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Sliabh Luachra Lectures Ballydesmond, Sliabh Luachra, Ireland

Friday February 6, 2015

Lecture 4

Speaker: Tim Browne

The Songs of Duhallow

Dancer (for Sarah Curran) Words by Donal Ó Siodhacháin Music by 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,

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Longing for arms that held her In a land that’s far behind.

So, Dia daoibh, agus céad míle fáilte de gach éinne 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 Dúthalla, there about six or seven years ago. So, just to mark where we are I said I’d start that way. 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 what would you call it. . . 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 for 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 Vaughan, 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

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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 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 is what I like about them. This is my interest in 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 came across today, from Colm Ó Lochlainn, who was a great collector of music. He regarded himself

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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 some 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 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 song 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! 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

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time of the year. Tonight I’m going to sing Tureengarriffe Glen – that was an engagement by the local company on the twenty-eighth 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. They’re 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, 1845. 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 sing it, and it is a love song. Brighidín Bán mó Stór Words by Edward Walsh Music by Tim Browne I am a wandering minstrel man And love’s my only theme I’ve strayed beside the pleasant Bann And ’neath the Shannon’s 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 hath ringlets rich and rare By nature’s fingers wove Loch Carra’s swan is not so fair As is her breast of love And when she moves in Sunday sheen Beyond our cottage door I’d scorn the highborn Saxon queen For Brighidín bán mo stór. It is not that thy smile is sweet

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And soft thy voice of song It’s not that thou flee’st to meet My coming lone and long But that doth rest beneath her breast A heart of purest core 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.

Ah 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 side line 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. ‘Kasky’ 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. [Egmont MSS, Vol I, Part 2, Richard Beare to John Percival, 1653, November 5, Mallow] “About the twenty-first, Kasky 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 furze, but the tenants saved them” (p. 526). 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 Egmont estate. [1654, January 23] “Col Murtagh O’Bryan 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” (p. 524). (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”,

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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, Kasky 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 1750 – 1817, 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 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

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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 Chisman, 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 song is about. I got it from Con 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, 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 only 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.

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The Bold Thady Quill Words by Johnny Tom Gleeson 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 ’Til the carriage you notice 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 Can bowl play or goal 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 of Ballinagree Well he hurled the ball right and left in their faces And showed the Tipperary boys action and skill 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

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Give over your doctors and medical treatment Sure, I'd rather one squeeze of 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. On his rambles through Kerry his story was painful He witnessed quite plainly the flames of that day The evictions of Hussey near Sneem in Kenmare And he challenged Lord Clare in the town of Tralee Well he loaded his rifle, and he swore that bejaysus Right through their brains he would lodge the contents If they dared to continue their savage outrages Those fat-bellied bears that were raising the rent. In the year eighty-one before Parnell was taken Thade was outrageously breaking the peace He was bound up in chains for two years in Kilmainham With six months hard labour for beatin' police But in spite of coercion he's still agitating The blood of his brains he's quite willing to spill For to gain for old Ireland entire separation ‘Till ’tis achieved there’s no peace for Thade Quill. There was an old prophecy came to light lately Stating quite plainly that Thade would be seen In Parliament pleading the rights of old Ireland With Parnell our Chairman in fair College Green And the green harp of Tara that’s silent for ages Once more would awaken us lively and shrill And sing for triumphant old Ireland the nation Long Live the Land League and 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.

Question: Where is he buried Tim? TB: I’m not sure. Is he buried out in Rylane? I don’t know. But there was a plaque put up to him in the 1970s up in Rylane, and Sean O’Riada unveiled it, and he said, “Not only is it the national anthem of Cork”, he said, “it should be the national anthem of Ireland.” But this is a good example of the historical perspective that I was trying to articulate there earlier. “The evictions of Hussey in Sneem near Kenmare” – so who’s this dude Hussey? Hussey turns out to be Samuel J Hussey, an amazing dude altogether. He devised a system of collecting rent, and he was very good at it, so he got an awful lot of people evicted and he used to continually arm himself. But luckily he wrote a book;

