The Old Woman From Wexford lyrics and guitar chords
The Old Woman From Wexford Irish Folk Song lyrics and easy guitar chords A traditional song recorded by Patsy Watchorn from The Dublin City Ramblers and by The Clancy's and Tommy Makem. Also recorded by The Dubliners with Ronnie Drew on vocals. The youtube video is of The Dubliners. Guitar chords in chordpro are in C with other versions in G and A.
[C]There was an old woman from Wexford
In Wexford[G7] town did [C]dwell
She loved her[F] husband dearly
But a[G]nother man twice as[F] well
Chorus:
With me[C] right fol lid-der-al ar-yl
And me right fol [G7]low-rel[C] lee
One day she went to the doctor
Some medicine for to find
Saying "Doctor give me something
That'll make me ould man blind"
"Oh, feed him eggs and marrow bones
And make him sup them all
And it won't be so very long after
That'll he won't see you at all"
So she fed him eggs and marrow bones
And made him sup them all
And it wasn't so very long after
That'll he couldn't see the wall
"O," says he "I'd go and drown meself
But that might be a sin"
"Well," says she "I'll go along with you
And I'll help to push you in"
The old woman she went back a bit
To get a running go
The old man blithely stepped aside
And she went in below
Oh, how loudly did she roar
And how loudly did she bawl
"Arrah hould yer whisht ould woman," says he
"Sure I can't see you at all"
She swam and swam and swam and swam
'Till she came to the further brim
The old man got a long, larch pole
And he pushed her further in
O eggs are eggs and marrow bones
Will make your old man blind
But if you want to drown him
You must creep up close behind.
Song lyrics from N-R
In Wexford[G7] town did [C]dwell
She loved her[F] husband dearly
But a[G]nother man twice as[F] well
Chorus:
With me[C] right fol lid-der-al ar-yl
And me right fol [G7]low-rel[C] lee
One day she went to the doctor
Some medicine for to find
Saying "Doctor give me something
That'll make me ould man blind"
"Oh, feed him eggs and marrow bones
And make him sup them all
And it won't be so very long after
That'll he won't see you at all"
So she fed him eggs and marrow bones
And made him sup them all
And it wasn't so very long after
That'll he couldn't see the wall
"O," says he "I'd go and drown meself
But that might be a sin"
"Well," says she "I'll go along with you
And I'll help to push you in"
The old woman she went back a bit
To get a running go
The old man blithely stepped aside
And she went in below
Oh, how loudly did she roar
And how loudly did she bawl
"Arrah hould yer whisht ould woman," says he
"Sure I can't see you at all"
She swam and swam and swam and swam
'Till she came to the further brim
The old man got a long, larch pole
And he pushed her further in
O eggs are eggs and marrow bones
Will make your old man blind
But if you want to drown him
You must creep up close behind.
Song lyrics from N-R
Easy Guitar chords in G Major
[G]There was an old woman from Wexford
In Wexford[D7] town did [G]dwell
She loved her[C] husband dearly
But a[D]nother man twice as[C] well
Chorus:
With me[G] right fol lid-der-al ar-yl
And me right fol [D7]low-rel[G] lee
[G]There was an old woman from Wexford
In Wexford[D7] town did [G]dwell
She loved her[C] husband dearly
But a[D]nother man twice as[C] well
Chorus:
With me[G] right fol lid-der-al ar-yl
And me right fol [D7]low-rel[G] lee
The Dubliners play this song in the key of A Major. [ Ronnie Drew Version ]
[A]There was an old woman from Wexford
In Wexford[E7] town did [A]dwell
She loved her[D] husband dearly
But a[E]nother man twice as[D] well
Chorus:
With me[A] right fol lid-der-al ar-yl
And me right fol [E7]low-rel[A] lee
[A]There was an old woman from Wexford
In Wexford[E7] town did [A]dwell
She loved her[D] husband dearly
But a[E]nother man twice as[D] well
Chorus:
With me[A] right fol lid-der-al ar-yl
And me right fol [E7]low-rel[A] lee
Joe Heaney - Irish Singer
'Where I come from they all sing like that';
SEOSAMH Ó hÉANAÍ:
HIS LIFE AND SINGING TRADITION
by Liam Mac Con Iomaire
Seosamh dhana was born on the 1st of October 1919, three
miles west of the village of Carna in the townland of An Aird Thoir (Ard East), an area long since renowned for its wealth of songs and stories. Though Joe is on record as saying that he never opened his mouth to sing in public until he was nearly twenty years of age, nevertheless he had absorbed by then, from his parents, relations and neighbours, a vast store of songs and stories that he carried with him, in his head and in his heart, when he was forced to emigrate, at a young age, first to Scotland, then to England and later on to the USA, where he died on May 1st 1984.
The American writer A B Lord, in his book "The Singer of Tales', recommends that 'One must always begin with the individual and work outwards from him to the group to which he belongs, namely to the singers who have influenced him and then to the district, and in ever increasing circles until the whole language area is included.' If we begin with Joe Heaney the individual - he was the fifth of seven children, four boys and three girls, all of whom could sing. His mother, Babe Sheáin Mhíchíl Shéamuis Ní Mhaoilchiaráin - (Mulkerrins) came from a long line of famous storytellers and Joe's older brother Michael, now dead, was to win a prize for storytelling at the Oireachtas, the annual cultural festival organised by Conradh na Gaeilge (The Gaelic League). Joe's father, Pádraig Ó hÉanaí, was a very fine singer and was a first cousin of Colm Ó Caoidheáin, from whom Séamus Ennis collected two hundred and twelve songs.
Just over the stone wall from Joe's house was perhaps the greatest sean- nós singing house in the whole of Ireland, that of Seán Choilm 'ac Dhonncha (McDonagh) and his talented family. Only one of that family is living there at the moment.
Dara Bán Mac Donnchadha, indisputably one of the finest living sean-nós singers. Over the road were two other McDonagh households, long since famous for their sean-nós singing, that of the late Seán 'ac Dhonncha or Johnnie McDonagh, who taught for many years in Ahascragh near Ballinasloe, Co. Galway and the famous Seán Jack 'ac Dhonncha, whose sons Josie and Johnnie are following in their father's footsteps. A short distance from Seán Jack's house was that of Beairtle Ó Conghaile who was known as 'Rí na Scéalaithe' (the king of the storytellers) and who was also a great singer. Joe spent a lot of time in Beairtle Ó Conghaile's house and learned a lot from him, especially the stories behind the songs.
Last but not least of Joe's neighbours, I must mention Máire an Ghabha Bean Uí Cheannabháin. This amazing woman had an extraordinary repertoire of religious songs and prayers and, from a very young age, he had access to that rich store. In fact, one of those religious songs. Caoineadh na dtrí Muire (The Lament of the Three Marys), was made famous by Joe when he recorded it for Gael Linn in 1957.
Joe went to the local national school, Scoil na hAirde, where Seán 'ac Dhonncha or Johnnie McDonagh, the previously mentioned famous traditional singer and a lifelong friend, was a class ahead of him. Joe is on record as saying, 'Bhí an t-ádh orainn go raibh an bheirt mhúinteoirí ab fhearr in Éirinn againn...' (We were lucky to have the best two teachers in Ireland, Seán Ó Conchúir from Mayo and his wife, Bríd Ní Fhlatharta from Carraroe). Seán 'ac Dhonncha and others have told me that Bríd Bean Uí Chonchúir was untiring and unsparing of herself in promoting sean-nós songs in school. She organised competitions to see which of the girls and boys would learn the most sean-nós songs and Joe was very often ahead of his classmates. By all accounts he was very bright at school. He wrote poetry in Irish which was published in the monthly journal 'Ar Aghaidh', under the pen-name 'Loch na gCaor', the name of the local lake.
Joe won a scholarship to a preparatory college for primary teachers, Coláiste Einde, which was based in Dublin at the time but less than two years ater when he was coming home for the Easter holidays one of the priests in charge of the college told Joe that he was not to return. I don't know what, or indeed if any reason was given, but I am told that it could have been something as trivial, by today's standards, as smoking cigarettes. I need not comment on the harshness and injustice of such a cruel decision, but we can imagine how the young man felt that Easter on his way home on the train to Galway and on the bus from Galway to Carna. There was worse to come, however. When he got off the bus in Carna a coffin was being carried into the church there. When he enquired whose funeral it was he was told it was that of his own father.. He had not been informed, which might seem unusual to us nowadays, but we must remember that this was the 1930s when communications were not what they are today and in any case, he may have been expected home a few days earlier.
