The Old Turf Fire Lyrics
Guitar chords included[ plus the sheet music ]for the version by Kenneth McKellar. The song was sent to the site by Patrick Burke. Norman King from the Wild Geese learned this song from his Aunt in Dublin
Mrs Mc Knight when he was about 6yrs old, the song was sung to him as a lullaby as a child.
Since then it has always being one of his favorites.
The Group have lifted the pace slightly & when you hear the Congress Reel in between & at the end ye will know why. The song was also recorded by Kenneth McKellar and by Steeleye Span who probably done the best version of the Old Maid In The Garrett Song , well in my view.
This Congress Reel really gets ye going they did a really super great job & its just really beautiful.
The Wild Gees also recorded The Galway Rebel Boys which Patrick also sent to me.
Wild Geese are Tony Small, Peadar OhUallaigh, Steve Power, Norman King
Information to the Congress Reel which was played with this song by The Wild Geese.
It does not appear in any of the older collections of Ireland & it was composed around the very early 1932, the year of the Eucharistic Congress which was held in Dublin Ireland at the time.
432- 1932 to celebrate the coming of St Patrick to Ireland & thus it may have received its name.
I have a Holy Picture at home from the 1932 Congress in Dublin.
By the way A transcription is given in Breandan Breathnach's Ceol Rinnce nah Eireann
It was Published in Dublin 1960.
This is another lovely jewl from the Wild Geese Lp The Quays of Galway Town.
This Lp from the Wild Geese was recorded in Germany way back in Janurary 1976 on a Joke Label
Mrs Mc Knight when he was about 6yrs old, the song was sung to him as a lullaby as a child.
Since then it has always being one of his favorites.
The Group have lifted the pace slightly & when you hear the Congress Reel in between & at the end ye will know why. The song was also recorded by Kenneth McKellar and by Steeleye Span who probably done the best version of the Old Maid In The Garrett Song , well in my view.
This Congress Reel really gets ye going they did a really super great job & its just really beautiful.
The Wild Gees also recorded The Galway Rebel Boys which Patrick also sent to me.
Wild Geese are Tony Small, Peadar OhUallaigh, Steve Power, Norman King
Information to the Congress Reel which was played with this song by The Wild Geese.
It does not appear in any of the older collections of Ireland & it was composed around the very early 1932, the year of the Eucharistic Congress which was held in Dublin Ireland at the time.
432- 1932 to celebrate the coming of St Patrick to Ireland & thus it may have received its name.
I have a Holy Picture at home from the 1932 Congress in Dublin.
By the way A transcription is given in Breandan Breathnach's Ceol Rinnce nah Eireann
It was Published in Dublin 1960.
This is another lovely jewl from the Wild Geese Lp The Quays of Galway Town.
This Lp from the Wild Geese was recorded in Germany way back in Janurary 1976 on a Joke Label
1
Oh the old turf fire
And the hearth swept clean
Sure there's no one half so happy
As myself and Paddy Keane
With the Baby in the cradle
You can hear her mammy say
Ah wouldn't you go to sleep Alanna
Ti'll I wet your Daddy's Tea.
2
Oh I've got a little house
And a tidy bit of land
Sure you'd never see the better
On this side of Cnoc na gCrann
I've no piano in the corner
And no pictures on the wall
Ah but sure I'm quite contented
In my little marbel hall.
3
Oh the man that I work for
Is a richer man than me
But somehow I'll be telling you
We never can agree.
He has big towering mansions
And he's castles over all
But sure I'd never exchange with him
Me little marbel hall
4
Oh the old turf fire
What a welcome now it brings
As the cricket chirups gaily
And the kettle also sings
We all join in the chorus
Of a merry lilting song
With the friendly neighbours dropping in
To join in the happy throng.
5
Round the old turf fire
Sit the old folk bent with years
As they watch us trippin'g lightly
And they're smilin' through their tears
For so sadly they are dreaming
Of their youthfull hearts desire
And those dear old days so long ago
Round the old turf fire.