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it’s called Reminiscences of an Irish Land Agent, and some of it is very funny. He gives a great picture, especially from the perspective of the landlord. You know, sometimes we don’t tend to look at those spaces. I read that book some years ago, and I was very interested in one particular person mentioned in the book, Malcolm Richard Leeson Marshall, who was his sub-agent. He’s on my Deed, his name is on my Deed, the Deed of my house. So you can do little tracings, these songs take you there . . . But Hussey was fire-bombed out of Castleisland by the Moonlighters, and that’s why he was armed all the time, because they used to take shots at him. And there was a very funny story told about the parish priest back there, I don’t know was it from Cordal, I’m not exactly sure, but he was giving his sermon one day, anyway, and he was giving out about drink. And he was saying, like, you know, “It is drink that is making ye fight, and it is drink that’s making ye sick, and it’s drink that’s making you lose your work and not getting up for work, and all your social problems, and even the drink” he says, “is making ye taking shots, ye’re taking shots at the landlord. And it’s that demon drink” he says, “that’s making ye miss!” And that’s in the book! That was actually Hussey writing about himself. But you can imagine, if you read that book, it’s a text book in the library, you have to kind of go up for it, and it’s a good read. But you can imagine him with a lovely little glass of brandy in front of a fire over in London, with a nice dinner jacket and smoking a Havana, and he quoting his memoirs about Paddy. But, interestingly about Hussey, and I’ll finish with the historical perspective here, he starts his book by saying Cúis is the Irish word for Hussey, and he claimed his right to be where he was because his ancestors, I think it was under Henry II, he gave them “Daingean Uí Cúis, the Steadfastness of the Husseys”. So Samuel Hussey was tracing his lineage back to the time that Henry II gave his ancestors a good skelp of one of the most beautiful peninsulas you could ever imagine to see anywhere. That’s the historical perspective, that kind of thing, where a song would lead you . . . You wouldn’t be thinking when you’re saying, “for rambling, for roving and drinking” and that, you wouldn’t be too worried about what Samuel Hussey was doing. So, what am I going to do now? Ah Jaysus, it’s says Conclusion – it’s too early for that! Will someone remind me when I’m supposed to finish? Alright, I’ll sing Tureegarriffe Glen; that will be the next one. Tureengarriffe Glen is just down the road here, for anyone that isn’t from the area, and it was an engagement by the local Company on 28th January, 1921. The weather was very bad. The words are good, it kind of explains the scene. I’m sure Fr John J covered it – I missed your talk John J, sorry about that, I was trying to earn a few bob and I didn’t make it – and I missed the other one as well, and I’m sorry about that, but that’s what happens in the summer-time. There was an engagement back the road, a successful ambush, they made away with a car and an amount of ammunition and what have you. And Johnny O’Mahony, who was just buried last week, told me that it was written by a man called Denis Lane of Glaunalacca, Ballydesmond, who wrote a lot of other songs, and hopefully we might get around to them, someone might them, or we might be able to access some of them in time, because I have quite a few songs got since I did this project, nine or ten years ago, so I might be able to revise into volume 2, if there’s . . . when you get opportunities like this it might jog someone’s memory, they might have an old song in a biscuit box. I got a beauty there about a month ago. You know, like that. They’re there and they’re just ghosts that need to be given the chance to get life in a song. And again, remind me when I’m supposed to wind up, because I could lose the run of myself.