So Seosamh Ó hÉanaí still in his early teens had to earn his living by the sweat of his brow... not that Joe ever saw any loss of dignity in manual labour or working on the buildings as he had to do in Scotland and in England in the years ahead. He worked for a farmer in East Galway for a period, in Newbridge near Mount Bellew, which could possibly account for his fondness of The Rocks of Bawn, with its opening line, 'Don't hire with any master till you know what your work will be!"
Joe sang publicly for the first time at a Feis in Carna in 1940 and was invited to sing at the Oireachtas in Dublin later that year where he won a prize and where he was to win many others in the following six years until he emigrated in 1946. It was around this time too that he attracted public attention when he sang O'Brien From Tipperary at a sailing regatta in nearby Roundstone on the feast of Saints Peter and Paul, the 29th of June a great day for sailing regattas all over Connemara and the Aran Islands. This was the first song in English that he learned from his father who, incidentally, had a good collection of songs in English as well as the old songs in Irish. Joe was awarded first prize at the Oireachtas in 1942, when Sorcha Ní Ghuairim, also from the Carna region, won first prize in the Women's Competition and they were photographed together in the Irish Press. Joe met Séamus Ennis at the Oireachtas that year and Ennis went to Carna shortly afterwards and recorded songs from Joe.
The folk song collector, Tom Munnelly, in an essay he wrote on Seosamh Ó hÉanaí in Dál gCais No. 7 in 1984, commented: "This was the beginning of a lifelong friendship with the collector Séamus Ennis. This was a comradeship which emitted more sparks than the blacksmith's forge. They sought each other and fought each other... continually."
Joe went to Clydebank in Glasgow in 1947 where an uncle of his and others from Carna were working. He lodged with a Connolly family from the Caladh Mhainse area of Carna, married the daughter of the house, Mary, some time in the late forties and they had four children; Jackie Heaney, the eldest, two daughters, Patricia and Barbara, and the youngest son, Michael. The marriage was not a happy one. Joe drifted down to London where he lived until the mid-fifties, returning now and again to Glasgow. He was to sever all family links for good in 1955. His wife, Mary, died of pleurisy on the 20th of May 1966 and she is buried in Glasgow. Joe had an address in Southampton when he came to the Oireachtas in Dublin in 1955 where, as well as winning the men's competition, he won the Gold Medal in the open competition for previous winners, men and women.
Tom Munnelly says that, while in London, Joe: 'naturally came into contact with other Irish musicians and singers including Michael Gorman, Paddy Taylor. Roger Sherlock, Bobby Casey, Máirtín Byrnes and Willie Clancy. It was here in the late '50s and early '60s that Ewan MacColl and A.L. Lloyd began running folk clubs. This was the beginning of the Folk Revival in Britain and many of the Irish musicians domiciled across the water were asked to play in English clubs. MacColl and Lloyd ran the most prestigious of these clubs, "The Singers Club', and to their credit they frequently had Ó hÉanaí to perform there."
Gabe Sullivan, who was later to make a record with him for the Green Linnet label, met Joe in Galway in 1958 and shared a house with him in London in the early 60s. Joe smoked heavily, Gabe remembers, but he was not a heavy drinker. The pubs in Camden Town in which Joe sang then were The Stores, The Laurel Tree (where he met Willie Clancy for the first time in 1954) and The Bedford, where Margaret Barry reigned supreme in the late '50s and early '60s.
Riobard Mac Góráin of Gael Linn invited Joe to sing at the Oícheanta Seanchais (Traditional Nights) in the Damer Hall in Dublin in 1957, Gael Linn's contribution to a festival called An Tóstal, and was so impressed by Joe's singing that he brought him back from England every year through to 1961, to make a series of records for Gael Linn.
We were now into the ballad boom that was Dublin in the early 60s. The Clancy Brothers were home from America and were all the rage. The Dubliners were forming into a formidable group in O'Donoghue's pub in Merrion Row, Dublin and Joe Heaney came back from London to take up residence there as well, together with his old friend and sparring partner, Séamus Ennis. Ronnie Drew and his wife Déirdre became very friendly with Joe, and Ronnie asked him to sing with the Dubliners in the Gate Theatre. The show was a great success and Joe's powerful singing in Irish and in English was now being heard by a wider audience in his own country for the first time. It was in the early sixties too that Peggy Jordan rented cinemas, first the Grafton Cinema and then the Green Cinema, for late night ballad sessions and Joe was a regular contributor. Both Joe and Séamus Ennis stayed in Peggy's house for a period and she remembers Joe as being "always a thorough gentleman". Joe stayed with Déirdre and Ronnie Drew for a time as well; he spent more than a year with them in their house in Wellington Road and it was from their house that Joe left for America in 1965. It was Joe, of course, who gave Ronnie the song Seven Drunken Nights that reached number one in the English charts for the Dubliners, not that either Ronnie or Joe thought it was a great song, but it was undeniably a commercial success.
The Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem were very popular in the mid- sixties and were very friendly with Joe. Tom Clancy invited him over to the Newport Folk Festival of 1965 and paid his way over and back, a gesture which Joe himself was often to acknowledge with gratitude. The Newport Folk Festival of 1965 drew the attention of the world media; it was the festival where Bob Dylan came on stage with an electric guitar instead of the acoustic guitar and where Bob Dylan's manager, Albert Grossman and the widely respected musicologist, Alan Lomax, were seen rolling on the ground, literally at one another's throat. It was the year of the turbulent marriage of Folk and Rock.
Joe Heaney sang at the festival for 20 minutes each day for the three days of the festival and sang again at the concerts at night; in the words of Liam Clancy: "Joe really bowled them over!" Alan Lomax brought Joe and Liam Clancy out to the sea cliffs near Newport and he filmed them swapping songs. on black and white film with sound. Joe performed at the Philadelphia Folk Festival also that year, then came home to Ireland and 'went to America for good' in 1966, settling in New York city.
When he first came to New York he stayed with a Deasy family from Bohola in Co Mayo who were living in Brooklyn and whose son, Jack, was friendly with the manager of the Clancy Brothers, Gerry Campbell. Campbell had an apartment in a very plush apartment block in Manhattan, right next door to the Dakota, where John Lennon was shot dead some years later. Gerry got Joe a job as doorman and elevator operator in 135 Central Park West. Among those living there then was Merv Griffin, whose people came from Co Clare and who had a coast to coast television show at the time.
Merv Griffin was coming to Ireland at some point and he asked Joe where he should go to hear good music. Joe directed him to O'Donoghue's in Dublin and to Clare, where he knew he was going anyhow. When Merv walked into O'Donoghue's the first thing he saw was Joe Heaney's picture on the wall and, to make a long story short, when he returned to the States he had Joe on his show for 20 minutes on St Patrick's Night. Joe could claim later that he was the first person ever to speak Irish on the Mary Griffin Show.
Mick Moloney, another Irish singer and musician who was with the University of Pennsylvania at the time and who performed with Joe on several occasions wrote in the Sunday Tribune in 1984 just after Joe's death. 'For years he worked as an elevator operator in Manhattan. He sang rarely during this time. On the odd occasion he performed, it was never under the auspices of Irish or Irish-American people or organisations. Mostly it was cultural activists in the American folk music revival who booked Joe for festivals and concerts. The pattern was to continue for the rest of Joe's life in America."
In 1980 he was appointed as a part-time teacher in Irish Folklore at Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut and this, in addition to his public performances, enabled Joe finally to give up his Manhattan job and teach and perform full-time. Just when his Wesleyan contract terminated he was appointed to a similar position in the Ethnomusicology Department of the University of Washington in far off Seattle. Just before he left for the Northwest in the beginning of January 1982 Mick Moloney spoke to Joe in his apartment in Brooklyn. He was happy about the move to Seattle: "I am doing what I like", he said, "and no man can ask for more than that."
Mick Moloney goes on to say: 'Joe continued to captivate audiences at festivals and concerts. It is sad that most people in Ireland never had a chance to see him in action. Two hours listening to Joe seemed to pass by in a matter of minutes as with words and song he wove a spell, compelling and at times mesmerising. His finest hour of all came in July 1982 when he was awarded by The National Endowment for the Arts the National Heritage Award for Excellence in Folk Arts, the highest award that the United States can confer on a traditional artist. On that unforgettable occasion in the nation's capital, surrounded by some of the finest artists and craftsperson in the land. Joe was at his greatest. He paid eloquent tribute to the old men of Connemara who had taught him so much about art and life. He sang his all-time favourites, the stirring tale of Morrissey and the Russian Sailor, Casadh an tSúgáin, and his favourite of all, The Rocks of Bawn."
