Lecture on The Songs of Duhallow By Tim Browne

Transcription

1 Lecture on The Songs of Duhallow By Tim Browne Dancer (for Sarah Curran) Words Donal Ó Siodhacháin; music Tim Browne She dances a dance by herself, And smiles to a face in her mind, Longing for arms that held her In a land that s far behind. Away from the parents she cherished, In sad exile far o er the sea, Her dreams are centred in Ireland And the things now that never can be. She dances a dance by herself, And smiles to a face in her mind, Longing for arms that held her In a land that s far behind. When Erin was broken and bleeding And the tyrant secure in his seat, Her lover had raised a rebellion That ended in loss and defeat. And she dances a dance by herself, She smiles to a face in her mind, Longing for arms that held her In a land that s far behind. The cruel foe her Emmet had hunted Before he was captured and tried, But he stood by the cause he defended And true to them both he had died. She dances a dance by herself, And smiles to a face in her mind, Longing for arms that held her In a land that s far behind. She dances a dance by herself, And she smiles to a face in her mind, Longing for arms that held her In a land that s far behind. Let me switch this yoke on... I have a few notes made here in case I d forget anything. So, Dia diabh, agus cead mile failte a gach aon i sa sheomra. Welcome to Teach an Fhile. I just started there with a song that I put a melody to. It s a poem that Donal wrote some years ago, when we started off the Féile Duhallow, there about six or seven years ago. So, just to mark where we are I thought I d start that way. 1

2 Welcome anyway, and I ll give you an idea what I m going to do for the next hour and feel free to throw stuff up at me if I m getting side- tracked. So, I ll sing a few songs that are relevant, probably five or six songs, that are relevant to Duhallow and the greater area we are calling Duhallow. For anyone who mightn t be from the area, Duhallow is roughly the area that s between I suppose the the Mullaghareirk Mountains and the Boggaraghs, like from Rathmore- ish, I suppose, to Mallow. That s roughly the confines of Duhallow, but it s not... there s several... we re not aliens or strangers to our neighbours. I ll sing five or six songs anyway, and we ll take a look at some of the writers of the songs over the past couple of hundred years. This is the English language singing tradition of Duhallow I m going to focus on. My interest in the songs is in the historical perspective of the songs. We ll tell a few stories and I ll come back to that historical perspective of the songs later on. At the end we ll hopefully sing a few songs or one song anyway together. I have a handout here of a song and I m going to hand it out at the very end. And Pat will give a little talk at the very end, because tonight is the last night in the four- part series that she put together, which has been a great success, and fair play to her doing it. So, who are we going to talk about? John Philpot Curran, you might have heard of him; Edward Holland, he was a barber poet, kind of contemporaneous with John Philpot Curran. This is in the English language side of it now, but they are contemporaneous with Eoghan Rua Ó Súilleabháin, so if you know that time, it s like you know the late 1700s, or mid- 1700s to the early 1800s. So, we ll be looking at other people like Edward Walsh, who Fr JJ has edited in his Tragic Troubadour. He s an authority, an international authority, on Edward Walsh. Donal also edited Walsh, and we ll come back to him. Patrick Bohan, Bill Flynn, Dan Sheahan, Denis Lane, Dan O Horgan they re just some of the names I ll be bouncing off and you mightn t have, some of you mightn t have heard of these people, so that s why I ve picked a small cross section, because it s far too complex and deep to go into the whole lot of the singing tradition, because it s going way back. So, what they all have on common is that they ve written songs that you d still hear. You know, you mightn t hear them every night like, but they are there. And, you know, that s what we re trying to save. And it will become more apparent, anyway. So, this fella here, this book Stories In Song is a project that was done in 2006/2007. It was launched in 2007 and it was funded by, part- funded by An Deis scheme of the Irish Arts Council, and IRD Duhallow also threw up a few bob. It didn t quite cover it, but it got it done, and this was a great start to it, because it collected stuff that had already been published in several different publications, like Cumann Luachra and Seanachas Duhallow, and maybe the Boherbue Millenium Magazine, and little parochial magazines that came out over the last forty or fifty years. A lot of the time they tend to use a page maybe, to fill up a page, someone will have an old song or an old poem. Tis a great place to collect stuff - a bit like Ireland s Own or that, that you d have a kind of a song out on its own, with no knowledge of who wrote it, but people had it, and I collected quite a few of them and put them into one dedicated 2