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(To Fr John J: I think it was in your book that I got this. Was it in Kisekam versus The Empire? Yes.) That’s what I was saying earlier on, that there’s a lot of books, like John J’s books over the years, The Tragic Troubador, Where Araglen So Gently Flows and Kiskeam versus the Empire, fantastic works, and I relied heavily on other people’s scholarship to put them into this collection. But by doing so I’m singing them in many different places . . . I was up in Letterfrack a couple of years ago, and this guy came over with a whiskey and a pint, and into my ear he said, “would you give us . . .” Now it wasn’t Tureengarriffe Glen at all he said, he didn’t know how to pronounce it, but I knew what he meant and he was delighted. (Fr John J: a local tradition is that Con Finucane was the first person to sing it, Marian Finucane’s uncle.) Well that’s nice to know. I wasn’t aware of that. You see, doing this kind of event you get a cumulative knowledge, I suppose, and the more we can find out about things the better chance we have of . . . They’re no good if you don’t sing them. But this is one that you would hear sung. I heard a woman singing this at a session one night years ago. I heard it a few times, but I haven’t heard it by anyone else since. That’s probably because I’m not in the places where you’d hear it sung. Tureengarriffe Glen Words by Denis Lane On the twenty-eight of January the wind blew cold and shrill Those volunteers assembled in a place called Daly’s Glen They took up their positions ’mongst the heather furze and stone And captured six staff officers and Major General Holmes. The evening sun was beaming as those lorries came in sight The hearts of all those rebel boys were beating with delight They little dreamt of cowardice as those Crossley cars sped in “Hands up me boys” Sean Moylan’s cries went echoing through the glen. Those hirelings showed resistance and opened heavy fire Without effect they feared their doom, to escape was their desire The steady aim and quick exchange proved death was near them then And many’s a wound each hireling found in Tureengarriffe Glen. After twenty minutes fighting fierce those hirelings showed despair They’d been thro’ France and Flanders they had wished to show no fear They had gained distinguished medals they were shrewd and daring men But could not compare with those rebel boys in Tureengarriffe Glen. At last they should surrender which grieved them much to do They gave up their full equipment and their ammunition too They had to part their Crossley cars soon manned by gallant men Who with hand grenades and rifles left Tureengarriffe Glen. Holmes’ poor condition it was a ghastly sight This one of cruel Britannia’s sons would scarcely last till night

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(First aid was quickly rendered to him and all his men) And for medical aid they were conveyed from Tureengarriffe Glen. Here’s to the Second Battalion and its fearless fighting squad Truer and nobler hearted men Old Ireland never had Along Blackwater’s valley, those proud and daring men Ne’er proved their power and valour as in Tureengarriffe Glen.

The next man I’m going to talk about now is a man . . . called Dan Sheahan, an icon in Newmarket, he’s very well known all over the world, by some people. I know the boys from Newmarket would have heard of Dan Sheahan, but has anyone here ever hear of Dan Sheahan? (audience member: over in Queensland in Australia there’s more of Dan Sheahan.) There you go. Fair play. He’s known as ‘Pop’ over there. Dan Sheahan came from somewhere up near Meelin, I don’t know exactly where, from the Barley Hill side anyway, but I think they were from Cummer originally. There was so many different Sheahans there and they moved around a bit, his family, his niece told me, she died there some years ago. He was the inspiration for the great song, The Pub Without Beer. It was a big hit for Slim Dusty back in the 1950s. It became The Pub With No Beer. I have all that story, it’s a big long story, and I was lucky to get it through Tim Barrow, via Raymond O’Sullivan in Newmarket, and a lot of my material comes from Newmarket, because it’s a great place that has maintained tradition down through the years. You never tire of meeting people in Newmarket that will just . . . and this side back too, everywhere really, it’s just if you get the right crowd together, and the right situation, you’ll pull out all that kind of stuff that’s there. It brings out the ghost and makes it living. So Dan Sheahan, he wrote several songs. He used to write to his mother in rhyme when he went away first. He emigrated in 1906. He became a soldier. He fought in the War, the First World War, and . . . I’m leading up now to another song, the song I’m going to sing is The Girl From Glashakeenleen . . . and he used to write to a woman. This woman in Wales used to send food parcels to the troops. He was a gunner in the Australian army, and he was in France during the First World War. He used to write to this Welsh woman who used to send them food parcels. And when he got demobbed, or when he was not fighting anymore, he was going to visit her, he said. And jeeze, he changed his mind and came back to Newmarket, to have a bit of a holiday I suppose, before he went back out. He was already in Australia quite a bit. He was there fifteen years. And he had an uncle out there and he was able to . . . he had a small little farm in New South Wales. But after the War anyway . . . he wrote quite a bit of material, I believe, when he was in the trenches, and sent it home, which was censored because of the nature of . . . there was a collection of his works published in 1975, and he’s held in the highest regard in Australia because he became a sugar cane farmer and he left a great record of the social conditions for sugar farming in Queensland in the 1920s and ’30s and ’40s. And he loved drink, I’d say, because he has some of the funniest songs about drink you’ve ever herd, including The Pub With No Beer.

