selection from his MSS appeared (Hoffman) followed by another fascicle of the original edition. Finally a 'complete' but disorderly Petrie was edited by Stanford (1902-5). A doctoral thesis has now re- edited the whole collection from the MSS (39). Petrie gave only a little more space to song texts than Bunting had done, but some of the appropriate texts in Irish seem to survive in the MSS of Eugene O'Curry (Eoghan 0 Comhrai), who was one of Petrie's informants and a mentor for him in Irish (36). One more editor of song melo dies in Ireland was P.W. Joyce of co. Limerick, whose publications, however, admit a proportion of whole and fragmentary song-texts, mainly in English. They culminate in the large miscellany of 1909 and a fur their volume remains in manuscript (NL). Joyce drew on music collections whose authors had not printed them: Forde, Pigot, and for the unpublished volume Goodman (II), who has left a substantial collection from Kerry (TCD). Finally Francis O'Neill deserves mention: hough settled in Chicago he maintained links with Ireland, The vocal, indeed the musical, value of these collections is limited, the lack of texts regrettable. Meanwhile, texts were printed without airs (Brooke, Connellan, Hardiman, Hyde, and as late as O Muir- gheasa) and occasionally with them (O'Daly), often from unspecified sources. All these are in Irish: in English, poetic collections were many but popular song-texts found small space in them (Duffy, Madden,for, after all, English was still the medium of a flourishing popular press and as such less esteemed as a field of ethnographic enquiry. From about 1910 the balance is redressed a little between the languages, and words and airs are more often associated: in Irish Ni Annagain & Clann- dioluin, Costello, Freeman, 0 Muireadhaigh, Walsh, Ni Ogain, O Baoighill (125), O'Sull ivan (175); in English Darley & McCall, Hughes, Galwey, O Lochiainn (155-6), Ranson (184), to which can be added Sam Henry's newspaper series (§9). The foundation of the Irish
Folklore Commission (1935) brought new discipline to collections made under its authority, regrettably only two exclusively of songs: De Noraidh (Munster) and Ennis (mainly Connaught and Ulster, unpublished).The publication of Ennis's substantial collection, still in MS, is under consideration.
The advent of the tape recorder assigns the rest of this account primarily to the DISCOGRAPHY where it is more fully dealt with. But MS and printed notations from sound strictly belong here and may be briefly noted. The Folklore Commission, now the Department of Irish Folklore at University College Dublin, makes verbal - not musical - MS notations of its recorded songs. Some collectors have published items from these: Munnelly , Partridge (180-1). For other printed items from existing recordings see Shields (l91-«, 198, 202-3, 205).
The diversity of motives, the success in achieving them, and the resources and competences of collectors of what ever epoch must be left to the reader to judge. Irish folk song is predominantly secular, recreational, at most casually celebratory no important present-day genre is marked by functional application or seasonal performance. A few surviving items suggest that it was not always so, but they are ill-documented and offer little matter for research. A handful of songs alleged or purporting to accompany spinning (183), winnowing (171), ploughing (whistling,
86, 183), rowing , and
the work of the blacksmith occur in early collections. Some Presbyterian 'choir rhymes' - secular verses in English for practicing the music of sacred texts - are given by Henry . There is no attested history of dancing to singing except to vocables or 'lilt', which uses instrumental tunes and is rarely notated (202). Children's game songs and rhymes, on the other hand, are plentiful in English .But Irish apparently lacks these, and has only left a small body of songs involving child and adult: a few lullabies, dandling songs and the like Seasonal customs mumming, wrenboys, biddyboys use instrumental support rather than songs which are proper -or applied to this function; see however two mummers' songs of English origin in Tunney.
Religious songs in Irish, now commonly focussed on Eastertide are thematically ancient but do not survive well. The theme of the Lament of Mary/ the Three Marys is the subject of a major study: Partridge. Christmastide hymn-singing in English, 'carols', survives in one co. Wexford church . Funeral lamentation, now disused, has often received general comment but has rarely been analyzed or notated a few parodies of keening caoineadh' have been noticed
We turn to the broad secular category in the respective languages. The medieval • 'laoi Fiannaiochta', Fenian or Ossia- nic lay, is the only thoroughly narrative genre of Irish, more heroic than ballad-like (88, 98,
170). It has survived in Scotland, but the last Irish example was recorded in 1949 (10, 193). Irish adopted - from English - only a few of the international narrative ballads (194). On the other hand it uses varied native techniques of narration mingling prose with sung verses (53). The latter being strongly lyrical are not distinctly marked off from the great body of lyric song in Irish. A survey of love song defined by poetic theme has shown extensive influence of continental medieval lyric on Irish: O Tuama (177). The
'aisling* - vision - poetry evidently develops a political interpretation out of an erotic one (10, 177). Many song-texts
which have been orally trans mitted are by known Gaelic poets and also figure in editions of their works; except for Raftery (Reachtuire) these editions are omitted below.
