Her Mantle So Green Song Lyrics And Chords

(Traditional Irish Song) Guitar chords in chordpro style fit Sinead O’Connor’s version of this beautiful song. Also included are the tin whistle  sheet music notes included.
The Butcher Boy Song is another of Sinead O'Connor's '' Folk '' songs that she covered very well. The son was also recorded by Margaret Barry.

Her Mantle So Greet Song Lyrics And Chords In The Key Of C Major

Intro: C-F-Dm-Am-Am   F-C-F-C-C   F-C-F-C-C   G7---Am-F-Dm-Am-(Am-F)-Am-(Am-G7)
As (C)I went out (F)walking, one (Dm)morning in (Am)June -Am
To (F)view the fair (C)fields, and the (F)valleys in (C)bloom; -C
I (F)spied a pretty (C)fair maid, she a(F)ppeared like a (C)queen, -C
(G7)With - her (Am)costly fine (F)robes and her (Dm)mantle so (Am)green 
(Am-F)-Am-(Am-G7)

Says (C)I, my pretty (F)fair maid, won’t (Dm)you come with (Am)me, -Am
We'll (F)both join in (C)wedlock, and (F)married we'll (C)be; -C
I will (F)dress you in fine (C)linen, you'll a(F)ppear like a (C)queen, -C
(G7)With - your (Am)costly fine (F)robes and your (Dm)mantle so (Am)green.
(Am-F)-Am-(Am-G7)

Says (C)she, now my (F)young man, you (Dm)must be ex(Am)cused,  -Am
For (F)I'll wed with no (C)man, so you (F)must be re(C)fused; -C
To the (F)green woods I will (C)wander and (F)shun all men's (C)view -C
(G7)For - the (Am)boy I love (F)dearly lies in (Dm)famed Water(Am)loo.
Bridge: F-C-F-C-C   F-C-F-C-C   G7---Am-F-Dm-Am-(Am-F)-Am-(Am-G7)

Well, (C)if you're not (F)married, say (Dm)your lover's (Am)name -Am
I (F)fought in that (C)battle, so I (F)might know the (C)same. -C
Draw (F)near to my (C)garment, and (F)there you will (C)see -C
(G7)His – (Am)name is em(F)broidered on my (Dm)mantle so (Am)green.
(Am-F)-Am-(Am-G7)

In the (C)ribbon of her (F)mantle, there (Dm)I did be(Am)hold, -Am
His (F)name and his (C)surname, in (F)letters of (C)gold -C
Young (F)William O'(C)Riley, a(F)ppeared in my (C)view -C
(G7)He – (Am)was my chief (F)comrade back in (Dm)famed Water(Am)loo
(Am-F)-Am-(Am-G7)

And (C)as he lay (F)dying, I (Dm)heard his last (Am)cry -Am
’If you were (F)here lovely (C)Nancy I'd be (F)willing to (C)die’ -C�
And as I (F)told her this (C)story, in (F)anguish she (C)flew, -C
(G7)And - the (Am)more that I (F)told her, the (Dm)paler she (Am)grew
(Am-F)-Am-(Am-G7)

So I (C)smiled on my (F)Nancy, 'twas (Dm)I broke your (Am)heart, -Am
In (F)your fathers (C)garden, that (F)day we did (C)part -C
And (F)this is the (C)truth, and the (F)truth I de(C)clare, -C
(G7)Oh – (Am)here's your love (F)token the (Dm)gold ring I (Am)wear.
Irish song lyrics G-J

Her mantle so Green sheet music and tin whistle notes

​MARGARET BARRY:
At the time of this writing, 1975, Margaret is 58 years old and has supported herself through singing for 4 of those years. Born into a family in which music runs from her maternal grandfather (known as the King of the Pipers), to her father who played and taught banjo, her mother who sang, played the harp and banjo, and brothers who played nearly everything with strings from the mandolin and fiddle and banjo onward, she has lived by singing and for singing.
At about 12 years of age, Margaret started going into people's houses to sing after school, "making a nuisance of myself, I suppose. At 14, she bought herself a bicycle for 10 shillings and set off on the roads of Ireland. School had not been able to keep her.