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But the story behind that, to put the record right, because you hear all sorts of stuff about it on the radio that’s incorrect, is . . . this day in 1943 I think it was . . . I can check all them, but look, what’s a year . . . Johnny Logan, What’s Another Year? That was a trick question. Oh, by the way, I have a little quiz. I’m going to give you a question later on, and the first correct answer up to me after the show gets a free CD and a cup of tea. So pay attention now. But I didn’t get to that yet. It’s a very nice one actually. It comes from a song – it’s a very interesting feature of the song – it’s called The Maid of Sweet Rathcoole, written by a man from Kiskeam who was a teacher in Rathcoole many years ago. But I’ll get to that, because it’s a good one. I’m just trying to give you, as I mentioned at the start, different categories of songs. And I’ve another lovely one that I’m going to do, that I’m going to mention, and it comes from the Blueshirt tradition in Duhallow, and I’m going to get to that one after this maybe, if I don’t get thrown out the door! Anyway, Dan Sheahan told the story, there was this woman called Irene Mascell. It’s a very nice story actually. Tim Barrow from Newmarket was touring over in Australia many years ago, and he knew a small bit about Dan Sheahan, enough to know that he was somewhere around the Ingham area of Queensland. So Tim was journeying around, so lo and behold he got to Ingham and he went to the library, like you would, do you know, to find out information, ’tis a great place to go, and who was the librarian only Dan Sheahan’s daughter-in-law. So she gave him a couple of books, and Tim gave them to Raymond when he came back. So I got a copy of it, which I photocopied, and ’tis available now through the Library Service, via that photocopy. It’s not the original, but I think it was, I’m not sure was it Bob Hawke, or one of the Australian Prime Ministers, came on an official visit to Ireland some years ago, and there was a copy of it presented to Trinity College. So, his own work that’s published, and it’s been revised three times, it’s called Songs of the Cane Fields. That’s accessible as well. I have my own copy. When I wrote to Dan’s daughter, or Dan’s family, they were very, very good, and I wrote to Irene Mascell, and they gave me loads and loads of information about him, and this is why I have the lineage of the song. And the story he gave was, his local pub was a place called the Day Dawn Hotel. He was living twenty-five miles away from it, on his farm. He was able to buy a sugar cane farm in Queensland with his deferred pension, and by this stage he had married a woman from Limerick. He tried to get married when he came back, you know that time to Newmarket, and he made a proposal to this Mary from Glashakeenleen. And I’m going to sing you that song, because it’s a great story, and it’s a very, very popular song now. I’ll get to it. But I want to tell you the story of The Pub With No Beer first. Like, has it anything to do with Duhallow? Of course it has. It was written by a man from Duhallow, and we should be proud of it, like, which we are. And he came in anyway on his horse. It was an awful hot day, in the middle of an Australian heat wave, and his local pub, in the Day Dawn Hotel, was full of American soldiers, who were down on R & R from . . . the Pacific that was raging that time, you know, and the Americans were taking over islands that they still possessed, like Guam and Saipan and places like that, so that they can point their nuclear missiles at whoever they like. And they were starting it that time. But this is not about that. This is about Dan Sheahan. But Dan anyway probably guessed it, so he came into town for a few pints, and the barman, seeing gold with all these GIs, had sold all the beer. So he had to drink gin. And then, after riding twenty-five miles in the heat wave in Northern