3 collection, as a start. It s called Volume 1. So, I ll be drawing on that. And there s quite a bit of material. There s about a hundred or so pieces in that collection. So, the songs in the collection, they deal with a lot of different topics, like there s songs there from The Land League; there s songs there loads of them from the War of Independence; there s songs of love; there s songs of love of place; immigration; the supernatural; satirical and political... some of them are very good; and we ll just bounce off a couple of them, just for the flavour of it. As I said earlier, it is from the historical perspective as well is what I like about them. This is my interest I singing them. It can be a very, very informative means of trying to look at local history. History, as you know can be written... tis the winner writes the history, but the Bard records it properly. So, we ll just have a quick look at the words we ll be using, like folk song. I started with a contemporary folk song. So we ll just have a quick look at those kinds of definitions, to get us into the start of the first song, because these words come up so often through the texts. The earliest musical instrument we know is the human voice. Humans were imitating animals, and beating sticks off of hollow timber, and making sounds. The earliest records, the scholars tell us, is that this type of writing was on clay tablets called cuneiform. The earliest form of written song dates to five thousand years ago. They re known as the Mesopotamia Hurriam Songs. So there was a lot of action going on there. It was a very advanced culture, over there in the Middle East. There s an Epitaph in Turkey which has words and music dated to around 200BC 100 AD. The Old Testament tells of Moses leading the chosen few from slavery, and when they got to the other side they had a big Halleluiah, they sang a song, a hymn, of deliverance. The New Testament has mention of singing at the Last Supper. And that brings us on up to Pope Gregory in the Middle Ages, and the Gregorian chant, and people singing together in choirs. And there was a lot of secrecy attached to it. Then up to the eighteenth century I know I m jumping very fast but up to the eighteenth century a new word came into the... sorry the mid- nineteenth century... a word called folklore was introduced, and it kind of... it created a lot of different genres, like folk music, folk dance, folk culture. That all comes under the folklore brand, or the name folklore. That causes difficulty when you are trying to explain it, because it s very hard to say what a folk song should have, or shouldn t have, to categorise it as a folk song. What would be the characteristic of a folk song? Well there s many different ones: a traditional song which would have a modern interpretation, like Bob Dylan, Planxty, Sean Corcoran, these people, the Clancy Brothers in the 1960s. They were taking old songs and giving them modern interpretations, which you would do, just like I did there, and that would be classed as contemporary folk music. But all these songs from the old time... a traditional folk song is usually.. just before I get to that, I ll just mention, there s a nice little reference here that I 3

4 came across today, from Colm Ó Lochlann, who was a great collector of music. He regarded himself as a ballad monger. In 1965, this is what he said about the ballad, and it s an interesting little... He says, the ballad, an authentic reflex of the Irish spirit, in Gaelic or English, has come into its own. Organisations like An Óige, Múintír na Tíre, the ICA, Macra na Féirme... have revived these country songs with enthusiasm. Hardly a night but come common room, club hall or public house resounds with ballads, the most popular being those with a chorus. I have known ballads in Irish and English sung and taken up with joy in Norway, Belgium, Holland, France and Germany at international conferences. One might almost claim for the ballad a good share in building International friendship. That s a pretty strong statement there. Starting in the twentieth century, a new form of popular folk music evolved from traditional folk music. Many songs the people sang long ago, and which are now sung and interpreted in modern times, are generally termed contemporary folk songs. So, if that kind of makes sense... it s kind of self evident. If you hear a traditional singer, you d know a traditional singer. Scholars agree that there s no easy way to explain what a folk song is, in musical terms, but the common form in folk is usually, AA BB, just like a jig. You have the first part repeated and a double second part repeated, just like the rhythm of it. It s not always that way, but that s the general kind of rhythm of the folk song. Broadly speaking, traditional folk songs are regarded as meaning that the composer is unknown and the song was handed down orally, from generation to generation. That s a pretty good one, that you can be nearly sure... that s called the oral tradition, by most people, and some scholars would believe that writing a thing a down, or recording signing that comes from that oral tradition, dilutes it. But there s others who would say that, by writing it down you preserve it. So that s an ongoing argument as to what writing down does to a very, very vibrant oral tradition, that went on for years, for centuries. Another explanation is that a folk undergoes an evolutionary process through its oral transmission, and the working and reworking of a song by the community that s what gives it its folk character. Brendan Kennelly, the Kerry poet, he put it very nicely in one of his poems, he says, All songs are living ghosts, and long for a living voice. And that s a very, very strong statement too. It s a lovely one, because that s exactly what they are. They are no good unless you sing them. It is on paper, but you have to give it, and by giving it life... it s the same as a tune; you are inviting the magic that s there through you; you are the conduit to provide the magic. And that s what he s saying. So a good way to explain what a folk song is simply would be, like, it s the songs that the people sang. They sang them because, you know, they were their songs, they were their stories, and that s why they sang them. So that s a very good explanation. And I have a nice one here that came from Louis Armstrong... he was a great American musician... he was asked the question one time, Louis, what is folk music? Satchmo, as he was called said, All music is folk music, he said I ain t ever heard a horse singing a song. Twas was well put, like! 4