She says, "I cried all day because I was prevented from singing in school by the teacher, who said I was too loud over the others. I had to leave old Cork City as I suppose I was a sort of embarrassment there.." On her sturdy Raleigh she crossed and recrossed the country, singing for her supper and what she could collect outside the football matches, markets and fairs, wherever a crowd of people was likely to gather. "A bed at a lodging house cost a shilling, but you had to get your own. breakfast."
When she was 17 she finally bought a 4 shilling banjo from a pawn shop, but it wasn't very good. She abandoned it, and later borrowed a wooden one "without any vellum to it at all" from the head superior of the University of Cork until she could buy something better. Gradually she worked her way up to a decent banjo, but they were very hard to find and expensive. She gathered her songs from "the old people" who would write down the words for her out of their memories. Others she found in books, but since she couldn't get the music this way she would invent her own airs. Her singing, like her playing, is self-taught. "Although my father was a teacher, he never bothered with me because he said the music was born in me."

For one who has wandered so many years on her own, Margaret has a keen sense of family. She was born on January 1, 1917, to Tim Cleary and Margaret Thompson. As I can piece out the family tree, her father's maternal grandfather was Robert Thompson, the famous. piper. His brothers Willie, Matt and John, were also musicians. Robert Thompson's wife was called Kate Cleary, and had come from Spain to Ireland when she was 17. Margaret remembers that she spoke Spanish, liked to wear mantillas and combs, and that there were number of other Spanish people around Cork City at the time who made their livings from selling fish and chips at stands, among other things. According to Margaret, Kate's family were horse breeders who had come "originally from Egypt" and lived in caravans or in the fields. In Madrid they had been lace-makers. Since the Thompson name was so well accepted in musical circles, Margaret's father and mother called themselves Thompson rather than Cleary, and this is the name she grew up with. Tim played the banjo in a dance hall, where he was a partner, taught banjo, and played the accompaniments to the silent movies on the banjo since the town cinema had no piano. The dances were called "four-penny hops" after the admission at the door. Mary played the harp and sang Moore's melodies and others of that vein.


Margaret had a daughter named Nora Barry, who is married and the mother of seven children. Before the babies came along, the mother and daughter teamed up. and travelled together as a singing team which called itself "The Barry Sisters", and this is how Margaret comes to be called Barry. Now that the children have come along, Nora's husband frowns on the idea of her leaving home to sing, but in earlier times they used to take a bus with the football players up to the
opening of the Geelic Football season together, where they sand on the grounds and generally had a good time. Nora lives in Lawrencetown with her family, but manages to sing quite a bit, with a repertoire of many of Margeret's songs but plenty of her own. She also likes the songs of some of the "folk singers" from outside.
of Ireland.

According to Margaret, "Ireland is all lounges now. There's no more dance halls. You stand on a little platform to sing and everybody's drinkin', and take your turn, and then come the pipers, fiddlers, melodion. players and all. You have to pay to go in, and everyone is folk-mad now." Perhaps the modern-day interpreters and popularizers have taken over, but there will still be a solid place for the likes of Margaret. "But I must like the song! I listen to it myself when I'm singin', you know.
Margaret likes to tell the story of the time Phil Raymond, the promoter, signed Michael Gorman and herself to a con- cert in the Royal Albert Hall, the most prestigious in London. To help insure that they would get proper press attention, he arranged for them to visit the Lord Mayor of Dublin, a Mr. Brady, who gave them a letter and a shillelagh to take to the Mayor of London. When they arrived, they appeared on a TV show with a man called Cliff Mitchelmore, who asked Margaret, on camera, how much Guinness she drinks every night. Playing the game to the hilt, she said 36, but according to Margaret he heard the figure 46. After that, every dance hall proprietor had a case of it ready for her because "they reckoned I couldn't sing without it."

This same Phil Raymond, a man with a well developed flair for headline grabbing, arranged for Margaret to be crowned "Queen of the Tinkers" on television, where "they gave ne a tiara of fake diamonds. Margaret says, "I'm not a Tinker, you understand, but I knew quite a lot of travelling tinsmiths. They make hardware, like pans and buckets, for farm people. They are a travelling people, reared on the road like Gypsies, but they are originally Irish. The road is their life, and they can't live in houses. They make good matches between their tribes. If the daughter is a good pan seller she might be matched with a tinsmith, for instance. That's the way it works. Actually, they're just unemployed people who took to the roads to make a living. There is a class distinction between the tinkers, or travelling tinsmiths who can make a tin pot to order, and the people who sell ordinary radios, tape recorders, watches and so forth. But they all have to have a license, pay taxes and insurance just like everybody else. They're great citizens that way. I'm not a Tinker, that business of being crowned their queen was just for (publicity for) a record, but if that's the way they wanted it that's all right with me."