In a letter to Máire Davitt just after receiving this prestigious award Joe writes: "Tharla rud mór dom féin, don Ghaeilge agus don sean-nós uilig. Fuair mé an National Heritage Award 6 Rialtas na Státaí Aontaithe... Bhí sé thar barr an bealach ar chaith siad liom. Seo é an chéad uair riamh a bronnadh an 'Fellowship', mar a thugann siad air. Plaque deas agus 5000 dollar. Tá sé handy le haghaidh cúpla seachtain saoire. Bhí iontas orthu nach raibh sé ar pháipéir na hÉireann. Níl a fhios agam an raibh. Ar aon nós seo é an review agus ainm na ndaoine. Is mé féin an t-aon European". (A great thing happened to myself. to the Irish language and to the sean-nós generally. I got the National Heritage Award from the Government of the United States. It was great the way they treated me. This is the first time ever the 'Fellowship', as they call it, was awarded... A lovely plaque and 5000 dollars. It is handy for a few weeks holidays. They were surprised that it did not appear in the Irish newspapers. I wonder if it did. Anyhow, this is the review and the names of the people. I am the only European.)
Joe stayed mostly with Máire and Michael Davitt during the six weeks he spent in Ireland in that Autumn of '82 and little did they realise that they would never see him again as he boarded the Galway train, together with his old friend, Máirtín Byrnes, to spend Joe's last night in Ireland in Seán Mac Donncha's house in Ahascragh near Ballinasloe, before flying back to the States the following day. Johnnie, his wife Bríd and Máirtín Byrnes saw him off at Shannon and Joe, after shaking hands with them, walked straight out to the plane without looking back once.
Joe returned to Seattle and continued with his teaching and singing. He planned to come home again in 1984 but in February of that year he had to cancel a performance in the Galway Trader there and he was brought into the University Hospital suffering from emphysema. Joe had a weak chest since childhood and his heavy smoking for most of his life did not improve matters. He was in and out of hospital during February and March of '84 and he left hospital for the last time in an ambulance on Good Friday, the 20th of April, to convalesce at home. He was cared for in his apartment by a group of students and friends, including Cáit Callen who was caring for him the night he died. When Joe asked Cáit to call a priest she began to look for an Irish-speaking priest and she found Father Lane who came and attended to Joe. Later in the night he lost his speech. An ambulance was sent for and Joe died of congestive heart failure in the ambulance on the way to hospital on May Day 1984.
Mick Moloney had this to say in the Sunday Tribune: 'It wasn't altogether inappropriate that Joe should have passed away in a country that had rewarded him so much more in his lifetime than his own native land that he loved so much even in exile."
Tom Munnelly has the following account of the funeral: 'On the journey from Shannon the cortege halted in Galway where it was met by the Bishop and Mayor of Galway and a short ceremony was held in Galway Cathedral before the funeral cars wound their way through the rocky Connemara landscape to the village of the singer's birth. Another ceremony was held in the church in Carna before gathering mourners dispersed for the night.
The following morning a most moving funeral Mass was held in the small church which could not hope to cater for the enormous crowd which had gathered from all over Ireland and abroad. The removal to the graveyard was an awesome sight, for even when the head of the procession had travelled the couple of miles to Muighros, the tail had not even left Carna. It was here in the churchyard that we were forcibly reminded that we were not merely burying a fine artist but a man whose early death brought much grief to his relations and friends who were so obviously deeply distressed."
Mick Moloney wrote at the time of Joe's death: 'He was a gifted singer and storyteller and a consummate performer; the only solo unaccompanied singer I have ever come across who could hold riveted for hours on end any audience of any size, no matter what its age, or ethnic composition. I was privileged to perform with him on several occasions in recent years and as I watched him I couldn't help feeling that even his physical appearance, particularly his gaunt, craggy facial features symbolised the rugged, dignified grandeur of the Connemara landscape whence he came. He was Ireland's supreme cultural ambassador abroad. That he could never make a living in Ireland, doing what he loved so much, is, to say the least of it, ironic."
I'll leave the last word to Joe himself. Lucy Simpson, a student of Joe's from New York whom I met at Féile Joe Éinniú in Carna earlier this year told me that when people praised Joe profusely for his singing he would just say: "Stop making a fuss about my singing: where I come from they all sing like that."
JOE HEANEY: ASSORTED MEMORIES
by Peggy Seeger
LONDON THE SINGER'S CLUB
The Singers Club, London, where Joe was a resident for years. I don't mind any particular evening - what remains in my mind is the extraordinary dignity that Joe had on stage, even when he had several - or many- too many drinks. He was never incapable of singing - or indeed remaining upright- under such circumstances. The songs in the Gaelic were his favourites and he would sink into them as into the arms of a lover. He would absent himself into this realm of comfort, tradition, memory - wherever it was he went. The audience was very aware of the nature of his absorption, for few of our singers had it. Ewan had it when he sang the long ballads. I hope I had it sometimes. But Joe would fix his eyes somewhere in the far distance and his face would go almost stony, his hands on his knees and his mouth set. Like a singing statue. When he sang in English, he was sociable, almost puckish. He and Ewan had an excellent relationship on stage. Two cronies who just enjoyed each other's singing to the full.
BECKENHAM AT EWAN & PEGGY'S
35 Stanley Avenue, Beckenham, Kent, shortly before Joe left for the USA. We invited him to stay for several weeks so that we could record him in depth.. He would sit, glass or teacup in hand, and sing, talk, tell stories and jokes for hours. His face was extraordinary, as if it had been hewn of granite. His eyes were piercing and his manner, to me, quite courtly, almost cautious. I ran the machines and Ewan ran the interview. It was at these sessions that I began to really appreciate the intellectual status of the man, how purposeful and planned was his singing, how careful was his choice of repertoire, pitch, pace and decoration. He had learned from the masters and knew that he was a master himself. He appreciated the hospitality and the food and was a good house guest played with the children, kept his room, person and effects in order and really enjoyed having a chance to talk about the craft of singing as opposed to just singing the songs. He was completely articulate even with enough As-It-Comes whisky down him to fell an ox.
DUBLIN THE GRAFTON THEATRE
A Saturday afternoon at the Grafton Theatre, Dublin (probably during the 1960s). The line-up was The Dubliners, Peggy Seeger/Ewan MacColl and Joe Heaney. I have no idea whose cockeyed idea it was to book anyone but The Dubliners for such an occasion but the experience haunted me, as I am sure it must have haunted Joe, for years afterward. Half the audience was sleeping drunk. The other half was rowdy drunk. The concert was broken into two halves and each of the three acts was to appear in each half. Joe, being the 'less well known was to open. He was booed off by this despicable crowd after the first two lines of his first song. It is to our eternal disgrace that we other artists went on after he was forced off, almost in tears. The Dubliners came on and you couldn't hear them for the cheering and raucous cries. Ewan and I came on and gave what must have been a most inappropriate program for the occasion. Only boycotting would have been suitable. It's the only time I have ever given a concert with police patrolling the aisle and removing sick drunks - the officers congratulated us, Ewan and me, for "reaching the interval". The show was closed down after the intermission. I am sure that the lack of appreciation in Ireland for Joe Heaney at that time was one of the reasons that he emigrated.
AMERICA
I was sorry when he moved to the States for I felt that these islands had matured enough to appreciate him. The Singers Club certainly missed him. When we saw him in the States later he had given up the smoking and the drink. He was singing excellently, had been given awards and grants and was being squired around by flocks of young women. I am glad he found some of his heaven on earth before departing.
I never had a steady job': JOE HEANEY: A LIFE IN SONG by Fred McCormish recordings are taken from a series of interviews conducted by Ewan MacColl and Peggy Seeger at their home in Beckenham in 1964. A transcript of the interviews is published on the Musical Traditions website at www.mustrad.org.uk together with a discussion of the ideological stance which lay behind the project. Here it is necessary only to explain that years of working with traditional singers and musicians had resulted in MacColl and Seeger adopting a partisan attitude against the approaches of earlier collectors. Where other collectors had typically viewed traditional performers as the passive bearers of spontaneous art, MacColl and Seeger believed that folksongs articulate the thoughts and feelings of the people who sing them. Therefore, in order to understand the songs, we have to understand the singer. We have to see the songs as a reflection of, and an integral part of, the singer's life and social world. Such an approach is commonplace nowadays, and is the standard working method of practically every other branch of social enquiry. In 1964, in the world of folksong collection, it bordered on the revolutionary. When dealing with a singer like Joe Heaney, however, we are led into a problem, for the subject of these recordings is something of an enigma. To the speaker of English he was Joe Heaney. To the Gaelic cultural revivalist, he was Seosamh Ó hÉanaí. To the cottagers of Connemara he was Joe Éiniú, which is the local form of his name in Gaelic. Different audiences, different songs, different expectations.