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Queensland, or Mid-North Queensland, if you’ve ever been there, it’s hot . . . and then drink gin and ride back on his horse. He said he was so dry he was spitting out sixpenny bits. So the song that he wrote was transposed, because he used to send a lot of his material into the newspaper. I have all that information in the book, so I won’t go into it in much more detail than that. But a singer called Graham Parsons got hold of it, and he transposed it to suit his own local in New South Wales. And he was touring with Slim Dusty in 1957, and Slim Dusty had a song coming out in the charts, called Saddle Boy, and he had no ‘B’ side. So Parsons gave him this song, The Pub With No Beer, and he put it out as the ‘B’ side – and it sold 500,000 copies. Not one penny of which royalty did Dan Sheahan get. Later on in time he did meet up, Slim Dusty was playing where Dan was living that time, and he recorded two or three more of his songs. And I think in 1975 he got official recognition for being the inspiration for The Pub With No Beer. And it’s word for word. I have the two versions – Dan’s version is called A Pub Without Beer, a six-liner, whereas Parson’s version is four. But, are they anything to do with Duhallow? I think they are. So, he wrote this other lovely song, called The GIrl from Glashakeenleen, and the first time I came across that was in a book. Marie Kelliher from Newmarket got a bursary, when she was going to UCC, to go out, and do a study on the Duhallow Diaspora in Oregan. I’ve been there myself, and some of my ancestors are buried there. I was there seven or eight years ago. I went out to find out information, just to see it, I’ve been out there twice actually, and most of the people from this area went out there sheep farming. There was . . . they don’t know how many but probably the bones of a thousand over the whole time. But she wrote a nice little account, a book, she wrote a very good book actually, and she had The GIrl From Glashakeenleen. That’s where I came across it first. A lot of people in the locality knew it like, but they didn’t know it as a song. I really liked it. When you’d read it, it was very good. Dan Sheahan’s stuff just jumps up off the page at you. They’re all . . . they’re songs . . . he’s writing poetry, but they’re songs. I put a melody to it anyway, that I got . . . Timmy [O’Connor] plays a beautiful tune called Pull Down The Blinds, and I turned that around a small bit, to make a melody for it. And lo and behold, it worked, because it’s played on the radio on a regular basis and it’s a song now that’s been given life again, you know? And I would love to come across anyone who might have known what the original melody was. And I’d say that time, or even now, if you came across a nice poem and said, “Jeez, that would make a great song”, you know, it might have been one of those. But it’s a true story; it is a true story and a very nice one. So, I’ll sing it. And I’d say some of you might know it at this stage. It’s actually being song as a country and western song in Gneeveguilla by a man, I met him a couple of times, and he makes a nice job of it, and ’tis being sung in competition as well, and it’s got two or three names now. It’s known as The Glenlara Girl. I was asked one day behind in The Why Not, not The Why Not but in The Shamrock, early one Monday morning, “Give us the Glenlara Girl!” And it’s also known as Mary From Glashakeenleen. But the way he had it was The GIrl From Glashakeenleen and it’s in that 1975 publication of his work, because it was incorrectly assumed it was a Murphy man that had written it. But it was known, you see, by the people out in Oregan. A lot of them wrote great poetry and songs. They were out in the wilderness and, you know, they brought songs with them, and they brought songs home with them, that they wrote. But this is definitely Dan Sheahan. There’s no debating it at all. Anyway, Pull Down the Blinds, and thanks Timmy. It was getting a totally different air when I started it at first. The way I was going to do it was like this (sings). You know that typical air.