In English, popular genres from Britain formed an initial repertory, later enlarged by native composition. American influence has been noticed. The early British ballads are well represented including rare examples and especially among the travelling people. From the late eighteenth century the broadside ballad was to quite an extent 'annexed' as an Irish genre. Lyric song from Britain and native song in Irish inspired native lyric in English, and there is an abundance of local composition, well exemplified by Berry (and in Irish by 0 Dubhda). Songs and verses translated from the one language to the other have received little attention. Macaronic song-texts are edited from written sources by O Muirithe. Political songs of Nationalist, with some of unionist, complexion - the former commoner from 1798 and in English rather than Irish - get scrupulous attention from Zimmermann; more popular anthologies are by Galvin and Greaves.
MUSIC
This is perhaps the branch of Irish folk song which is least developed. From Petrie on wards- who expressed a preference for vocal over instrumental melody most have counted it a merit simply to notate airs, without bothering to analyse them. Published notations, moreover, vary greatly in quality and utility, and the deli berate alteration of MS sources, which we may surmise in many editors, has been demonstrated in the case of Joyce: The only book devoted wholly to music, and largely to vocal music, is by Henebry; published post humously, it is uneven and difficult, but interesting for the airs sent to Hornbostel in Berlin.
THE POPULAR PRESS
We are probably still far from knowing the full extent of Irish- printed broadside ballad and song chapbook holdings in large public libraries, especially BL, so nothing said here need be considered definitive. The earliest Irish broadside ballad,
'Mount Taraghs triumph', is a topical piece dated 1626 (RSA): in English like all broadsides and chapbooks until the nineteenth century. Other sheets
of the late seventeenth and the eighteenth centuries include very few examples of traditional verse (BL, CUL, NL, TCD). From about 1760 to 1840 an abundance of chapbooks printed all over Ireland survive (BL, HC, NL, NLS see Lyle, RIA. TCD, UM) and these are a good source of texts of traditional songs. From the early nineteenth century to about 1914 these songbooks give way to broadsides printed mainly in Dublin, Belfast and Cork (BL, BMPL, BPL see Moulden, CUL* see Bradshaw, DPL, HC*, LC, LHB*, NL*, NLA, PRI, QUB, RIA, RSAI*, SUL see Carnell, TCD, UCD:FL, UCD:OB.) Collections marked * include uncut or only partly cut sheets with from six to sixteen items. Texts in Irish (96) or macaronic texts in Irish and English (165) are scattered through most collections.
Already in the eighteenth century popular anthologies of airs, texts or both were printed (13, 26, 117), as well as popular sheet music, which is well pre served in the Toly collection of NL. Such publications multi plied in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries: for items in book format see Zimmermann (226). Despite lingering broad sides, the period since the First World War has been chiefly supplied by such items, which have tended to become 'respectable'. Henry's 'Songs of the people' is an unusually long- running weekly newspaper series (1923-39) of songs with solfa airs. For the nineteenth century a good contemporary description of ballad-mongering and sheets (1851) is given by Ailing- ham, himself a writer for the Dublin ballad trade (I,96]Local printing is dealt with in numerous articles by Dix. For the Dublin printer Brereton see Neilands. Shepard places the Irish trade in the larger context of Britain and Ireland. Just as the sheets and songbooks in English contain many texts - including contemporary hits - of
British origin, many Irish songs in English, including traditional ones, were often printed on English and Scottish sheets.
Ballad sheets have influenced singing in Irish less than in English, despite those in Irish noted. From the late nineteenth century the Language Revival has seen the rise and fall of many magazines in Irish with song-texts which were often taken from the oral medium and/or sometimes found their way into it: Hayes (M). Later still, radio programmes were accompanied by some printing on sheets and by a series of booklets with texts and airs: 0 Tuama (178).