Oh the old turf fire
And the hearth swept clean
Sure there's no one half so happy
As myself and Paddy Keane
With the Baby in the cradle
You can hear her mammy say
Ah wouldn't you go to sleep Alanna
Ti'll I wet your Daddy's Tea.
2
Oh I've got a little house
And a tidy bit of land
Sure you'd never see the better
On this side of Cnoc na gCrann
I've no piano in the corner
And no pictures on the wall
Ah but sure I'm quite contented
In my little marbel hall.
3
Oh the man that I work for
Is a richer man than me
But somehow I'll be telling you
We never can agree.
He has big towering mansions
And he's castles over all
But sure I'd never exchange with him
Me little marbel hall
4
Oh the old turf fire
What a welcome now it brings
As the cricket chirups gaily
And the kettle also sings
We all join in the chorus
Of a merry lilting song
With the friendly neighbours dropping in
To join in the happy throng.
5
Round the old turf fire
Sit the old folk bent with years
As they watch us trippin'g lightly
And they're smilin' through their tears
For so sadly they are dreaming
Of their youthfull hearts desire
And those dear old days so long ago
Round the old turf fire.
Guitar Chords
[Em]Oh the old turf fire
And the hearth swept clean
Sure there's[D] no one half so happy
As myself and Paddy Keane
With the [C]Baby in the cradle
You can [Bm]hear her mammy say
Ah wouldn't you [D]go to sleep A[C]lanna
Ti'll I [D]wet your Daddy's [Em]Tea.
Oh [Em]the man that I work for
Is a richer man than me
But [D]somehow I'll be telling you
We never can agree.
He has [Em]big towering mansions
And he's [Bm]castles over all
But [Em]sure I'd never exchange with him
Me little marbel hall
[Em]Oh the old turf fire
And the hearth swept clean
Sure there's[D] no one half so happy
As myself and Paddy Keane
With the [C]Baby in the cradle
You can [Bm]hear her mammy say
Ah wouldn't you [D]go to sleep A[C]lanna
Ti'll I [D]wet your Daddy's [Em]Tea.
Oh [Em]the man that I work for
Is a richer man than me
But [D]somehow I'll be telling you
We never can agree.
He has [Em]big towering mansions
And he's [Bm]castles over all
But [Em]sure I'd never exchange with him
Me little marbel hall
Below is the list of sheet music and tin whistle songs that are in my ebooks. This is the largest collection of tin whistle songs ever put together.[over 900 songs ] Including folk, pop and trad tunes plus German And French songs along with Christmas Carols.
All of the sheet music tabs have been made as easy to play as was possible.
The price of the ebooks is €7.50
The old turf fire sheet music / tin whistle notes are included.
All of the sheet music tabs have been made as easy to play as was possible.
The price of the ebooks is €7.50
The old turf fire sheet music / tin whistle notes are included.
The Dear Little Shamrock-The Album
The title of this collection of songs takes its name from one of the most famous ballads in the world, a ballad known not only to every Irish man and woman who draws breath, but also to every other person living on this globe who ever thinks or dreams about Ireland at all. And yet the pleasant, heart-warming melody of this celebrated song is not Irish in any sense of the word, and most certainly it is not the Irish folksong that many people imagine it to be. The air was, in fact, composed by an Englishman, who, as far as we know, never was in Ireland in his life, one William Shield of Whickham in the County of Durham, who lived from 1748 until 1829. Shield spent much time with Haydn during that master's visit to London in 1791 and he often said that he learnt more about music from one day's conversation with Haydn than he learnt in a year of hard study in less inspiring company.
William Shield wrote several successful operas, many songs, of which "The Wolf" is still quite well known and eventually became composer to Covent Garden and Master of Musicians in Ordinary to the King. He lies buried in the south cloister of Westminster Abbey, in the same grave as Clementi and Solomon, and a marble slab still stands there to his memory, but assuredly the lovely melody that he wrote about a country quite unknown to him will outlast any such material tribute raised to him by human hands, The story is different when we come to consider the words of this universally beloved song, for they were in. deed written by an Irishman, albeit one of English de- cent, one Andrew Cherry, who was born in Limerick in 1762 and who died, the father of a large family, in 1812.