Joe sang forty one songs and fragments during those interviews, of which thirty three are on these discs. In a lifetime of majestic singing, Joe Heaney was never in better form than here. Nevertheless, several songs have been omitted. either because they are well represented on record already or, in one or two cases, the performances were slightly less than satisfactory the interview situation is not conducive to retakes. The songs have been supplemented with pieces of speech or actuality and these include a pair of folktales to accompany the songs An Droighneán Donn (The Brown Blackthorn) and Una Bhán (Fair Úna). With the exception of a few short folktales, whispers, as Joe called them. this is the first time that Joe Heaney's speaking voice has been heard on record. It is worth pointing out that neither the songs nor the actuality follow the interview sequence. The aim was not to reproduce the interviews in miniature, but to show how songs and singing intertwined with the life of Joe Heaney.
arna, which is the district of south Connemara where he grew to manhood. Chas all the qualifications to host one of the greatest folksong traditions on earth.
It is remote, barren and poverty stricken, and some of the flavour of the life, work and entertainment of Connemara is heard in the actuality on these discs. In recent years a certain amount of light industry has been introduced into the area. However, it remains essentially a fishing cum small holding economy, with the bulk of its inhabitants settled within a few hundred yards of the shore line. Gaelic is the first spoken language of the majority of its inhabitants, and it has been an outpost of Gaelic culture since the days when Cromwell banished the native Irish property holders to lands west of the Shannon. Along this bleak, inhospitable coast, Joe Heaney's forbears and confreres fished the Atlantic swells, dug the peat bogs for turf and grew potatoes in the bare, rocky soil. It is an unremittingly harsh environment, one made all the more so by the ruthless colonialism of foreign oppressors.
Assemble a group of aficionados of the Sean nós or old style of Gaelic singing, which is still the major form of musical expression in Connemara, and the collective opinion will be that Heaney was the idiom's greatest ever representative. Just like Michael Coleman, or Willie Clancy, or Johnny Doran, his artistry was such that it virtually defined the medium in which he performed. He was Carna to his bootstraps. There is no doubt that birth and background moulded Heaney's singing style, a style which stayed with him to the end of his days. There is no doubt either that he left Carna with a large repertoire of songs, and a perspective of life which had been shaped by poverty and hard living, and by folk and National School memories of Cromwell and the famine and landlordism and the Black and Tans. You don't have to look far into Heaney's repertoire to see that this perspective is reflected in many of the songs he sought out. But Heaney was much more than a paradigm of the Carna tradition. In a lifetime of wandering he picked up a great many songs and became many singers. He was the private singer of the kitchens of Connemara. He was the public face of Gaeldom at the Oireachtas, the annual festival of Gaelic culture. To the building labourers of Camden Town, he was a pub singer who regaled them with memories of far off shores and home. To the crowds at American folk festivals, he embodied an Ireland where the cottage door was always open, and the kettle was always on the turf fire, and the poitín still bubbled merrily and secretly nearby.
The fact that Joe Heaney spent most of his adult life away from Carna, therefore, seems to have had a major impact on the shape and content of his repertoire. Most of his Gaelic songs appear to have been learned in Carna: either before he moved away, or during infrequent visits home. Of the Gaelic songs sung during these interviews, only one, Éamonn an Chnoic (Ned of the Hill) is not widely known in Connemara. A good proportion of his English language songs were learned in Carna as well. For the most part these were importations from the English speaking world at large. It is not surprising to find The Bonny Boy and The Old Man Rocking the Cradle amongst them. Both songs must have had a strong appeal in a land where arranged marriage, often between people of disparate age groups, was the norm. For that matter, My Boy Willie is found wherever folksongs are sung in English, but its drowning theme must have held a special fascination for people who risk their lives wresting a living from the sea. The song has been recorded from several Connemara singers and it finds echoes in many Gaelic songs, including the lament for the drowned oarsmen, Currachaí na Trá Báine (The Currachs of Trá Báine). Other songs which Joe knew from childhood include O'Brien From Tipperary, a song from the American civil war, and a version of the pirate ballad, Captain Coulston. Joe knew this as The Tenant's Rights, which is the name of the ship.
whose crew and emigrant passengers jointly fight off a company of marauding pirates. It is also an oblique reference to the movement against landlordism which arose in the late 1870s. We find another oblique reference to landlordism in The Bogs of Shanaheever, which Joe called The Two Greyhounds. There are no local songs in English on these discs because, when Gaelic speakers write songs, they usually do so in their native tongue. The Two Greyhounds comes closest to being a local creation, although Shanaheever is actually north of Clifden, beyond the Gaelic speaking part of Connemara. Joe's notion that it was written by an emigrant in America is open to question. Even so, this story of a rabbit poacher, who emigrates to America on the death of his hunting dog. must have jerked a fierce response among a people forced out of their country by a class of rapacious rent gatherers.
The anti-landlord theme in Skibbereen is anything but oblique, and this story of eviction and famine and ultimate revenge would have gone down well with Joe's workmates in 1950s London. It is open to question though whether this song was part of his Carna inheritance, for it was far more popular with showbands and ballad groups than with Irish country singers. The author is unknown, but its theme is typical of compositions by nineteenth century middle class radicals. So, too is The Glen of Aherlow, a composition of the Tipperary poet, Charles Kickham, which he wrote to warn young Irishmen against joining the British army. The large numbers of nineteenth century Irish enlistments is proof that the warning went unheeded. Even so, Anti-English songs were staple fare in the pubs of Camden Town, and these tales of nineteenth century oppression are complemented by two songs from the Black and Tan period; The Upton Ambush and The Valley of Knockanure. There is probably not much substance, however, in Joe's contention that The Harp Without the Crown is a fragment from the Fenian uprising of 1867. The harp without the crown was an emblem of the Fenians, but the raising of it is a motif which occurs in several other maritime songs. The popularity of nationalist songs was matched by 'Come all ye's' like The Rocks of Bawn (one of the songs omitted from these discs) and 'weepies' like Erin Grá Mo Chroí and jokey songs of mismatched wedlock like Patsy McCann.
In such a milieu, however, it is hard to imagine that Joe would have found much of an audience for the Gaelic songs, or for that matter, for his big English language songs like The Banks of Claudy or Barbara Allen. During this time he was visited by collectors from Raidió Teilifís Éireann and the BBC. He recorded commercially in 1959, for Gael Linn of Dublin, and in 1960 Collector Records of London released a disc of three of his English language songs. Otherwise, in a world of building sites and shared digs and noisy pubs, these must have been lean years for the talent which made Joe Heaney such a powerful force in the Gaelic world.
The early sixties saw a partial acceptance of that talent into the British folk club movement. He began to attract invitations to sing around folk venues, and held a resident's chair at the Singers Club in London until his emigration to the USA. So highly thought of was he, that his residency was kept open, should he ever decide that America was not for him. Nevertheless, while Joe Heaney's singing was meat and drink to a hard core of enthusiasts, very few folkies then or now, were prepared to listen to Joe Heaney singing in Gaelic. That is a sad situation, and it probably explains the preponderance of English language songs sung during these interviews. Venues like The Singers Club excepted, the buckling of Joe Heaney to the English folk revival was not a happy one. Indeed, it is said that unresponsive audiences were a major factor in his decision to emigrate. Be that as it may, the folk revival brought him into contact with the ballad groups, The Dubliners and The Clancy Brothers, and their influence was instrumental in getting Joe established in America. The twenty years which he spent there fall outside this project, but it is worth observing that his acceptance was not as artistically uncompromised as many like to think. All the same, if audiences wanted, and got, The Real Old Mountain Dew, I Wish I Had Someone to Love Me, and The Claddagh Ring, they also got some of the great treasures of Gaelic folksong like Úna Bhán or Currachaí na Trá Báine, or Amhrán na hEascainne (The Song of the Eel), Joe's magnificent version of the ballad. Lord
Randal.