PERIODICALS
Journals devoted to Irish folk music have an intermittent record. The JOURNAL OF THE IRISH FOLK SONG SOCIETY (1905-39) stopped publishing varied items after the First World War and ground finally to a halt amid the interrupted works of O'Sullivan. Variety is the keynote of CEOL* (1963-, 21 numbers) though it began and remains a one-man show. IRISH FOLK MUSIC
STUDIES* (1973-) has produced three numbers and is preparing a fourth. It is published by the Folk Music Society of Ireland, which also has a more topical newsletter, CEOL T(RE* (1973-, 27 numbers), with occasional re views, notes, music, reprinted items, articles of research value, and reports on all the Society's meetings. TREOIR (1967-), the bi-monthly magazine of Comhaltas Ceoltoiri Eireann, provides mainly glossy pictures and chat with an occasional useful article. SLOW AIR (1976-7), intended to be more seriously topical, did not outlive its third number.
Other Irish journals have relevant articles from time to time, chiefly: ULSTER FOLK LIFE, DAL gCAIS - a co. Clare journal with a special interest in folk music - in recent years BEALOIDEAS, and SINSEAR, edited by Folklore students of University College Dublin. ElGSE deals with textual and historical aspects of songs in Irish. Newspapers and magazines have run series of songs which rarely exceed a calendar year (but see Henry, §9). notice of folk-music events, publications etc. For most of the century IRELAND'S OWN has been printing song-texts in English.
The journals published from Cecil Sharp House have contributed to the editing of Irish songs: JOURNAL OF THE FOLK SONG SOCIETY and its successors JOURNAL OF THE ENGLISH FOLK DANCE AND SONG SOCIETY and FOLK MUSIC JOURNAL. The London magazine TRADITIONAL MUSIC and its successor MUSICAL TRADITIONS review Irish recordings. American folklore journals occasionally include articles on Irish folk song.
Those commonly called 'the great collectors' of Irish folk music were mainly compilers of repertories of melody. The oldest collection of melodies entitled 'Irish' was less assuming, that of the Neales (1726); similarly addressed to a popular urban public were those of the Clonmel piper O'Farrell (c. 1800* Bunting's three collections from Ulster and Connaught, in 1796, 1809 and 1840, became progressively more ambitious. His manuscripts survive in QUB and together with the Gaelic texts collected for him but excluded from his editions they have been re-edited by O'Sullivan, the last part unsatisfactorily after the latter's death. Bunting was followed by Hudson, some of whose melodies appeared, not as a collection, but in a magazine series of the 1840s. The next to publish a volume drawing on MS melodies was Petrie (1855),after whose death an independent selection from his MSS appeared (Hoffman) followed by another fascicle of the original edition. Finally a 'complete' but disorderly Petrie was edited by Stanford (1902-5). A doctoral thesis has now re- edited the whole collection from the MSS (39). Petrie gave only a little more space to song texts than Bunting had done, but some of the appropriate texts in Irish seem to survive in the MSS of Eugene O'Curry (Eoghan 0 Comhrai), who was one of Petrie's informants and a mentor for him in Irish (36). One more editor of song melo dies in Ireland was P.W. Joyce of co. Limerick, whose publications, however, admit a proportion of whole and fragmentary song-texts, mainly in English. They culminate in the large miscellany of 1909 and a fur their volume remains in manuscript (NL). Joyce drew on music collections whose authors had not printed them: Forde, Pigot, and for the unpublished volume Goodman (II), who has left a substantial collection from Kerry (TCD). Finally Francis O'Neill deserves mention: hough settled in Chicago he maintained links with Ireland, The vocal, indeed the musical, value of these collections is limited, the lack of texts regrettable. Meanwhile, texts were printed without airs (Brooke, Connellan, Hardiman, Hyde, and as late as O Muir- gheasa) and occasionally with them (O'Daly), often from unspecified sources. All these are in Irish: in English, poetic collections were many but popular song-texts found small space in them (Duffy, Madden,for, after all, English was still the medium of a flourishing popular press and as such less esteemed as a field of ethnographic enquiry. From about 1910 the balance is redressed a little between the languages, and words and airs are more often associated: in Irish Ni Annagain & Clann- dioluin, Costello, Freeman, 0 Muireadhaigh, Walsh, Ni Ogain, O Baoighill (125), O'Sull ivan (175); in English Darley & McCall, Hughes, Galwey, O Lochiainn (155-6), Ranson (184), to which can be added Sam Henry's newspaper series (§9). The foundation of the Irish
Folklore Commission (1935) brought new discipline to collections made under its authority, regrettably only two exclusively of songs: De Noraidh (Munster) and Ennis (mainly Connaught and Ulster, unpublished).The publication of Ennis's substantial collection, still in MS, is under consideration.