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That was too common I thought and I spent a couple of nights at this anyway, and I’m still at it, so. The Girl From Glashakeenleen Words by Dan Sheahan Music by Tim Browne The heather was blooming in Cummer The skylark was chanting a lay From Taur with the soft breeze of summer Came scent of the new gathered hay Well the gardens they never looked better And the corn and the turnips were green Along by that road where I met her The Girl from Glashakeenleen. You may talk of your Hollywood beauties Proud ladies of cinema fame Your Sassanach maids and French cuties She sure would put them to shame Her skin was like snow on the Reeks When cold winter weather is in And the paint that she had on her cheeks It never came out of a tin. The ass that she drove was contrary So slow was he lifting his feet That I jumped on that cart beside Mary She gave me one half of her seat Her head it soon lay on my shoulder We kissed, we cuddled and necked And the plausible tale that I told her Alas it had little effect. Said she there’s a boy in Drishane Who’s breaking his heart about me He has fourteen good cows in his bawn And there’s grass there right up to your knees He’ve plenty of hay in the haggard And his yard holds a good rick of turf From porter he’s never yet staggered Sure he knows when he’s taken enough. They tell me he has no bad habits Mum thinks that he’s gentle and kind Dad says ’tis a chance, I should grab it For better I never may find And don’t you then think I’d be silly Well fit for the mad house or zoo To go out and to boil a black billy In the wilds of Australia with you. The knock back ’twas quick and ’twas sudden I felt a great pain in my heart As against my ribs it went thudding Sure I nearly fell out of the cart

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Our ship by the quayside I sought her Next morning we sailed down the Lee And soon many miles of salt water There rolled between Mary and me. That ever I go to Duhallow The chances may be one in ten I never may walk by the Allow Or gaze at Sliabh Luachra again But oft when alone on the prairie As night’s shade comes down on the scene Sure it’s oft times I think of young Mary The Girl from Glashakeenleen.

So, of course that’s a contemporary kind of take on it, on a song that was written, or a poem at least, it became a song. I was singing it one night in Killarney in the Grand Hotel, I played there for four or five years in a residency, three nights a week, and this guy came up one night and he said, “Where did you get that song,” he said. And I told him exactly where I got it. I was interested in him, and what was his interest in the song. And he told me he was living between Kilcummin and Gneeveguilla, and he told me that a fella that was working for a farmer back there used to come into their house, every night, he said, for thirty-seven years, and he heard him singing that song several times, he said. And he was under the impression that he had written it, you know. Because at that time, I suppose, if you got a gem like that, and no one else had it, it would be a great one to have, like. But it was very, very well known. I got a phone call from an old lady in Kiskeam, and she heard it from America that it was out, that it was in the charts, kind of thing. Because Ann O’Shea from Newmarket kept ringing County Sound to play it, and I got a few bob from IMRO out of it! It’s an important point to make, because in the classification, if you want to go down that road into, we’ll say, the academia or the theory of the folk song, copyrighted music would come right into a huge debate there, you know. If the music is copyrighted, therefore it has a lineage on who is claiming it, and a lot of people claim traditional stuff as their own. And I could write a book about that, no bother at all, because I’ve come across it several times. So there’s a lot of unscrupulous people around and they . . . So, pay attention now please, we are having a quiz and there is a prize! An unusual part of a talk . . . how could you talk at a singing thing really, but I suppose you have to mix it up. But anyway, wait till I get the song in question. It’s called The Maid of Sweet Rathcoole, and I collected it from Dan Joe O’Keeffe in Rathcoole. Dan Joe’s a shopkeeper and he’s great, he has loads of songs. He collected . . . Bill Cody’s stuff, I’ll get to that. But he was a great help to me when I was putting this together. I’m a bit rusty with this, it’s about ten years ago when I was doing this and I nearly knew it backwards, and I’m a bit stiff. So, especially with Tureengarriffe Glen. Where are you . . . we’ll find him. Anyone there sing a song while I’m doing this? We’ll have a minute’s silence. I must start learning tricks like that for this speaking thing. I’m not used to it at all. I’m a pure chancer . . . and I’m going blind as well, I’d say, by the looks of things. While I’m doing that, I’ll get this as well. Do you remember that? The Road To Song, Sean McCarthy, His Songs, Their Music and Story? This is just a few pages from it. This is a book that Donal (Ó Siodhacháin) edited, a collection of Sean McCarthy’s songs, and that’s what I’m going to talk about next, one of the songs that’s in that is still being sung, recorded all over the world, by every ballad band that comes out every year,