5 So I m going to sing five or six songs here from... they re all to do with the locality... and just little pieces... for example the first song I m going to sing, because of St Bridget s Day, the feast of Imbolg was just a couple of days ago, and this is a magical time of the year. Tonight I m going to sing Tureengarriffe Glen that was an English engagement by the local company on the twentieth of January, 1921, and it s only down the road there. That was last week. I got a lot of information from Johnny Mahony, Lord have mercy on him. He was buried last Sunday. So, I ve another one from the War of Independence, the Ballad of High Mill Lane. It s an example of a song that, probably, what it recorded didn t happen at all. And there s quite a few of those songs. I m not going to go into the subcategory of those types of songs; we just wouldn t have time. It s interesting nonetheless. And then we have another type of song, local anthems, songs that are very, very unique, maybe even to a house. You might never hear them unless you were at a party in the house. You know, a GAA club, if they won something, they probably had a unique song. You know, Newmarket would have Up Up Newmarket, or Sweet Kingwilliamstown, or Kanturk, the Pride of Brogeen, or whatever. Local anthems; and they have a huge place in their community. And then there s a few others that I ll come off of, so I think I have enough talking done now for a minute and, as I was just saying there, the song I m going to sing is Brighidín Bán mo Stór. When I was doing this project some years ago, I was in constant touch, many times, with Father JJ, and he was brilliant, sending me all sorts of stuff, cuttings and photocopies from The Nation. And this song appeared in The Nation on the eleventh of January, So I ll just give you that song first, and I m going to go over here to sing. It s called Brighidín Bán mo Stór. And it s very interesting. I ll just talk a small bit about if after, but I ll just sing it first. There s a few different versions of this. It s the same lyric, but the melodies are slightly different. Sean Ó Sé sings it, and there s a very famous Scottish singer called Andy Stewart; he sings it. But I didn t know it was a song at the time, and I kind of put my own melody to it. It is very, very like Andy Stewart s, by pure coincidence. It was two years later I found it out. This is the way I sing it, when I song it, and it is a love song. I m a wandering minstrel man And love s my only theme I ve strayed beside the pleasant Bann And neath the Shannon stream I ve piped and played to wife and maid By Barrow, Suir and Nore But never met a maiden yet Like Brighidín Bán mo Stór. My girl had ringlets rich and rare By nature s fingers worn Loch Callan s swan is not so fair As is her breast of love And when she moves in Sunday sheen Beyond our cottage door 5

6 I d scorn the high- born Saxon queen For Brighidín Bán mo Stór. It s not that I smile as sweet Or scorn the voice of song It s not that I refuse to eat By coming low and long But that doth rest beneath her breast A heart of purest gold Whose pulse is known to me alone My Brighidín Bán mo Stór. I am a wandering minstrel man And love s my only theme I ve strayed beside the pleasant Bann And neath the Shannon stream I ve piped and played to wife and maid By Barrow, Suir and Nore But never met a maiden yet Like Brighidín Bán mo Stór. Oh yeah, I know exactly now what I want to say about it: it is not Brighidín Bán mo Stór at all I want to talk about; it is Mairead Ní Ceallaigh. That s one of Edward Walsh s very famous songs, and when I was trying to collect material to put it into a collection, I recorded Bernadette O Shea Bernadette Collins that time, I think. No, she was married. Bernie used to sing this song a lot. I have a field recording of it. I won t play it now, but I ll play it after if anyone wants to hear it, because she sent me a tape of herself singing it, and that s what we use as the notation for the song in the book. But there s a very interesting little sideline here that I found out when I was doing this, and that s what the researching... if I can call it, what I did, research... there was a very interesting thing in it. The story of Donal A Casca. He was one of the O Keeffes. And he was a bandido, and he was going over to Castlemagner doing all sorts of raiding of cattle, and burning houses and everything. Jim Cronin of Newmarket pointed this out to me, and he was a great help when I was putting this together, he put me on to the writing of the late Brother Allen from Newmarket. Brother Allen was a great scholar, and there s three little letter references here, and they re well worth reading out, because it puts a different slant completely on the song, and the story of the song, that Mairead Ní Ceallaigh betrayed O Keeffe and he killed her. Casca the English used to call him, he killed her, and that s the way the song goes. And he was got himself, like. But according to this, that might not be the case at all. You can make up your own mind about it. [Egmond MS, Vol I, Part II, Richard Beare to John Percival, 1653, November 5, Mallow] About the twenty- first, Casca came to Liscarroll with a party, and drove away all Magner s cattle and mine. By chance, a shot from the castle killed one of his best horses, whereupon he set three or four houses afire, and also a rick of turf, but the tenants saved them. 6