The advent of the tape recorder assigns the rest of this account primarily to the DISCOGRAPHY where it is more fully dealt with. But MS and printed notations from sound strictly belong here and may be briefly noted. The Folklore Commission, now the Department of Irish Folklore at University College Dublin, makes verbal - not musical - MS notations of its recorded songs. Some collectors have published items from these: Munnelly , Partridge (180-1). For other printed items from existing recordings see Shields (l91-«, 198, 202-3, 205).
The diversity of motives, the success in achieving them, and the resources and competences of collectors of what ever epoch must be left to the reader to judge. Irish folk song is predominantly secular, recreational, at most casually celebratory no important present-day genre is marked by functional application or seasonal performance. A few surviving items suggest that it was not always so, but they are ill-documented and offer little matter for research. A handful of songs alleged or purporting to accompany spinning (183), winnowing (171), ploughing (whistling,
86, 183), rowing , and
the work of the blacksmith occur in early collections. Some Presbyterian 'choir rhymes' - secular verses in English for practicing the music of sacred texts - are given by Henry . There is no attested history of dancing to singing except to vocables or 'lilt', which uses instrumental tunes and is rarely notated (202). Children's game songs and rhymes, on the other hand, are plentiful in English .But Irish apparently lacks these, and has only left a small body of songs involving child and adult: a few lullabies, dandling songs and the like Seasonal customs mumming, wrenboys, biddyboys use instrumental support rather than songs which are proper -or applied to this function; see however two mummers' songs of English origin in Tunney.
Religious songs in Irish, now commonly focussed on Eastertide are thematically ancient but do not survive well. The theme of the Lament of Mary/ the Three Marys is the subject of a major study: Partridge. Christmastide hymn-singing in English, 'carols', survives in one co. Wexford church . Funeral lamentation, now disused, has often received general comment but has rarely been analyzed or notated a few parodies of keening caoineadh' have been noticed
We turn to the broad secular category in the respective languages. The medieval • 'laoi Fiannaiochta', Fenian or Ossia- nic lay, is the only thoroughly narrative genre of Irish, more heroic than ballad-like (88, 98,
170). It has survived in Scotland, but the last Irish example was recorded in 1949 (10, 193). Irish adopted - from English - only a few of the international narrative ballads (194). On the other hand it uses varied native techniques of narration mingling prose with sung verses (53). The latter being strongly lyrical are not distinctly marked off from the great body of lyric song in Irish. A survey of love song defined by poetic theme has shown extensive influence of continental medieval lyric on Irish: O Tuama (177). The
'aisling* - vision - poetry evidently develops a political interpretation out of an erotic one (10, 177). Many song-texts
which have been orally trans mitted are by known Gaelic poets and also figure in editions of their works; except for Raftery (Reachtuire) these editions are omitted below.
In English, popular genres from Britain formed an initial repertory, later enlarged by native composition. American influence has been noticed. The early British ballads are well represented including rare examples and especially among the travelling people. From the late eighteenth century the broadside ballad was to quite an extent 'annexed' as an Irish genre. Lyric song from Britain and native song in Irish inspired native lyric in English, and there is an abundance of local composition, well exemplified by Berry (and in Irish by 0 Dubhda). Songs and verses translated from the one language to the other have received little attention. Macaronic song-texts are edited from written sources by O Muirithe. Political songs of Nationalist, with some of unionist, complexion - the former commoner from 1798 and in English rather than Irish - get scrupulous attention from Zimmermann; more popular anthologies are by Galvin and Greaves.
MUSIC
This is perhaps the branch of Irish folk song which is least developed. From Petrie on wards- who expressed a preference for vocal over instrumental melody most have counted it a merit simply to notate airs, without bothering to analyse them. Published notations, moreover, vary greatly in quality and utility, and the deli berate alteration of MS sources, which we may surmise in many editors, has been demonstrated in the case of Joyce: The only book devoted wholly to music, and largely to vocal music, is by Henebry; published post humously, it is uneven and difficult, but interesting for the airs sent to Hornbostel in Berlin.
THE POPULAR PRESS
We are probably still far from knowing the full extent of Irish- printed broadside ballad and song chapbook holdings in large public libraries, especially BL, so nothing said here need be considered definitive. The earliest Irish broadside ballad,
'Mount Taraghs triumph', is a topical piece dated 1626 (RSA): in English like all broadsides and chapbooks until the nineteenth century. Other sheets
of the late seventeenth and the eighteenth centuries include very few examples of traditional verse (BL, CUL, NL, TCD). From about 1760 to 1840 an abundance of chapbooks printed all over Ireland survive (BL, HC, NL, NLS see Lyle, RIA. TCD, UM) and these are a good source of texts of traditional songs. From the early nineteenth century to about 1914 these songbooks give way to broadsides printed mainly in Dublin, Belfast and Cork (BL, BMPL, BPL see Moulden, CUL* see Bradshaw, DPL, HC*, LC, LHB*, NL*, NLA, PRI, QUB, RIA, RSAI*, SUL see Carnell, TCD, UCD:FL, UCD:OB.) Collections marked * include uncut or only partly cut sheets with from six to sixteen items. Texts in Irish (96) or macaronic texts in Irish and English (165) are scattered through most collections.