Apprenticed to a Dublin bookseller at the age of eleven, Andrew subsequently ran away and became a strolling player. In the course of his wanderings he reached Belfast and he there married the daughter of Richard William Knipe, a highly-successful theatrical manager, whose company of players he had joined. Andrew Cherry wrote more than a dozen successful plays, several of which were performed at Covent Garden and Drury Lane, and eventually he became a popular actor in England, where he was affectionately known as "Little Cherry". But "The Dear Little Shamrock", a trifle for which most likely he had but small regard, was destined to be the one child of his prolific pen that was to carry him into unquestioned immortality.
The real music of Ireland can conveniently be di- vided into two parts, dance music and vocal minstrelsy, and Richard Hayward has said somewhere that the tendency for the last fifty years has been to play the dance music too quickly and to sing the songs too slowly. Another kind of Irish music, which is not really Irish at all, is made up of songs about Ireland, and of such music a well-known story tells all that it is necessary to tell.
A popular English song-writer scored a great success with a drawing-room ballad about Donegal, and years afterwards he visited Ireland for the first time in his life. Looking from his ship, over Moville Bay, at the crowding glory of the Donegal mountains, he is reputed to have said, "Lovely, indeed, and I've always longed to see the hills from which I have made a great deal of money".
This present collection, for the greater part, is made up of genuine Irish music, and the name of Herbert Hughes, who collected most of it, is sufficient guarantee of its authenticity. For no one laboured more lovingly, or with greater skill and devotion, in the field of Irish folksong, than this son of Ulster, and his four volumes of "Irish Country Songs", not to mention all his other wonderful work, form a splendid memorial to his illustrious memory.
SIDE NO. 1
No. 1. The gentle maiden. One of the most shapely melodies of Ireland, this song is much better known in a different set of verses. The tune is eloquent and of undoubted Irish lineage, and it seems to have come originally from the domestic pipers of Connemara. The pipes they played were the native Irish pipes, the Uilleann pipes, which were "the woollen pipes" of Shakespeare. The air-bag is inflated by a bellows in stead of by the lungs of the player.
2. A good roaring fire. This song, hailing from the County Derry, was taken down by Herbert Hughes from the singing of his old nurse, Ellen Boylan, who was a rich source of ballads of all kinds. It is a variant of the well-known "Inniskilling Dragoon", a melody played by the Old Harpers centuries before that gallant regiment ever rattled a sabre. The ballad is a good specimen of the more sentimental kind of Irish domestic song-making.
3. The lark in the clear air. One of the sweetest and most perfect of all ancient Irish melodies is here wedded. to words written by one of Ireland's greatest poets, the Belfast man, Sir Samuel Ferguson. Nothing could be more wonderful than this perfect marriage.
4. The star of the County Down. Another of Ellen Boylan's songs which tickled the ear of Herbert Hughes. It is a lovely lilting thing, obviously of County Down origin, but current all over Ireland and in America too.
5. Shannon River. This falls into the class of "Songs about Ireland", and if there is nothing Irish about it it is a typical specimen of what most people think of as Irish music.
6. The ould turf fire. It was in the County Kerry, not far from Killarney, that Herbert Hughes collected this ballad, and a very pleasant thing it is. You will hear country singers all over Ireland breaking forth in this kind of native musical expression: that is, if the flood of American crooning has not already overwhelmed
them all.
7. Love thee, dearest. The words are by Thomas Moore, and if this song is not included in the canon of "Moore's Melodies" it has all the qualities to give it admission to that melodious and well-loved garland of early-nineteenth-century verses set to genuine old Irish airs. As a matter of interest, most of the melodies to which Moore tuned his facile pen were collected by Edward Bunting, at the great Meeting of Harpers held in Belfast in 1792. This Bunting Collection, gathered into two portly volumes, is still the richest extant mine of authentic Irish melodies.