Together, Margaret and Michael have visited the U.S. several times, performing in the dance halls of the Irish communities in Boston, Brooklyn, Chicago, and elsewhere, as well as at large folk festivals. Now that Michael is gone, Margaret has considered teaming up with another fiddler. "I just haven't found the right one yet, but I have heard some great ones." says that if her voice holds out, as it gives every sign of doing nicely for many more years to come, she'll keep on thrilling audiences with what A.L. Lloyd celle her "varhoop."

FICHAEL GORMAN
Contrary to the date and place given by A.L. Lloyd (who said it was Doocastle, County Sligo, Ireland, in 1902) Michael himself described his birthplace as a British bost on the way from Glasgow to Ireland" and the date.  April 11, 1995. When he died at Christmas, 1970, his music partner Margaret Barry says he was 82, which would have made the year of his birth 1888. None of this changes the fact that he was one of the grand masters of the Irish fiddle, with a memory for airs and their titles which can only be called miraculous.
He started playing at the age of nine, and came from a musical family. His mother was a singer from Donegal, and his two aunts were good accordionists. His father, who was in fact a farmer from Sligo (according to Michael) sang, played the flute and accordion, and was a great dancer. His older brother Martin can still dance a re- spectacle hornpipe in his mid 80's. Michael once tried to explain the genealogy of the great fiddlers in Sligo. in this way:
"There was an old blind fiddler named Thomas Haley who taught James and Thomas Gannon. James taught Michael Coleman and myself, and nearly all the Sligo players were trained by him. He had a first cousin named Thomas Gilmartin, from Powell borough, who taught all those not taught by James Gannon. His son, Willy Gannon, came to the U.S. and became the champion fiddler of the world. Ewan McColl gave a bad account of me, by the way, when he said I was following a drunkard. But Gannon wasn't a drunkard or a travelling man, he was a carpenter and a builder by profession."

Michael Coleman, the greatest of the Sligo reel and jig players, migrated to America. But Michael Gorman stayed in Ireland where he won medal after medal as well as a great following among the country folk. When he appeared in London, where his music had to take second place for some years to his daytime work, he attracted other Irish immigrant workers to the dances and pubs in droves. His long stay at the Bedford Arms made of the place a center for all the best of Irish musicians.
When 'Michael and Margaret first teamed up, he was working full time as a parcel post porter in the Liverpool Street railway station. He had been there 11 or 12 years when he put in for a change, to get away from the dust of the mail bags, asking for Waterloo station which was higher up and therefore less dusty. He received the transfer, and was very happy with a new assignment up on the plat- form, seeing the trains in and out. During that time, he was playing with Margaret at the Bedford Arms and other pubs. The railway had three shifts: early, late, and night, and when he was assigned to early shift he would be able to play at night, get up again at 5 A.M. and be back on the job. When, a short time later, the railway transferred some of the parcel post to Waterloo and assigned him back to his old job, he gave in his notice and "chucked it."

(Interestingly enough, one of his co-workers on the railway was Martin Byrnes, another Irish fiddle champion whose work can be heard on Leader records.)
At the time, he was 67 or 68 years old. Margaret had come into the Cecil Sharp House, center for so much of the British folkloric activities, with Peter Kennedy, who ran a ceilidh there. The first time she heard Michael, she said it "uplifted her" and she decided on the spot to team up. He liked to play two tunes written by Margaret's grandfather Robert Thompson, "Paddy Ryan's Dream" and "The Maid I Ne'er Forgot", the only ones Margaret asked him not to play because it upset her, started her to thinking about her grandfather, mother and father, and a lot of other musicians in the family now dead and "should be buried, I know." Michael simply changed the titles to "Gorman's Favorite" and kept them in his repertoire, but as Margaret says, it didn't change the music and it still made her sad. "But he had hundreds and hundred more tunes out of O'Neil's Book."
They never had a rehearsal, according to Margaret, but Just started right in playing together. Their legendary stay at the Bedford Arms lasted over seven years. They travelled all over together, including several trips to America where they appeared at the largest festivals. "Michael was always very kind and fatherly toward me, although of course I wasn't a child" says Margaret.