Already in the eighteenth century popular anthologies of airs, texts or both were printed (13, 26, 117), as well as popular sheet music, which is well pre served in the Toly collection of NL. Such publications multi plied in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries: for items in book format see Zimmermann (226). Despite lingering broad sides, the period since the First World War has been chiefly supplied by such items, which have tended to become 'respectable'. Henry's 'Songs of the people' is an unusually long- running weekly newspaper series (1923-39) of songs with solfa airs. For the nineteenth century a good contemporary description of ballad-mongering and sheets (1851) is given by Ailing- ham, himself a writer for the Dublin ballad trade (I,96]Local printing is dealt with in numerous articles by Dix. For the Dublin printer Brereton see Neilands. Shepard places the Irish trade in the larger context of Britain and Ireland. Just as the sheets and songbooks in English contain many texts - including contemporary hits - of
British origin, many Irish songs in English, including traditional ones, were often printed on English and Scottish sheets.
Ballad sheets have influenced singing in Irish less than in English, despite those in Irish noted. From the late nineteenth century the Language Revival has seen the rise and fall of many magazines in Irish with song-texts which were often taken from the oral medium and/or sometimes found their way into it: Hayes (M). Later still, radio programmes were accompanied by some printing on sheets and by a series of booklets with texts and airs: 0 Tuama (178).
PERIODICALS
Journals devoted to Irish folk music have an intermittent record. The JOURNAL OF THE IRISH FOLK SONG SOCIETY (1905-39) stopped publishing varied items after the First World War and ground finally to a halt amid the interrupted works of O'Sullivan. Variety is the keynote of CEOL* (1963-, 21 numbers) though it began and remains a one-man show. IRISH FOLK MUSIC
STUDIES* (1973-) has produced three numbers and is preparing a fourth. It is published by the Folk Music Society of Ireland, which also has a more topical newsletter, CEOL T(RE* (1973-, 27 numbers), with occasional re views, notes, music, reprinted items, articles of research value, and reports on all the Society's meetings. TREOIR (1967-), the bi-monthly magazine of Comhaltas Ceoltoiri Eireann, provides mainly glossy pictures and chat with an occasional useful article. SLOW AIR (1976-7), intended to be more seriously topical, did not outlive its third number.
Other Irish journals have relevant articles from time to time, chiefly: ULSTER FOLK LIFE, DAL gCAIS - a co. Clare journal with a special interest in folk music - in recent years BEALOIDEAS, and SINSEAR, edited by Folklore students of University College Dublin. ElGSE deals with textual and historical aspects of songs in Irish. Newspapers and magazines have run series of songs which rarely exceed a calendar year (but see Henry, §9). notice of folk-music events, publications etc. For most of the century IRELAND'S OWN has been printing song-texts in English.
The journals published from Cecil Sharp House have contributed to the editing of Irish songs: JOURNAL OF THE FOLK SONG SOCIETY and its successors JOURNAL OF THE ENGLISH FOLK DANCE AND SONG SOCIETY and FOLK MUSIC JOURNAL. The London magazine TRADITIONAL MUSIC and its successor MUSICAL TRADITIONS review Irish recordings. American folklore journals occasionally include articles on Irish folk song.
THE FOLLOWING IS WRITTEN BY H. HALLIDAY SPARLING.
London, March 17, 1888.
IN the small volume to which these pages are prefixed,
an attempt has been made to provide, from the lyric
wealth of Ireland, a collection that shall fulfil two
distinct important functions — the furnishing to all readers
a fairly adequate opportunity of judging Irish character, as
it is shown in the most self- revealing of all means of
expression ; and the providing Irish readers with a book
that, in its scope, completeness, and accuracy, may be
found worthy to take rank on their shelves beside Gavan
Duffy's "Ballad Poetry" and the "Spirit of the Nation."