8. Down by the glen side. A fine evocative thing with a stirring refrain. A good specimen of a folk, or near- folk, song that has become a popular ballad greatly loved by the Irish people at home and abroad.
SIDE NO. 2
No. 1. The dear little shamrock. The history of this famous song has already been set forth above."
2. I'm not myself at all. A good example of the rather coy kind of Irish country song. It was collected by Herbert Hughes in some part of Ireland which he does not specify.
3. She moved through the fair. The air, one of the loveliest of all Irish melodies, was taken down by Hughes in Donegal, and the words were written for him by Padraic Colum, one of the greatest living Irish poets. The middle verse of the present rendering is not the one usually sung, and it lacks the magic of some of Colum's most inspired lines. This is perhaps one of the most difficult of all Irish songs to phrase and shape and bring to a perfect poise and conclusion.
4. I know where I'm going. This song comes from the County Antrim and is one of those taken down by Hughes from the singing of his old nurse, Ellen Boylan. It has all the marks of an authentic folksong: it is time- less and defies all attempts to put a date on it.
5. The fairy tree. A dainty little song with a dark undertone that is very characteristic of the minstrelsy associated with the Irish fairyland and the impact upon it of Christianity. Not that any Irish countryman would ever talk about fairies as such. He calls them "the gentry", or "the little folk", for he knows that any more direct reference to them is unlucky.
6. Little town in ould County Down. Very definitely a song of the class referred to above as "Songs about Ireland".
The title of this collection of songs takes its name from one of the most famous ballads in the world, a ballad known not only to every Irish man and woman who draws breath, but also to every other person living on this globe who ever thinks or dreams about Ireland at all. And yet the pleasant, heart-warming melody of this celebrated song is not Irish in any sense of the word, and most certainly it is not the Irish folksong that many people imagine it to be. The air was, in fact, composed by an Englishman, who, as far as we know, never was in Ireland in his life, one William Shield of Whickham in the County of Durham, who lived from 1748 until 1829. Shield spent much time with Haydn during that master's visit to London in 1791 and he often said that he learnt more about music from one day's conversation with Haydn than he learnt in a year of hard study in less inspiring company.
William Shield wrote several successful operas, many songs, of which "The Wolf" is still quite well known and eventually became composer to Covent Garden and Master of Musicians in Ordinary to the King. He lies buried in the south cloister of Westminster Abbey, in the same grave as Clementi and Solomon, and a marble slab still stands there to his memory, but assuredly the lovely melody that he wrote about a country quite unknown to him will outlast any such material tribute raised to him by human hands, The story is different when we come to consider the words of this universally beloved song, for they were in. deed written by an Irishman, albeit one of English de- cent, one Andrew Cherry, who was born in Limerick in 1762 and who died, the father of a large family, in 1812.
Apprenticed to a Dublin bookseller at the age of eleven, Andrew subsequently ran away and became a strolling player. In the course of his wanderings he reached Belfast and he there married the daughter of Richard William Knipe, a highly-successful theatrical manager, whose company of players he had joined. Andrew Cherry wrote more than a dozen successful plays, several of which were performed at Covent Garden and Drury Lane, and eventually he became a popular actor in England, where he was affectionately known as "Little Cherry". But "The Dear Little Shamrock", a trifle for which most likely he had but small regard, was destined to be the one child of his prolific pen that was to carry him into unquestioned immortality.
The real music of Ireland can conveniently be di- vided into two parts, dance music and vocal minstrelsy, and Richard Hayward has said somewhere that the tendency for the last fifty years has been to play the dance music too quickly and to sing the songs too slowly. Another kind of Irish music, which is not really Irish at all, is made up of songs about Ireland, and of such music a well-known story tells all that it is necessary to tell.
A popular English song-writer scored a great success with a drawing-room ballad about Donegal, and years afterwards he visited Ireland for the first time in his life. Looking from his ship, over Moville Bay, at the crowding glory of the Donegal mountains, he is reputed to have said, "Lovely, indeed, and I've always longed to see the hills from which I have made a great deal of money".