7 So he was definitely a tough man, like. So this is the next letter, from Richard Beare, Lieutenant Richard Beare, who was the landlord, or the main overseer at that time for the Egmond estate. [1654, January 23] Col Murtagh O Brien and Col Driscoll, with all their party are come in, and to come in they bring the heads of the rest. None stays out but Casca, who will not as much as admit to a treaty without an Act of Oblivion. (I won t go into the Act of Oblivion, that was a kind of pardon at the time, of that English Charles, that king.) He that is born to be hanged will never be drowned, is how he concluded that communiqué from Richard Beare to John Percival. The Percivals were the family... they had a title... they lived over there where Noel comes from. He could tell you a lot about the Egmonds. This is the interesting one, now. [Richard Beare to John Percival, 1654, February 3] Now that the Tories are all come in, Casca has now done so, and is said to be clear of the murder laid to his charge, in which case he will be transported with the rest. So, whatever happened to him after that... was he transported, or was he executed? It s a nice one. So, from the song you wouldn t think that, that he might have got away. It s just another thing that leads you into that type of historical outlook. Right, I m back on track again, now. John Philpot Curran is the next one I m going to have a look at, because when we finish this session I have a little handout here... and he wrote some great songs. I m trying to make a point here, and I m a bit slow about it, but I ll get to it. The song is called The Deserter s Lamentation. I have a broadsheet copy of it that I got, but not a physical copy. It is a song that s still sung. I ve heard it in Newmarket several times. Why it s a very interesting look, is that it s sung to the very popular air of Phreab san Ól. Do you know that air, Phreab san Ól? Most of you know it, yes? So, it s very interesting. Padraic Colum, in his Anthology of Irish Verse, published in 1920, wrote: This poem (he s talking about The Deserter s Lamentation; it will become a bit clearer to you when you see the words of it, but we ll leave it go to the end, because it s a nice little parting song) marks the first departure in Anglo- Irish poetry from the traditional Irish forms towards the Gaelic forms. When the likes of Curran, who was a musician, and he was raised bilingually, and he was a great musician... Thomas Moore seemingly got a melody from him... Curran lost a child and he used to play the cello, and he used to play out the window to her grave, and Thomas Moore seemingly picked up on the melody, and tis one of Curran s melodies. He was an accomplished musician because Petrie collected him, from his son, and I ll get to that as well because it s interesting. But Padraic Colum says, this poem marks the first departure in Anglo- Irish poetry from the traditional Irish forms towards the Gaelic forms. So, John Philpot Curran, he was , that s roughly the time, and there s complete... with who I mentioned earlier, Edward Holland, the barber poet. Was this the start of barber shop singing, or what? It mightn t have been, but he was writing poetry about the French Revolution and stuff like that. I m not going to go into that because that s another avenue altogether, but he was doing some... you can imagine going in to get your hair cut and listening to a fella who was rattling off stuff about things, you know... there was no internet that 7