He would also have given them some of the livelier songs of Gaelic Ireland. Songs like Bean Pháidín (Páidín's wife) and Cailleach an Airgid (The Hag with the Money) and the macaronic or dual language Cúnnla, are sometimes held in lesser esteem than the bigger items. But whatever they lack in stature they make up for in vigour and wit. To complete the picture of Joe Heaney, three which arose in the late 1870s.
Some Songs Recorded By Joe Heaney
My Bonny Boy is Young The West of Ireland
Skibbereen
Bean Pháidín Páidín's Wife
Amhrán na hEascainne The Song of the Eel (Lord Randal)
As I Roved Out Story & Song:
An Droighneán Donn
The Brown Blackthorn
Caroline and her
Young Sailor Bold
Fishing in Connemara
Amhrán an Bhá
Song of the Drowning (Currachaí na Trá Báine)
Singing in Connemara The Jug of Punch
The Ferocious O'Flahertys
The Widow from Mayo
The Harp without the Crown Suantraí (lullaby) Seoithin Seo
Advice to Young Singers
The Valley of Knockanure
Whiskey Ó Roudeldum-Row Barbary Ellen
The Two Greyhounds
(The Bogs of Shanaheever)
The Old Woman of Wexford
The Banks of Claudy
Éamonn an Chnoic (Ned of the Hill)
My Boy Willie
Patsy McCann
Story & Song: Úna Bhán - Fair Úna
Cailleach an Airgid
The Hag with the Money
The Lonely Woods of Upton
O'Brien from Tipperary
Erin Grá mo Chroí Ireland, Love of my Heart
Cunnla
The Tennis Right (Captain Coulston)
Eanach Cuain (Annaghdown)
Beidh Aonach Amárach i gContae
an Chláir - Gréasaí Bróg
(There is a fair tomorrow in the County Clare The Shoemaker)
The Glen of Aherlow
Slán agus Beannacht le
Buaireamh an tSaoil
Farewell to the Worries of Life (One Morning in June)
The Old Man Rocking the Cradle.
'Where I come from they all sing like that';
SEOSAMH Ó hÉANAÍ:
HIS LIFE AND SINGING TRADITION
by Liam Mac Con Iomaire
Seosamh dhana was born on the 1st of October 1919, three
miles west of the village of Carna in the townland of An Aird Thoir (Ard East), an area long since renowned for its wealth of songs and stories. Though Joe is on record as saying that he never opened his mouth to sing in public until he was nearly twenty years of age, nevertheless he had absorbed by then, from his parents, relations and neighbours, a vast store of songs and stories that he carried with him, in his head and in his heart, when he was forced to emigrate, at a young age, first to Scotland, then to England and later on to the USA, where he died on May 1st 1984.
The American writer A B Lord, in his book "The Singer of Tales', recommends that 'One must always begin with the individual and work outwards from him to the group to which he belongs, namely to the singers who have influenced him and then to the district, and in ever increasing circles until the whole language area is included.' If we begin with Joe Heaney the individual - he was the fifth of seven children, four boys and three girls, all of whom could sing. His mother, Babe Sheáin Mhíchíl Shéamuis Ní Mhaoilchiaráin - (Mulkerrins) came from a long line of famous storytellers and Joe's older brother Michael, now dead, was to win a prize for storytelling at the Oireachtas, the annual cultural festival organised by Conradh na Gaeilge (The Gaelic League). Joe's father, Pádraig Ó hÉanaí, was a very fine singer and was a first cousin of Colm Ó Caoidheáin, from whom Séamus Ennis collected two hundred and twelve songs.
Just over the stone wall from Joe's house was perhaps the greatest sean- nós singing house in the whole of Ireland, that of Seán Choilm 'ac Dhonncha (McDonagh) and his talented family. Only one of that family is living there at the moment.
Dara Bán Mac Donnchadha, indisputably one of the finest living sean-nós singers. Over the road were two other McDonagh households, long since famous for their sean-nós singing, that of the late Seán 'ac Dhonncha or Johnnie McDonagh, who taught for many years in Ahascragh near Ballinasloe, Co. Galway and the famous Seán Jack 'ac Dhonncha, whose sons Josie and Johnnie are following in their father's footsteps. A short distance from Seán Jack's house was that of Beairtle Ó Conghaile who was known as 'Rí na Scéalaithe' (the king of the storytellers) and who was also a great singer. Joe spent a lot of time in Beairtle Ó Conghaile's house and learned a lot from him, especially the stories behind the songs.
Last but not least of Joe's neighbours, I must mention Máire an Ghabha Bean Uí Cheannabháin. This amazing woman had an extraordinary repertoire of religious songs and prayers and, from a very young age, he had access to that rich store. In fact, one of those religious songs. Caoineadh na dtrí Muire (The Lament of the Three Marys), was made famous by Joe when he recorded it for Gael Linn in 1957.
Joe went to the local national school, Scoil na hAirde, where Seán 'ac Dhonncha or Johnnie McDonagh, the previously mentioned famous traditional singer and a lifelong friend, was a class ahead of him. Joe is on record as saying, 'Bhí an t-ádh orainn go raibh an bheirt mhúinteoirí ab fhearr in Éirinn againn...' (We were lucky to have the best two teachers in Ireland, Seán Ó Conchúir from Mayo and his wife, Bríd Ní Fhlatharta from Carraroe). Seán 'ac Dhonncha and others have told me that Bríd Bean Uí Chonchúir was untiring and unsparing of herself in promoting sean-nós songs in school. She organised competitions to see which of the girls and boys would learn the most sean-nós songs and Joe was very often ahead of his classmates. By all accounts he was very bright at school. He wrote poetry in Irish which was published in the monthly journal 'Ar Aghaidh', under the pen-name 'Loch na gCaor', the name of the local lake.
Joe won a scholarship to a preparatory college for primary teachers, Coláiste Einde, which was based in Dublin at the time but less than two years ater when he was coming home for the Easter holidays one of the priests in charge of the college told Joe that he was not to return. I don't know what, or indeed if any reason was given, but I am told that it could have been something as trivial, by today's standards, as smoking cigarettes. I need not comment on the harshness and injustice of such a cruel decision, but we can imagine how the young man felt that Easter on his way home on the train to Galway and on the bus from Galway to Carna. There was worse to come, however. When he got off the bus in Carna a coffin was being carried into the church there. When he enquired whose funeral it was he was told it was that of his own father.. He had not been informed, which might seem unusual to us nowadays, but we must remember that this was the 1930s when communications were not what they are today and in any case, he may have been expected home a few days earlier.
So Seosamh Ó hÉanaí still in his early teens had to earn his living by the sweat of his brow... not that Joe ever saw any loss of dignity in manual labour or working on the buildings as he had to do in Scotland and in England in the years ahead. He worked for a farmer in East Galway for a period, in Newbridge near Mount Bellew, which could possibly account for his fondness of The Rocks of Bawn, with its opening line, 'Don't hire with any master till you know what your work will be!"
Joe sang publicly for the first time at a Feis in Carna in 1940 and was invited to sing at the Oireachtas in Dublin later that year where he won a prize and where he was to win many others in the following six years until he emigrated in 1946. It was around this time too that he attracted public attention when he sang O'Brien From Tipperary at a sailing regatta in nearby Roundstone on the feast of Saints Peter and Paul, the 29th of June a great day for sailing regattas all over Connemara and the Aran Islands. This was the first song in English that he learned from his father who, incidentally, had a good collection of songs in English as well as the old songs in Irish. Joe was awarded first prize at the Oireachtas in 1942, when Sorcha Ní Ghuairim, also from the Carna region, won first prize in the Women's Competition and they were photographed together in the Irish Press. Joe met Séamus Ennis at the Oireachtas that year and Ennis went to Carna shortly afterwards and recorded songs from Joe.
The folk song collector, Tom Munnelly, in an essay he wrote on Seosamh Ó hÉanaí in Dál gCais No. 7 in 1984, commented: "This was the beginning of a lifelong friendship with the collector Séamus Ennis. This was a comradeship which emitted more sparks than the blacksmith's forge. They sought each other and fought each other... continually."