This present collection, for the greater part, is made up of genuine Irish music, and the name of Herbert Hughes, who collected most of it, is sufficient guarantee of its authenticity. For no one laboured more lovingly, or with greater skill and devotion, in the field of Irish folksong, than this son of Ulster, and his four volumes of "Irish Country Songs", not to mention all his other wonderful work, form a splendid memorial to his illustrious memory.
SIDE NO. 1
No. 1. The gentle maiden. One of the most shapely melodies of Ireland, this song is much better known in a different set of verses. The tune is eloquent and of undoubted Irish lineage, and it seems to have come originally from the domestic pipers of Connemara. The pipes they played were the native Irish pipes, the Uilleann pipes, which were "the woollen pipes" of Shakespeare. The air-bag is inflated by a bellows in stead of by the lungs of the player.
2. A good roaring fire. This song, hailing from the County Derry, was taken down by Herbert Hughes from the singing of his old nurse, Ellen Boylan, who was a rich source of ballads of all kinds. It is a variant of the well-known "Inniskilling Dragoon", a melody played by the Old Harpers centuries before that gallant regiment ever rattled a sabre. The ballad is a good specimen of the more sentimental kind of Irish domestic song-making.
3. The lark in the clear air. One of the sweetest and most perfect of all ancient Irish melodies is here wedded. to words written by one of Ireland's greatest poets, the Belfast man, Sir Samuel Ferguson. Nothing could be more wonderful than this perfect marriage.
4. The star of the County Down. Another of Ellen Boylan's songs which tickled the ear of Herbert Hughes. It is a lovely lilting thing, obviously of County Down origin, but current all over Ireland and in America too.
5. Shannon River. This falls into the class of "Songs about Ireland", and if there is nothing Irish about it it is a typical specimen of what most people think of as Irish music.
6. The ould turf fire. It was in the County Kerry, not far from Killarney, that Herbert Hughes collected this ballad, and a very pleasant thing it is. You will hear country singers all over Ireland breaking forth in this kind of native musical expression: that is, if the flood of American crooning has not already overwhelmed
them all.
7. Love thee, dearest. The words are by Thomas Moore, and if this song is not included in the canon of "Moore's Melodies" it has all the qualities to give it admission to that melodious and well-loved garland of early-nineteenth-century verses set to genuine old Irish airs. As a matter of interest, most of the melodies to which Moore tuned his facile pen were collected by Edward Bunting, at the great Meeting of Harpers held in Belfast in 1792. This Bunting Collection, gathered into two portly volumes, is still the richest extant mine of authentic Irish melodies.
8. Down by the glen side. A fine evocative thing with a stirring refrain. A good specimen of a folk, or near- folk, song that has become a popular ballad greatly loved by the Irish people at home and abroad.
SIDE NO. 2
No. 1. The dear little shamrock. The history of this famous song has already been set forth above."
2. I'm not myself at all. A good example of the rather coy kind of Irish country song. It was collected by Herbert Hughes in some part of Ireland which he does not specify.
3. She moved through the fair. The air, one of the loveliest of all Irish melodies, was taken down by Hughes in Donegal, and the words were written for him by Padraic Colum, one of the greatest living Irish poets. The middle verse of the present rendering is not the one usually sung, and it lacks the magic of some of Colum's most inspired lines. This is perhaps one of the most difficult of all Irish songs to phrase and shape and bring to a perfect poise and conclusion.
4. I know where I'm going. This song comes from the County Antrim and is one of those taken down by Hughes from the singing of his old nurse, Ellen Boylan. It has all the marks of an authentic folksong: it is time- less and defies all attempts to put a date on it.
5. The fairy tree. A dainty little song with a dark undertone that is very characteristic of the minstrelsy associated with the Irish fairyland and the impact upon it of Christianity. Not that any Irish countryman would ever talk about fairies as such. He calls them "the gentry", or "the little folk", for he knows that any more direct reference to them is unlucky.
6. Little town in ould County Down. Very definitely a song of the class referred to above as "Songs about Ireland".