Just about the time they got together, Michael developed a serious ulcer, and the doctor told him there was no hope. Years later, the doctor asked Margaret what she had done with him to make him keep his health and continue working. "It must be the recipe is music" she said. A week before he died, when the ulcer finally took its toll, he was playing as well as he ever had.
"I had to go away for something," says Margaret, "and the girl who lived downstairs and who looked after him when I was purly, Tessie Moore, said the phone rang about a booking. Michael Jumped out of bed and said 'Why shouldn't I go to play?" and he got his clothes together and played on that Saturday night. The following Friday, he was dead in London Hospital. Although I didn't share my life with him, he was the greatest music partner you could have."
An excerpt from Captain Frances O'Neill's "Irish Minstrels and Musician" detailing the background of Margaret's illustrious grandfather, Robert Thompson:
"It does not speak well for the spirit of the citizens of Cork to be so callous to the beauties of their national music as to allow a piper of such distinction to dwell among them unappreciated a d unknown for so many years, dragging out a cheerless existence at the gloomy business of making hearse plumes.

"To Alderma Phair of Cork, an enthusiastic amateur piper himself, belongs the credit of discovering Thompson, and it didn't take the alderman long, kindhearted man that he was, to have his prize exconced in his parlor vi h the alderman's own pipes in his lap. At reed and quill making the newly discovered piper proved to be expert, and before an hour had elapsed Gillabey House resounded with the merry music of the Union Pipes such as its astonished proprietor had not heard in a lifetime. Thompson's performance was a revelation.
"Installed as teacher of his art at the newly organized Cork Piper's Club, of which Alderman Phair was president, his name and fame spread like fire on a mountain. At concerts, entertainments and festivities of all kinds, he was the great attraction, but the conviviality common to such occasion proved disastrous to his health, which had been far from robust for years.

"Thompson, who had a cool finger and splendid execution, took First Prize among thirteen competitors at the first Feis Ceoil at Dublin in 1897, and repeated his triumph at Belfast the following year. Lest his continuous success discourages less gifted pipers from competing, the committee formulated a rule under which he was  ineligible to enter future contests."Equally at home playing Strathspeys, waltzes and quadrilles, his repertoire was by no means confined to Irish music. Yet he had his peculiarities in a musical way: an aversion to "The Fox Chase" and to the humming of the drones being the most pronounced. The latter can hardly be viewed as an evidence of fine musical taste, for few sounds produced by nature or art are more soft and soothing than the mellow hum of well-tuned drones of the Uilleann Pipes. Unsupported by them, the tones of the chanter lose much of their charm, and it has been noticed that a piper's dislike of the sustained tones of the drones is always associated with his inability to tune them properly.

"Bob" Thompson, with some members of his family, was borr at Lisburn, County Antrim, although his father hailed from Bally Clough, a small village near Mallow in County Cork. The latter was an Irish scholar and one-time teacher of the Irish language at Belfast. He was also a skillful performer on the Union Pipes, and taught the rudiments of the art to his son, who had inherited his musical tastes and later took lessons from
Daniel Crilly, noted Dublin player. Involved in financial difficulties (brought about) by the introduction of machinery and by domestic infelicities, Bob was reduced to the necessity of pawning his pipes. When. Paddy Meade's pawnshop was wrecked by fire soon after both pipes and prospects perished with it. The forlorn piper considered that the curtain had finally fallen on his piping.

"Mr. Wayland, founder and secretary of the Cork Piper's Club, to whom we are indebted for a vast fund of information in this and other cases, says: "Thompson was a nice man to talk to, most conversational, and above all modest as to his own abilities as a piper and reed maker.
"With Tim Murphy, a champion step-dancer, Thompson once went to play at a concert at Mitchelstown. When Mr. Wayland called the manager's attention to the curious coincidence that the piper was a maker of hearse plumes while the dancer was a builder of coffins, the witty Milesian carelessly answered: 'Oh well, if they are both in the funeral business I don't think there's any necessity for a rehearsal.'