Joe went to Clydebank in Glasgow in 1947 where an uncle of his and others from Carna were working. He lodged with a Connolly family from the Caladh Mhainse area of Carna, married the daughter of the house, Mary, some time in the late forties and they had four children; Jackie Heaney, the eldest, two daughters, Patricia and Barbara, and the youngest son, Michael. The marriage was not a happy one. Joe drifted down to London where he lived until the mid-fifties, returning now and again to Glasgow. He was to sever all family links for good in 1955. His wife, Mary, died of pleurisy on the 20th of May 1966 and she is buried in Glasgow. Joe had an address in Southampton when he came to the Oireachtas in Dublin in 1955 where, as well as winning the men's competition, he won the Gold Medal in the open competition for previous winners, men and women.
Tom Munnelly says that, while in London, Joe: 'naturally came into contact with other Irish musicians and singers including Michael Gorman, Paddy Taylor. Roger Sherlock, Bobby Casey, Máirtín Byrnes and Willie Clancy. It was here in the late '50s and early '60s that Ewan MacColl and A.L. Lloyd began running folk clubs. This was the beginning of the Folk Revival in Britain and many of the Irish musicians domiciled across the water were asked to play in English clubs. MacColl and Lloyd ran the most prestigious of these clubs, "The Singers Club', and to their credit they frequently had Ó hÉanaí to perform there."
Gabe Sullivan, who was later to make a record with him for the Green Linnet label, met Joe in Galway in 1958 and shared a house with him in London in the early 60s. Joe smoked heavily, Gabe remembers, but he was not a heavy drinker. The pubs in Camden Town in which Joe sang then were The Stores, The Laurel Tree (where he met Willie Clancy for the first time in 1954) and The Bedford, where Margaret Barry reigned supreme in the late '50s and early '60s.
Riobard Mac Góráin of Gael Linn invited Joe to sing at the Oícheanta Seanchais (Traditional Nights) in the Damer Hall in Dublin in 1957, Gael Linn's contribution to a festival called An Tóstal, and was so impressed by Joe's singing that he brought him back from England every year through to 1961, to make a series of records for Gael Linn.
We were now into the ballad boom that was Dublin in the early 60s. The Clancy Brothers were home from America and were all the rage. The Dubliners were forming into a formidable group in O'Donoghue's pub in Merrion Row, Dublin and Joe Heaney came back from London to take up residence there as well, together with his old friend and sparring partner, Séamus Ennis. Ronnie Drew and his wife Déirdre became very friendly with Joe, and Ronnie asked him to sing with the Dubliners in the Gate Theatre. The show was a great success and Joe's powerful singing in Irish and in English was now being heard by a wider audience in his own country for the first time. It was in the early sixties too that Peggy Jordan rented cinemas, first the Grafton Cinema and then the Green Cinema, for late night ballad sessions and Joe was a regular contributor. Both Joe and Séamus Ennis stayed in Peggy's house for a period and she remembers Joe as being "always a thorough gentleman". Joe stayed with Déirdre and Ronnie Drew for a time as well; he spent more than a year with them in their house in Wellington Road and it was from their house that Joe left for America in 1965. It was Joe, of course, who gave Ronnie the song Seven Drunken Nights that reached number one in the English charts for the Dubliners, not that either Ronnie or Joe thought it was a great song, but it was undeniably a commercial success.
The Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem were very popular in the mid- sixties and were very friendly with Joe. Tom Clancy invited him over to the Newport Folk Festival of 1965 and paid his way over and back, a gesture which Joe himself was often to acknowledge with gratitude. The Newport Folk Festival of 1965 drew the attention of the world media; it was the festival where Bob Dylan came on stage with an electric guitar instead of the acoustic guitar and where Bob Dylan's manager, Albert Grossman and the widely respected musicologist, Alan Lomax, were seen rolling on the ground, literally at one another's throat. It was the year of the turbulent marriage of Folk and Rock.
Joe Heaney sang at the festival for 20 minutes each day for the three days of the festival and sang again at the concerts at night; in the words of Liam Clancy: "Joe really bowled them over!" Alan Lomax brought Joe and Liam Clancy out to the sea cliffs near Newport and he filmed them swapping songs. on black and white film with sound. Joe performed at the Philadelphia Folk Festival also that year, then came home to Ireland and 'went to America for good' in 1966, settling in New York city.
When he first came to New York he stayed with a Deasy family from Bohola in Co Mayo who were living in Brooklyn and whose son, Jack, was friendly with the manager of the Clancy Brothers, Gerry Campbell. Campbell had an apartment in a very plush apartment block in Manhattan, right next door to the Dakota, where John Lennon was shot dead some years later. Gerry got Joe a job as doorman and elevator operator in 135 Central Park West. Among those living there then was Merv Griffin, whose people came from Co Clare and who had a coast to coast television show at the time.
Merv Griffin was coming to Ireland at some point and he asked Joe where he should go to hear good music. Joe directed him to O'Donoghue's in Dublin and to Clare, where he knew he was going anyhow. When Merv walked into O'Donoghue's the first thing he saw was Joe Heaney's picture on the wall and, to make a long story short, when he returned to the States he had Joe on his show for 20 minutes on St Patrick's Night. Joe could claim later that he was the first person ever to speak Irish on the Mary Griffin Show.
Mick Moloney, another Irish singer and musician who was with the University of Pennsylvania at the time and who performed with Joe on several occasions wrote in the Sunday Tribune in 1984 just after Joe's death. 'For years he worked as an elevator operator in Manhattan. He sang rarely during this time. On the odd occasion he performed, it was never under the auspices of Irish or Irish-American people or organisations. Mostly it was cultural activists in the American folk music revival who booked Joe for festivals and concerts. The pattern was to continue for the rest of Joe's life in America."
In 1980 he was appointed as a part-time teacher in Irish Folklore at Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut and this, in addition to his public performances, enabled Joe finally to give up his Manhattan job and teach and perform full-time. Just when his Wesleyan contract terminated he was appointed to a similar position in the Ethnomusicology Department of the University of Washington in far off Seattle. Just before he left for the Northwest in the beginning of January 1982 Mick Moloney spoke to Joe in his apartment in Brooklyn. He was happy about the move to Seattle: "I am doing what I like", he said, "and no man can ask for more than that."
Mick Moloney goes on to say: 'Joe continued to captivate audiences at festivals and concerts. It is sad that most people in Ireland never had a chance to see him in action. Two hours listening to Joe seemed to pass by in a matter of minutes as with words and song he wove a spell, compelling and at times mesmerising. His finest hour of all came in July 1982 when he was awarded by The National Endowment for the Arts the National Heritage Award for Excellence in Folk Arts, the highest award that the United States can confer on a traditional artist. On that unforgettable occasion in the nation's capital, surrounded by some of the finest artists and craftsperson in the land. Joe was at his greatest. He paid eloquent tribute to the old men of Connemara who had taught him so much about art and life. He sang his all-time favourites, the stirring tale of Morrissey and the Russian Sailor, Casadh an tSúgáin, and his favourite of all, The Rocks of Bawn."
In a letter to Máire Davitt just after receiving this prestigious award Joe writes: "Tharla rud mór dom féin, don Ghaeilge agus don sean-nós uilig. Fuair mé an National Heritage Award 6 Rialtas na Státaí Aontaithe... Bhí sé thar barr an bealach ar chaith siad liom. Seo é an chéad uair riamh a bronnadh an 'Fellowship', mar a thugann siad air. Plaque deas agus 5000 dollar. Tá sé handy le haghaidh cúpla seachtain saoire. Bhí iontas orthu nach raibh sé ar pháipéir na hÉireann. Níl a fhios agam an raibh. Ar aon nós seo é an review agus ainm na ndaoine. Is mé féin an t-aon European". (A great thing happened to myself. to the Irish language and to the sean-nós generally. I got the National Heritage Award from the Government of the United States. It was great the way they treated me. This is the first time ever the 'Fellowship', as they call it, was awarded... A lovely plaque and 5000 dollars. It is handy for a few weeks holidays. They were surprised that it did not appear in the Irish newspapers. I wonder if it did. Anyhow, this is the review and the names of the people. I am the only European.)
Joe stayed mostly with Máire and Michael Davitt during the six weeks he spent in Ireland in that Autumn of '82 and little did they realise that they would never see him again as he boarded the Galway train, together with his old friend, Máirtín Byrnes, to spend Joe's last night in Ireland in Seán Mac Donncha's house in Ahascragh near Ballinasloe, before flying back to the States the following day. Johnnie, his wife Bríd and Máirtín Byrnes saw him off at Shannon and Joe, after shaking hands with them, walked straight out to the plane without looking back once.