This twofold aim, ambitious though it be, has been kept
steadily in view ; every song, ballad, or lyric is by an Irish
writer, upon an Irish theme, and clearly Celtic in thought
or feeling. Wherever possible it is one, also, that has
actually been popular among the peasantry, who have
always been the depositary of the song, music, and simple
story, that are now finding securer keeping in printed
books. From them, and those in sympathy with them,
came the force which again and again revived the hope
and courage that strove against unrelenting encroachment,
during dreary centuries in which the feet of war went
to and from over the face of the land. Chance fragments of great poems,
law-books, and legends found
their preservation at the hands of monkish transcribers;
but the song, ballad, or simple story was kept in being
only by the fireside handing-down of generation to generation.
Their ears attuned to the old music ; their memories
replete with traditionary lore ; their thought and speech
coloured and formed by the " olden golden tongue ; "
it is to the peasantry is due the continuity and development
of ethnic life and feeling in Ireland. "Mary," of the
Nation* did more than express an individual preference
when she said, " I like poetry wild with war, or hot with
love, or all glowing with scenery, but would rather write
one little song that a child or peasant might sing and feel,
than a very miracle-poem of abstraction and profundity."
Like Anteus must Humanity renew its vigour by the touch
of Mother Earth. From the conscious rule-encumbered
art of a complex civilisation must we turn to the truth,
freedom, and tenderness of the spontaneous art of a simple
nature-moulded life ; from the perennial fountain thus kept
fresh all really Irish writers have drawn their inspiration;
and until tried by the test thus furnished no song or lyric
can be unquestioningly received as truly Irish.
Hitherto there has been too little attention given to the
wealth and beauty of the minstrelsy of Ireland. Too many
have looked upon the inane rubbish of the music hall as
representing Irish song. Others, knowing only Moore, have
thought that no poetry could be Irish that was not a
glittering array of pearly words, a rippling stream of simile
and sentiment. For the first impression T. C. Croker is
most responsible. His knowledge of history was more
than equalled by misapplication of its meaning, and the
" Popular Songs of Ireland " * gave to the world the thought
and feeling of a class as that of a nation, and seemed for
ever to confirm the slander that Irish songs were " either
pure English or mere gibberish." Many learned and
ingenious theories accounted for the fact after the fashion
of those to whom the wish is father to the thought, but
such theories have long since melted into thin air for all
but the most ignorant, and none but the careless can have
had for years past an excuse for not knowing, in one
collection or another, even the scattered beauties of Irish verse.
Farther back in the prehistoric depths than even
tradition can guide us with sure feet, the Irish, like all
great peoples, were fruitful of poetry. As they enter
history, they have a triple order of bards — Law-man,
Historian, Poet — with settled functions and privileges,
held in high honour and wielding great power.
Then, after awhile came intestine quarrels; invasion by Norse
vikings; the settlement of Dublin, Limerick, and other
seaports as pirate strongholds by Norsemen ; and these
with other things had such effect that when Strongbow
entered Ireland in 1169 the highest point of the ancient
civilisation had long been passed, and the system of life
and government then in force was falling deeper and
deeper into confusion. A few months after Sweyn died
in England and Canute took the throne, the battle of
Clontarf had resulted in the death of Brian Boroimhe* at
the hands of the beaten Danes, and the resumption by
Malachi of the power his great rival had usurped. During
the reigns of William I. and II. and Henry I. in England
incessant fierce contests were raging for possession of the
Irish crown. All know how the suicidal folly of inviting
foreign intervention gave Ireland to the Normans, as, long
before, England had been given to the Saxons.
What remained then of Irish culture sought refuge where it
could. The triple order of the Bards was gone down the
wind. The historian was now a monkish transcriber ; the
law-man was extinct, or nearly so ; and the poet was a
wandering minstrel or a harper attached to a chieftain's
retinue. Even to the end of the eighteenth century
did the harper endure, and the minstrel has done so to
this day. Much of this endurance was owing to the
rapidity with which settlers became absorbed into " the
mere Irish," taking up their manners and customs, and adopting their speech.
Despite the draconic laws to that
end devised, the few could not be kept from intermingling
with the many, and each successive incursion welded into
a more or less complete whole all the folk already in the
island. Those therein established resented the new-comers'
intrusion, and fraternised with the natives in resisting it.