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including Cosamar, it’s on our new album. And that’s beside the point, because it’s got a very, very good Duhallow connection, and we’ll get to that. So I’ll leave that out there. And I have this marked here, somewhere, it’s about the 1930s, it should be around here somewhere . . . Am I dreaming I wonder? I’m not. Where is it, at all? I tell you what, we’ll postpone the quiz for a minute. We’ll make the quiz even harder now. These are the handouts for the last song. We’re getting close to that now in a minute, I’d say, because I’m kind of . . . We could take a short break. But no. The next one, I’ll do Step It Out Mary first, but before I do it I’d like to . . . this is a great example of another type of song. I mentioned earlier, there are songs about what might not have happened, and this definitely didn’t happen. Sean McCarthy was at a fair back in Kanturk, back in the 1940s, and I’m going to quote Donal here, because this is what Donal recorded of what Sean McCarty said. And when we were young, we all knew this around Kanturk, like. It was a hit in the charts in the 1960s, but I’ll get to that. But you know the jingle, Step It out Mary my fine daughter, Step it out Mary if you can, Step It out Mary my fine daughter, Cock your leg for the country man.

That was the jingle, and Sean McCarty was amazed with that jingle because what it represented was, he was at a fair in Kanturk, when the fairs were on the street, this is around 1948 or ’49 and the children had a skipping game. And the game was that the skipper would skip and the kids would sing that jingle. And when they’d get to the bit, “Cock your leg for the country man” they’d have to lift their left leg, and if they keeled over they’d lose the rope, but if they did it successfully they could keep the rope, and if you were very good at it they would never lose it, you know what I mean, ’twas a competitive game. And he was intrigued by it, and the melody of it, and the simplicity of it. And I’m going to quote what he said because it is well worth it. “The children in the swaying circle took their game very seriously. All along the Kanturk streets farmers and shopkeepers traded and argued, but the children paid no heed to them; they were too intent on their skipping game. The rules of the skipping game were fairly simple: each skipper took it in turn to use the skipping rope, while the others chanted the above ditty. When it came to the last line, “Cock your leg for the country man”, the skipper stopped, with the left leg cocked as high as he or she could manage, and stayed playing until the next skipper took his or her place” as I was saying. So, “Kanturk in the County Cork is a town with numerous pubs . . .” He went around to a lot of pubs that night to see if he could find any more words to it and he couldn’t. And he comes on, and he says, “Indeed my own Kerry, home of strange songs and poems, failed to supply any more than the four lines. In desperation then, in a London building site, when again times were hard on folk singers, I composed the story of the soldier and Mary and added to the Kanturk skipping jingle.” So, like, it didn’t happen. It’s a love story that was made up, but he used it as the inspiration for it, and what a beautiful way to do it, from the kids singing in the street, playing in the street, that the magic of that brought this beautiful song.

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When times were a bit better for him later on, he opened a folk club called The Crubeen and it became very, very popular. One night . . . he more or less had forgotten about the song up to a year before it, because he wrote it on a piece of a cement bag and he put it into his desk and thought about it a couple of years later. So he was singing it again, and who walked into the club only Danny Doyle, and he was just after leaving the Irish army, he was a rifleman in the Irish army, and Sean gave him the song. And he brought it home and Noel Pearson arranged it, and it became a huge hit. And it’s still being sung. There’s bands recording it every year. So, very few, you might say, are aware of where it came from. So we’re claiming that. That’s a Duhallow song, even though it was a Kerry man wrote it, but we have a connection to it. He found it in Kanturk. Put that in your pipe and smoke it kind of stuff, you know! He wrote some other fantastic songs too that would be popular in the area. He was such a good songwriter: he wrote some brilliant songs about the War of Independence, like Shanagolden and things like that. He is a wonderful writer. He had over a hundred of his songs published, Sean McCarthy. This was a gem of a book; this is only an extract from it, relative to the few songs that I’m doing here by Sean McCarty, and it’s just an edit from Donal’s publication. But that’s a beautiful book to read if you get a chance to read it. It’s in the library now. It’s hard to come by it, but ’tis very nice. There’s some beautiful stuff in it. Sean McCarthy was a mighty man altogether. So I’m going to sing it. And if you know it, sing it, and if you don’t, just cock your leg up, your left leg up, when you get to that part there. Or go out and do a bit of skipping. And again, it’s a contemporary take on it. Step It Out Mary Words by Sean McCarthy In the village of Kilcorney lives a maiden young and fair Her eyes they are like diamonds, she had long and golden hair Well a countryman came riding, up to her father's gate Mounted on a milk white stallion, he arrives at the stroke of eight. Chorus: Step it out Mary, my fine daughter Step it out Mary, if you can Step it out Mary, my fine daughter Cock your leg to the countryman I'm here to court your daughter, Mary of the golden hair I’ve gold and I’ve got silver, I’ve wealth beyond compare I’ll buy her silk and satin, a gold ring for her hand I'll buy for her a mansion, she'll have servants to command Chorus: Kind sir, I love a soldier, I've pledged to him my hand I don't want your gold nor money, I don't want your house and land Mary's father called out loudly: "You will do as you are told You'll marry him next Sunday and you'll wear that ring of gold" Chorus: In the village of Kilcorney, there's a deep stream running by