Joe returned to Seattle and continued with his teaching and singing. He planned to come home again in 1984 but in February of that year he had to cancel a performance in the Galway Trader there and he was brought into the University Hospital suffering from emphysema. Joe had a weak chest since childhood and his heavy smoking for most of his life did not improve matters. He was in and out of hospital during February and March of '84 and he left hospital for the last time in an ambulance on Good Friday, the 20th of April, to convalesce at home. He was cared for in his apartment by a group of students and friends, including Cáit Callen who was caring for him the night he died. When Joe asked Cáit to call a priest she began to look for an Irish-speaking priest and she found Father Lane who came and attended to Joe. Later in the night he lost his speech. An ambulance was sent for and Joe died of congestive heart failure in the ambulance on the way to hospital on May Day 1984.
Mick Moloney had this to say in the Sunday Tribune: 'It wasn't altogether inappropriate that Joe should have passed away in a country that had rewarded him so much more in his lifetime than his own native land that he loved so much even in exile."
Tom Munnelly has the following account of the funeral: 'On the journey from Shannon the cortege halted in Galway where it was met by the Bishop and Mayor of Galway and a short ceremony was held in Galway Cathedral before the funeral cars wound their way through the rocky Connemara landscape to the village of the singer's birth. Another ceremony was held in the church in Carna before gathering mourners dispersed for the night.
The following morning a most moving funeral Mass was held in the small church which could not hope to cater for the enormous crowd which had gathered from all over Ireland and abroad. The removal to the graveyard was an awesome sight, for even when the head of the procession had travelled the couple of miles to Muighros, the tail had not even left Carna. It was here in the churchyard that we were forcibly reminded that we were not merely burying a fine artist but a man whose early death brought much grief to his relations and friends who were so obviously deeply distressed."
Mick Moloney wrote at the time of Joe's death: 'He was a gifted singer and storyteller and a consummate performer; the only solo unaccompanied singer I have ever come across who could hold riveted for hours on end any audience of any size, no matter what its age, or ethnic composition. I was privileged to perform with him on several occasions in recent years and as I watched him I couldn't help feeling that even his physical appearance, particularly his gaunt, craggy facial features symbolised the rugged, dignified grandeur of the Connemara landscape whence he came. He was Ireland's supreme cultural ambassador abroad. That he could never make a living in Ireland, doing what he loved so much, is, to say the least of it, ironic."
I'll leave the last word to Joe himself. Lucy Simpson, a student of Joe's from New York whom I met at Féile Joe Éinniú in Carna earlier this year told me that when people praised Joe profusely for his singing he would just say: "Stop making a fuss about my singing: where I come from they all sing like that."
JOE HEANEY: ASSORTED MEMORIES
by Peggy Seeger
LONDON THE SINGER'S CLUB
The Singers Club, London, where Joe was a resident for years. I don't mind any particular evening - what remains in my mind is the extraordinary dignity that Joe had on stage, even when he had several - or many- too many drinks. He was never incapable of singing - or indeed remaining upright- under such circumstances. The songs in the Gaelic were his favourites and he would sink into them as into the arms of a lover. He would absent himself into this realm of comfort, tradition, memory - wherever it was he went. The audience was very aware of the nature of his absorption, for few of our singers had it. Ewan had it when he sang the long ballads. I hope I had it sometimes. But Joe would fix his eyes somewhere in the far distance and his face would go almost stony, his hands on his knees and his mouth set. Like a singing statue. When he sang in English, he was sociable, almost puckish. He and Ewan had an excellent relationship on stage. Two cronies who just enjoyed each other's singing to the full.
BECKENHAM AT EWAN & PEGGY'S
35 Stanley Avenue, Beckenham, Kent, shortly before Joe left for the USA. We invited him to stay for several weeks so that we could record him in depth.. He would sit, glass or teacup in hand, and sing, talk, tell stories and jokes for hours. His face was extraordinary, as if it had been hewn of granite. His eyes were piercing and his manner, to me, quite courtly, almost cautious. I ran the machines and Ewan ran the interview. It was at these sessions that I began to really appreciate the intellectual status of the man, how purposeful and planned was his singing, how careful was his choice of repertoire, pitch, pace and decoration. He had learned from the masters and knew that he was a master himself. He appreciated the hospitality and the food and was a good house guest played with the children, kept his room, person and effects in order and really enjoyed having a chance to talk about the craft of singing as opposed to just singing the songs. He was completely articulate even with enough As-It-Comes whisky down him to fell an ox.
DUBLIN THE GRAFTON THEATRE
A Saturday afternoon at the Grafton Theatre, Dublin (probably during the 1960s). The line-up was The Dubliners, Peggy Seeger/Ewan MacColl and Joe Heaney. I have no idea whose cockeyed idea it was to book anyone but The Dubliners for such an occasion but the experience haunted me, as I am sure it must have haunted Joe, for years afterward. Half the audience was sleeping drunk. The other half was rowdy drunk. The concert was broken into two halves and each of the three acts was to appear in each half. Joe, being the 'less well known was to open. He was booed off by this despicable crowd after the first two lines of his first song. It is to our eternal disgrace that we other artists went on after he was forced off, almost in tears. The Dubliners came on and you couldn't hear them for the cheering and raucous cries. Ewan and I came on and gave what must have been a most inappropriate program for the occasion. Only boycotting would have been suitable. It's the only time I have ever given a concert with police patrolling the aisle and removing sick drunks - the officers congratulated us, Ewan and me, for "reaching the interval". The show was closed down after the intermission. I am sure that the lack of appreciation in Ireland for Joe Heaney at that time was one of the reasons that he emigrated.
AMERICA
I was sorry when he moved to the States for I felt that these islands had matured enough to appreciate him. The Singers Club certainly missed him. When we saw him in the States later he had given up the smoking and the drink. He was singing excellently, had been given awards and grants and was being squired around by flocks of young women. I am glad he found some of his heaven on earth before departing.
I never had a steady job': JOE HEANEY: A LIFE IN SONG by Fred McCormish recordings are taken from a series of interviews conducted by Ewan MacColl and Peggy Seeger at their home in Beckenham in 1964. A transcript of the interviews is published on the Musical Traditions website at www.mustrad.org.uk together with a discussion of the ideological stance which lay behind the project. Here it is necessary only to explain that years of working with traditional singers and musicians had resulted in MacColl and Seeger adopting a partisan attitude against the approaches of earlier collectors. Where other collectors had typically viewed traditional performers as the passive bearers of spontaneous art, MacColl and Seeger believed that folksongs articulate the thoughts and feelings of the people who sing them. Therefore, in order to understand the songs, we have to understand the singer. We have to see the songs as a reflection of, and an integral part of, the singer's life and social world. Such an approach is commonplace nowadays, and is the standard working method of practically every other branch of social enquiry. In 1964, in the world of folksong collection, it bordered on the revolutionary. When dealing with a singer like Joe Heaney, however, we are led into a problem, for the subject of these recordings is something of an enigma. To the speaker of English he was Joe Heaney. To the Gaelic cultural revivalist, he was Seosamh Ó hÉanaí. To the cottagers of Connemara he was Joe Éiniú, which is the local form of his name in Gaelic. Different audiences, different songs, different expectations.
Joe sang forty one songs and fragments during those interviews, of which thirty three are on these discs. In a lifetime of majestic singing, Joe Heaney was never in better form than here. Nevertheless, several songs have been omitted. either because they are well represented on record already or, in one or two cases, the performances were slightly less than satisfactory the interview situation is not conducive to retakes. The songs have been supplemented with pieces of speech or actuality and these include a pair of folktales to accompany the songs An Droighneán Donn (The Brown Blackthorn) and Una Bhán (Fair Úna). With the exception of a few short folktales, whispers, as Joe called them. this is the first time that Joe Heaney's speaking voice has been heard on record. It is worth pointing out that neither the songs nor the actuality follow the interview sequence. The aim was not to reproduce the interviews in miniature, but to show how songs and singing intertwined with the life of Joe Heaney.
arna, which is the district of south Connemara where he grew to manhood. Chas all the qualifications to host one of the greatest folksong traditions on earth.
It is remote, barren and poverty stricken, and some of the flavour of the life, work and entertainment of Connemara is heard in the actuality on these discs. In recent years a certain amount of light industry has been introduced into the area. However, it remains essentially a fishing cum small holding economy, with the bulk of its inhabitants settled within a few hundred yards of the shore line. Gaelic is the first spoken language of the majority of its inhabitants, and it has been an outpost of Gaelic culture since the days when Cromwell banished the native Irish property holders to lands west of the Shannon. Along this bleak, inhospitable coast, Joe Heaney's forbears and confreres fished the Atlantic swells, dug the peat bogs for turf and grew potatoes in the bare, rocky soil. It is an unremittingly harsh environment, one made all the more so by the ruthless colonialism of foreign oppressors.