Despite the incessant warfare, despite even the brutal
excesses of Elizabethan ruffians, it was not until Cromwell
and Ireton had " pacified the land," and the Williamites at
the Boyne, Aughrim, and Limerick had, within the space
of a generation, repeated the process, that Irish national
life was at an end. Until then there had been an Irish
audience for the Irish poet, and he wrote in the Irish
tongue. Many men of Irish birth, some, like Thomas
Duffett, of purely Irish blood, but born " within the pale,"
had written in English ; but they were those who came to
England to seek their fortune, becoming English to all
intents and purposes. The poems of these men have not
been included in the present volume, even though they
number among them songs like Duffett's "Though
Ccelia's my Foe." Nor have the writings been admitted
of those who at a later period followed their
example. Concanen, Congreve, and O'Keeffe must be
counted as English writers. Congreve was so anxious to
hide even that he was born in Ireland that he persuaded
Jacob to write him down as born at Bardsey in Yorkshire,
a lie still copied by the compilers of biography.
Goldsmith, in his London garret ; Usher Gahagan and Terence
Connor, upon Tyburn Tree; Nahum Tate and Nicolas
Bfar as they have to do with literature, are not Irish but
English.
The eighteenth century opened with the Irish people
" pacified " into seeming death. The country was in the
hands of an enormous garrison, supplemented by the
imported proprietors and Shoneen * aristocracy. That
part of the island that had lain without the pale was
crushed into quietude ; the Anglicised portion had not yet
become national ; Swift's " Drapier Letters," and the
move- ment connected with them, interested but a small section of
the country ; small outbreaks caused by local grievances
occurred here and there, but were speedily suppressed.
Many thousands of the "wild geese" fled oversea, and filled
the armies and colleges of foreign countries. Those who
remained in Ireland did so by favour of the garrison, whose
excesses they emulated if they did not surpass ; and during
this time it was that the "typical" Irishman of romance was
evoked. The eighteenth century was remarkable everywhere
for hard drinking, violence, and coarse excess; in
Ireland no less than in other countries. There, however,
it was coupled with social conditions that rendered it more
striking, and racial traits that made it picturesque ; rattling,
reckless extravagance, dare-devil humour, and superb disregard of danger,
combine to invite the admiration of the
unthinking, even for a people in the depths of degradation.
At the darkest time all was not dark ; a large part of the
peasantry was untainted ; from the earlier part of the
century date many delicate Celtic poems, like " Kathaleen
rady, versifying the psalms " to be sung in churches " — so
ny Houlahan," and " The Fair Hills of Ireland," and the
first really Irish song written in English, " The Blackbird."
This last is interesting in several ways ; it is not only the
first Irish song in English, but the only Anglo-Irish Jacobite song extant.
It is written to an old Irish air, and is a
curious example of the method and manner of one language
used in another. " Garryowen " and " The Rakes of
Mallow " speak for " gentry " and tradesmen ; " The Sprig
of Shillelah " for a good part of the peasantry ; " The
Night before Larry was Stretched" for the populace of
Dublin and the larger towns, when the century was about
three-fourths gone.
The first great blow struck at the British Empire, and at
monarchical government — a blow from which they bleed
yet — was struck by Irish refugees. " America was lost by
Irish emigrants," said, in 1784, Mr Gardiner, afterwards
Lord Mountjoy. A number of exiles, driven out by the
failure of a revolt occasioned in Ulster by excessive rents,
went to America, where they soon had a chance of revenge
upon England they were not slow to seize. The " Friendly
Sons of St Patrick," the " Fenians " of the time, had
Washington for a member — he being sworn in as an
" adopted Irishman " for the purpose — organised the already
large Irish element in the colonial population, and became
a very powerful and wealthy organisation. This society
supplied a very large part of both the men and money
needed for the revolutionary forces. Despite the steady
decay of their own tongue — perhaps the faster for it --
the purely Irish element permeated the Cromwellian and
Williamite settlers with national feeling; they or their
children became Irish, as the earlier settlers had done
before them. The great new-birth of nations that was
realising itself in two continents was not without effect in
Ireland; and amid the turmoil of debauchery and riot
may be traced the slow, sure, unconscious growth that bore
fruit in the Volunteer movement, the brief glory of independence,
and renewed national life. Most people now
spoke English, and that became the vehicle of expression.
Of the songs now written, few found memory but some
peasant-songs and one or two of Lysaght's and Drennan's ;
the others " are upon men's shelves but in no man's
mind." "
The Wearing of the Green " and the " Shan Van
Vocht " are peasant-songs of this time, to which also belong
George Ogle's " Molly Asthore" and the anonymous " Cruiskeen Lawn,"
the first successful attempts, with the exception of " Shule Aroon,"
at blending the two languages in
one effusion. Hitherto, when a Celtic word or phrase had
been used in a song, it stood out as an alien intruder ; in
these the singer glides from one language to another with
little sense of transition, they have become fused in a
coherent whole ; a new development, significant, perhaps, of
the people that had sprung from the fusion of two races,
and was now looking eagerly back to the best in the history of
both, and hopefully forward to the future that lay before it.