"On another occasion, while returning by train from Schull, a remote town in West Carberry where he had been repeatedly engaged to play at concerts, he was entertaining Edward Cronin, brother of Reverend Dr. Cronin, editor of the Buffalo Catholic Times, and Mr. M. Donovan of Skibbereen, with a round or two of "The Dear Irish Boy", a telegram was received announcing 
the death of Thompson's mother. His reverence and the Journalist humbly apologized for asking him to play, not knowing of his mother's illness. Nothing disconcerted by the sad news, the bereaved orphan continued playing the plaintive melody, casually remarking, 'Wisha, then, 'twas time for her, after her ninety- three years. All three are now in the land of shades, and all three-nature's noblemen-have left their impress on their times.
"The insistent friendship and misdirected hospitality of his admirers, too often a source of inconvenience and embarrassment, eventually ruined Thompson's health utterly, and he died early in 1903. Two of his three living sons are skilled violinists, Mattie being engaged in teaching a violin class at Schull. Another married. the daughter of Dick Stephenson, the celebrated piper.
"Poor Robert Thompson, though not blessed with much of this world's wealth, enjoyed the fullness of deserved popularity during the later years of his checkered life, end in death he has the honor of taking his final rest beside another famous Corkman, Collins the explorer, in the elevated and picturesque old churchyard of Currakippane, a few miles above the city on the banks of the river Lee."
(The above quotation was researched by Michael Gorman and included in this booklet by his request.)

NOTES ON THE SONGS:
"Her Mantle So Green" is Margaret's own air to a song she found in a book called "Irish Street Ballads" (Colm O'lochlainn, pub. Corinth Books, Inc. 1960) about the famous Battle of Waterloo. "The Rose of Mooncoin" refers to a village in Kilkenny where "all the hurling champions come from." "The Cottage with the Horseshoe O'er the Door" was learned by Margaret from a man named Tynan, who was over 80 years old at the time. He lived in Castle Blaney, County Monaghan, and wrote down these words in about 1945 along with "The Turfman from Ardee" which has so many marvelous double intenders in it. said that he learned it from the McNulty Family of Donegal, who had recorded it on an old 78 rpm record. "It's Better to be Single than a Poor Man's Wife" is. Margaret's set of words to a tune called "The Cuckoo's Nest."

He, According to Margaret, "The Limerick Rake" is an old street ballad set to the tune of a jig written by her grandfather called "Castle Comer." "The Leprechaun' was a popular stage song in the 1890's, published first in "Ancient Irish Music" by P.M. Joyce, who wrote it to a tune he collected in Limerick sometime in the 1850's It is often referred to in anthologies as a traditional song. (This from Ewan McColl) Margaret remembers that she saw it as a poem in her schoolbooks and heard it sung by John McCormack, the world famous Irish tenor.
The song here called "Still I Love Him" has been sung with many variations and by many singers. Here, Margaret brings in the incident when she took the letter to the Lord Mayor of London. She also speaks about incidents during her seven-year stay singing at the Bedford Arms in Camden Town near London. It is originally a song from Northumberland.

In his book "Irish Songs of Resistance", Patrick Galvin says the following about the "Bold Fenian Men" (the organization, not the song): "The importance of the Fenians lies in their representation of the aims of the United Irishmen, in its manifestation to the whole world of Ireland's demand for complete independence, in its reintroduction of Irish claims into the programme of progressive movements in England, in its absolute rejection of sectarianism, in its standard of complete fidelity and steadfastness, of disciplined manliness, in its unmistakeably democratic character and intentions. That its enemies well understood its potential is plainly demonstrated by the famous and appalling dictum that Hell is not hot enough nor Eternity long enough to punish the Fenians."

One of Margaret's identifications in Ireland is as "The Guinness Lady", since she has advertised the rich black stout malt liquor far and wide. This is a song written by Joe O'Grady, a man who worked at. the famous brewery for over 50 years. Joe was well- loved by his fellow workers, and was both a barrel cooper and a "charge hand" or foreman who knew how to supervise all other jobs. He often wrote verses and articles for the Guinness Harp, an in-house publication of the brewery. Joe wrote many songs for Margaret, but after he wrote this one the company. gave him permission to "allow" her to record and broadcast it. Joe died in 1962.
Side A, Band 1
HER MANTLE SO GREEN
As I went out a walking one morning in June To view the fine spots and the meadow in bloom, I spied a young damsel, she appeared like a queen, In her costly fine robes and her mantle so green.
I stood in amaze, I vas caught by surprise. I thought her an angel that fell from the skies. Her eyes like diamonds, her cheeks like the rose, She's one of the fairest that nature composed.