Assemble a group of aficionados of the Sean nós or old style of Gaelic singing, which is still the major form of musical expression in Connemara, and the collective opinion will be that Heaney was the idiom's greatest ever representative. Just like Michael Coleman, or Willie Clancy, or Johnny Doran, his artistry was such that it virtually defined the medium in which he performed. He was Carna to his bootstraps. There is no doubt that birth and background moulded Heaney's singing style, a style which stayed with him to the end of his days. There is no doubt either that he left Carna with a large repertoire of songs, and a perspective of life which had been shaped by poverty and hard living, and by folk and National School memories of Cromwell and the famine and landlordism and the Black and Tans. You don't have to look far into Heaney's repertoire to see that this perspective is reflected in many of the songs he sought out. But Heaney was much more than a paradigm of the Carna tradition. In a lifetime of wandering he picked up a great many songs and became many singers. He was the private singer of the kitchens of Connemara. He was the public face of Gaeldom at the Oireachtas, the annual festival of Gaelic culture. To the building labourers of Camden Town, he was a pub singer who regaled them with memories of far off shores and home. To the crowds at American folk festivals, he embodied an Ireland where the cottage door was always open, and the kettle was always on the turf fire, and the poitín still bubbled merrily and secretly nearby.
The fact that Joe Heaney spent most of his adult life away from Carna, therefore, seems to have had a major impact on the shape and content of his repertoire. Most of his Gaelic songs appear to have been learned in Carna: either before he moved away, or during infrequent visits home. Of the Gaelic songs sung during these interviews, only one, Éamonn an Chnoic (Ned of the Hill) is not widely known in Connemara. A good proportion of his English language songs were learned in Carna as well. For the most part these were importations from the English speaking world at large. It is not surprising to find The Bonny Boy and The Old Man Rocking the Cradle amongst them. Both songs must have had a strong appeal in a land where arranged marriage, often between people of disparate age groups, was the norm. For that matter, My Boy Willie is found wherever folksongs are sung in English, but its drowning theme must have held a special fascination for people who risk their lives wresting a living from the sea. The song has been recorded from several Connemara singers and it finds echoes in many Gaelic songs, including the lament for the drowned oarsmen, Currachaí na Trá Báine (The Currachs of Trá Báine). Other songs which Joe knew from childhood include O'Brien From Tipperary, a song from the American civil war, and a version of the pirate ballad, Captain Coulston. Joe knew this as The Tenant's Rights, which is the name of the ship.
whose crew and emigrant passengers jointly fight off a company of marauding pirates. It is also an oblique reference to the movement against landlordism which arose in the late 1870s. We find another oblique reference to landlordism in The Bogs of Shanaheever, which Joe called The Two Greyhounds. There are no local songs in English on these discs because, when Gaelic speakers write songs, they usually do so in their native tongue. The Two Greyhounds comes closest to being a local creation, although Shanaheever is actually north of Clifden, beyond the Gaelic speaking part of Connemara. Joe's notion that it was written by an emigrant in America is open to question. Even so, this story of a rabbit poacher, who emigrates to America on the death of his hunting dog. must have jerked a fierce response among a people forced out of their country by a class of rapacious rent gatherers.
The anti-landlord theme in Skibbereen is anything but oblique, and this story of eviction and famine and ultimate revenge would have gone down well with Joe's workmates in 1950s London. It is open to question though whether this song was part of his Carna inheritance, for it was far more popular with showbands and ballad groups than with Irish country singers. The author is unknown, but its theme is typical of compositions by nineteenth century middle class radicals. So, too is The Glen of Aherlow, a composition of the Tipperary poet, Charles Kickham, which he wrote to warn young Irishmen against joining the British army. The large numbers of nineteenth century Irish enlistments is proof that the warning went unheeded. Even so, Anti-English songs were staple fare in the pubs of Camden Town, and these tales of nineteenth century oppression are complemented by two songs from the Black and Tan period; The Upton Ambush and The Valley of Knockanure. There is probably not much substance, however, in Joe's contention that The Harp Without the Crown is a fragment from the Fenian uprising of 1867. The harp without the crown was an emblem of the Fenians, but the raising of it is a motif which occurs in several other maritime songs. The popularity of nationalist songs was matched by 'Come all ye's' like The Rocks of Bawn (one of the songs omitted from these discs) and 'weepies' like Erin Grá Mo Chroí and jokey songs of mismatched wedlock like Patsy McCann.
In such a milieu, however, it is hard to imagine that Joe would have found much of an audience for the Gaelic songs, or for that matter, for his big English language songs like The Banks of Claudy or Barbara Allen. During this time he was visited by collectors from Raidió Teilifís Éireann and the BBC. He recorded commercially in 1959, for Gael Linn of Dublin, and in 1960 Collector Records of London released a disc of three of his English language songs. Otherwise, in a world of building sites and shared digs and noisy pubs, these must have been lean years for the talent which made Joe Heaney such a powerful force in the Gaelic world.
The early sixties saw a partial acceptance of that talent into the British folk club movement. He began to attract invitations to sing around folk venues, and held a resident's chair at the Singers Club in London until his emigration to the USA. So highly thought of was he, that his residency was kept open, should he ever decide that America was not for him. Nevertheless, while Joe Heaney's singing was meat and drink to a hard core of enthusiasts, very few folkies then or now, were prepared to listen to Joe Heaney singing in Gaelic. That is a sad situation, and it probably explains the preponderance of English language songs sung during these interviews. Venues like The Singers Club excepted, the buckling of Joe Heaney to the English folk revival was not a happy one. Indeed, it is said that unresponsive audiences were a major factor in his decision to emigrate. Be that as it may, the folk revival brought him into contact with the ballad groups, The Dubliners and The Clancy Brothers, and their influence was instrumental in getting Joe established in America. The twenty years which he spent there fall outside this project, but it is worth observing that his acceptance was not as artistically uncompromised as many like to think. All the same, if audiences wanted, and got, The Real Old Mountain Dew, I Wish I Had Someone to Love Me, and The Claddagh Ring, they also got some of the great treasures of Gaelic folksong like Úna Bhán or Currachaí na Trá Báine, or Amhrán na hEascainne (The Song of the Eel), Joe's magnificent version of the ballad. Lord
Randal.
He would also have given them some of the livelier songs of Gaelic Ireland. Songs like Bean Pháidín (Páidín's wife) and Cailleach an Airgid (The Hag with the Money) and the macaronic or dual language Cúnnla, are sometimes held in lesser esteem than the bigger items. But whatever they lack in stature they make up for in vigour and wit. To complete the picture of Joe Heaney, three which arose in the late 1870s.
Some Songs Recorded By Joe Heaney
My Bonny Boy is Young The West of Ireland
Skibbereen
Bean Pháidín Páidín's Wife
Amhrán na hEascainne The Song of the Eel (Lord Randal)
As I Roved Out Story & Song:
An Droighneán Donn
The Brown Blackthorn
Caroline and her
Young Sailor Bold
Fishing in Connemara
Amhrán an Bhá
Song of the Drowning (Currachaí na Trá Báine)
Singing in Connemara The Jug of Punch
The Ferocious O'Flahertys
The Widow from Mayo
The Harp without the Crown Suantraí (lullaby) Seoithin Seo
Advice to Young Singers
The Valley of Knockanure
Whiskey Ó Roudeldum-Row Barbary Ellen
The Two Greyhounds
(The Bogs of Shanaheever)
The Old Woman of Wexford
The Banks of Claudy
Éamonn an Chnoic (Ned of the Hill)
My Boy Willie
Patsy McCann
Story & Song: Úna Bhán - Fair Úna
Cailleach an Airgid
The Hag with the Money
The Lonely Woods of Upton
O'Brien from Tipperary
Erin Grá mo Chroí Ireland, Love of my Heart
Cunnla
The Tennis Right (Captain Coulston)
Eanach Cuain (Annaghdown)
Beidh Aonach Amárach i gContae
an Chláir - Gréasaí Bróg
(There is a fair tomorrow in the County Clare The Shoemaker)
The Glen of Aherlow
Slán agus Beannacht le
Buaireamh an tSaoil
Farewell to the Worries of Life (One Morning in June)
The Old Man Rocking the Cradle.