Then came the era of Emancipation and Repeal ; of
Moore, Banim, Griffin, Waller, and many others. Moore,
whose songs are so accessible that none are here given,
unhappily tinkered most of the old tunes he used into
drawing-room shapes, and wedded them to words that were
Irish only in their sentiment and in their swiftness and
melody.
For the rest — intonation, inflection, character --
they might have been written by an educated Cockney with
an ear for music. With all their lyrical ease, and graceful
dance of liquid words, there is in them an affectation,
courtly and fastidious, a wealth of sparkling and epigrammatic similitude,
that accord ill with the deep simplicity of
the music, or the would-be fire of his feeling. Grim old
Hazlitt said of him, that he had " converted the wild harp
of Erin into a musical snuff-box." Yet it must be said that
in this way he was more useful to Ireland than otherwise he
could have been. He caught the ear of thousands, where
another would have been heard by tens. Lever, in his
songs no less than his novels, pandered to the palate that
relished the " Donnybrook Irishman," and knew none other.
Lover was in most of his work truly Irish, though
he now and then could not resist the temptation of
stretching a point in the same direction. Banim, Griffin, and
Waller wrote in close contact and sympathy with the
peasantry ; and their songs are " Irish right through " — as it
is said in Ireland, " you can fed the accent in them."
When Moore was in mid-career Mangan began to write.
The circumstances of his life have rendered him unknown
to large numbers outside his own land ; but there he is
held supreme, and the love of him is extending surely
wherever English is spoken. He stands far above Moore
in the Irish character of his work, as well as in real power
of imagination and perception of nature and truth.
But a greater development was in store. On October 15,
1842, the first number of the Nation was published. This
great paper was founded by three men, Thomas Osborne
Davis, John Blake Dillon, and Charles Gavan Duffy, who
had in view "to create and foster public opinion in Ireland
and make it racy of the soil."* From it, and from the
party it made and spoke for, arose a new life for Ireland.
It is not too much to say that Irish history took a new
meaning, a fresh departure, with the starting of the Nation ;
that the fresh departure found expression in the rebirth of
a national literature, of which the songs and ballads of its
poets and their successors were not the least important part.
How that new meaning has year after year grown deeper,
and that new departure more pronounced, needs here no
telling. The upward impulse has never slackened ; to-day
the Irish race, world-scattered though it be, is solidary and
united ; with an ever-growing literature distinctively its own,
and yet part of the literature of the English-speaking peoples.
To those who have erected fanciful theories of Irish
character, and come to this little book for confirmation,
disappointment must result.
There is revealed no glaring
difference between the Irish and English peoples that need
prevent them from meeting and mingling as close friends,
from uniting as one folk. In the lyric of love, war, or
fancy, the Celtic singer gives utterance to thought and
feeling that appeal to all men. The difference is one of
manner rather than of matter; swifter perception, and a
lighter touch. While the palm of supremacy in the art
of song-making must rest with the Scotch — Elizabethan
English being near by — the Irish are not far behind. With
much of the emotional melody of the Scottish singers, they
are free from the hindrance of a half-known dialect; lacking
somewhat of the Elizabethan simplicity, they possess most
part of their musical modulation. Ireland has in a thousand
ways "heaped coals of fire" upon the head of her conquerors ;
she has given soldiers and statesmen to the building of
the Empire; poets, artists, and musicians to its
adornment ; writers and historians to its record and description.
In none of these things has she been more
successful, or conferred a greater boon, than in singing the
hope and fear, the passion and the aspiration of humble
common folk — in giving us so many moving songs "that
a child or peasant might sing and feel." In the revision
as in the original preparation of this book
I have received counsel and encouragement from many
sources. Two men I cannot refrain from naming with
special gratitude — the Rev. Matthew Russell, of the Irish
Monthly, and Sir Charles Gavan Duffy — who laid open for
my use all the treasures of their learning. From Irish folk
everywhere have come warm-hearted letters of gratitude for
"the service done to the dear old land," oftentimes adding
valuable information or suggestions. To every one of these
I have given anxious thought, and have embodied all I
could. For the design upon the cover I am indebted to
Miss May Morris, and for several copyright poems to the
kindness of their authors. To them, and to all others, I
tender hearty thanks for the ungrudging aid given in the
realisation of a long-cherished project.
H. HALLIDAY SPARLING.
London, March 17, 1888.