8 time. So where was he getting his propaganda? I don t know. He s there and I have some information. There s very little information about him but he did publish, in 1792 I think it was, there was a work published, and the only information I have about him and some of his... I have a number of his pieces, I sourced it to a JCHAS volume, 1904 I think it is, I m not quite sure, I d have to check the reference, but a guy wrote an article about him at that time, and that s about the only thing I could ever find on him. There s a few people have heard of him but he s like one of those... we ll keep chasing after him, you d never know. We might be able to find the book and see if there s anything in there. But that s the kind of time frame, as I said, contemporaneous with Eoghan Rua Ó Súilleabháin. Stark contrast, which there still is, between the eastern and western side of the barony. This is what s happening over here, and the Gaelic tradition is still here on this side of it. The next thing I m going to do, I m going to sing a song, because at least I can do that, some way. And the next song I m going to sing is The Bold Thady Quill. Oh, you might say, That s a Muskerry song. It is a Muskerry song, of course, but if you re going to categorise songs by that way, it kind of... these are popular songs of the locality. The Bold Thady Quill is an amazing song, and this is the example I m using about the historical perspective, because the great works that come out, you know the Seanchas Duhallows and those Cumann Luachras, those little magazines that people make available, they are amazing records of local history and local goings on, and when I came across this Bold Thady Quill, I think it was the 1993 edition of the Seanchas Duhallow, and there was a man called James Chisholm, he was an academic from America, and he was over in UCC and he got friends with John Murphy. There was an article printed in the Seanchas and it gave the background, the backdrop, to The Bold Thady Quill. The Bold Thady Quill, everyone regards it as a singing song, you know, or a drinking song, drinking black porter as fast as you ll fill, etc, etc, and everyone knew it that way. And it became extremely popular in the 1930s and the 1940s, probably because Sean Ó Siocháin was the head of the GAA, and he was a good man to drink a pint, I d say, and sing a song, and he used to sing it. And then shortly after that Niall Tobin s father recorded a version of it in Irish. And maybe ten years later then, Walton s came out with a kind of altered version. So the Bold Thady was a song that was changing... Chisholm reckoned it was written around 1888, because it s a song of the Land League. So I ve jumped from Edward Walsh now up to the Land League. I m trying to bring it up. I started contemporary, went back to the start of when English language songs are coming into the tradition, and working back up. Jaysus, it took me a while! I thought I d be there a bit quicker! But what harm. So look, if you know bits of this song... there s different ways of interpreting it. I like to think he was lampooning Thady Quill, but I have a great story that differs a bit from the normal way that people think the story is about. I got it from Tom Tarrant, in Banteer, who was just buried a couple of months ago, so this is a nice way to keep him alive, or at least a memory anyway. Con had a great story, and I ll tell you after singing the song, because it differs very much to... you could actually get it out of the song, but that s what songs do, you know? Everyone gets a different interpretation. But it does record some very, very nice information, 8

9 and I ll sing the song first and I ll just go a small bit into the historical perspective of it. And then I ll sing a few more songs after that. So, if you d like to sing along with it. This version of it has three or four verses that you d never kind of hear really. There s a few people sing them. I m probably the one that sings the whole lot of it, but there is other people that do it. Up to that article by Chisholm the Bold Thady Quill was two or three verses maybe, or four verses if you add the extra verse... God I never heard that one before! And this one has nine, or eight, I think! And it tells a great story, because after the Cork Exhibition, he heads off for Kerry, and he gets into desperate trouble altogether in Kerry; he gets jail and everything, but... he was a tough man. The Bold Thady Quill Ye maids of Duhallow that re anxious for courting A word of advice sure I will give unto ye Proceed to Banteer to the athletic racing And hand in your names to the bold committee Ah but do not commence any sketch of your programme Till the carriage you see coming over the hill For flying through the valleys and hills of Kilcorney The Muskerry sportsman the bold Thady Quill Bold Thady is famous all over the nation At sports and at races he s very well known He s the only young rake that can court all the ladies From Bantry Bay to the County Tyrone There is no young lady from Kerry to Coachford That would not allow but him fast at her will There s a man in Duhallow, Kanturk or Kilcorney [ ] with the bold Thady Quill. Bold Thady is famous in many more places At the athletic races held out in Cloghroe There he won the shot put without throwing off his waistcoat All fifty- four feet of the shot did he throw And at throwing of the weights there was a Dublin chap foremost But the Muskerry sportsman exceeded him still And around the arena with a wide- ranging chorus Here s luck to our hero, the bold Thady Quill! Chorus: For ramblin', for rovin', for football' or courtin' For drinkin' black porter as fast as you'd fill In all your days rovin' you'll find none so jovial As our Muskerry sportsman, the bold Thady Quill At the great hurling match between Cork and Tipperary ( Twas played in the park on the banks of the Lee) Our Gaelic young boys were afraid of being beaten So they sent for bold Thady to Ballinagree Well he hurled the ball right and left in their faces And showed the Tipperary boys action and skill 9

10 And if they crossed on his lines sure he swore he would brain them And the papers were full of the praise of Thade Quill At the Cork Exhibition there was a fair lady Whose fortune exceeded a million or more But a bad constitution had ruined her completely And medical treatment had failed o'er and o'er O, Mother, says she, sure I know what will heal me And cure this disease that will certainly kill Give over your doctors and medical treatment Sure, I'd rather one squeeze out of bold Thady Quill Chorus: For ramblin', for rovin', for football' or courtin' For drinkin' black porter as fast as you'd fill In all your days rovin' you'll find none so jovial As our Muskerry sportsman, the bold Thady Quill [ ] In the year ninety- one before Parnell was taken, Thade was outrageously breaking the peace He got a light sentence for causin' commotion, And six months hard labour for batin' police. But in spite of coercion he's still agitatin' Ev'ry drop of his life's blood he's willing to spill, To gain for old Ireland complete liberation, "Till then there's no rest for me" says bold Thady Quill 10