http://celtic-lyrics.com/artists/196.html

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They found Mary there at midnight, she drowned with the soldier boy In the cabin there is music, you can hear her father say: "Step it out Mary my fine daughter, Sunday is your wedding day" Chorus:

Thanks very much. So, as I was saying about this Maid of Sweet Rathcoole it’s . . . Oh, before I do that, is there anyone here would like to sing a song in this part of the business? Does anyone know Sweet Kingwilliamstown and would like to sing that, you know, just to get an alternate and another voice? If you’d like to, the opportunity is there. That’s another great song; I have a field recording of it, I’m not going to play it now, but if you want to hear it after I can play it for you. It’s a great song called The Bog Road Ambush, about another local engagement in Rathmore, and I recorded it off a man that knew it, and it’s a beautiful melody, and it’s a song that I did hear sung, you know, live, we’ll say. Put it that way. Would there be any chance it’s after disappearing out of this? Hardly, I suppose. Wait a minute now, I’ll find it alright. Oh yes, that’s another one of Dan Sheahan’s The Red Rum of Bundi; it’s a song about Bundaberg rum. Did you ever come across Bundaberg rum? If you were ever in Australia you’d be drinking it, it’s a very popular rum. It’s like Jamaica rum here I suppose, or Bacardi. It’s strong rum, very popular in Australia, and I’d say Dan drank a lot of it. But it’s interesting the way he starts . . . he never lost touch of where he was from . . . the way he starts it is very nice, It’s strange how the sons of all nations will toast Their own native land in the booze they love most For thirsty Sinn Féiners of Erin the Green Are partial to porter and pots of poitín The sons of the Saxon, their tummies regale On liquor of London, John Bass’s brown ale.

He was a great man to take the piss, for want of a better word. Anyway, this man, Ned Buckley, he was known as The Bard of Duhallow. There’s books written about him; Donal wrote about him, Aubane [Historical Society] wrote extensively about him, and he used to write to Sean Moylan in verse. But he was a Redmondite, and Home Ruler, and he went the full hog: he was a Blueshirt, and very proud of it. But he was a great man to write poetry, and he won . . . there used to be a competition in the Cork Examiner that time, you’d get ten bob if you sent in your song, and he won it several times. He even wrote a poem, or a song, about winning the ten bob, he won it so often. But he wrote a song called The Doggy Due and it was a parody on The Foggy Dew, the great Republican ballad that we all know and love, and it’s really satirical. So he took one of the great Republican songs to get at Fianna Fáil at the time, because they were just after coming in, and the first thing that they did, one of the first things that they did, was they doubled the price of the dog licence. It was half a crown, and automatically it was five bob. So he wrote a song about it and I put it on a CD there a while ago. I’m not going to sing it, but I’ll give you the first verse of it. . . I have The Maid of Sweet Rathcoole here now. It took a while, probably a record!

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I was setting spuds on a bright May morn When the ground was far from dry When men and boys to drown their dogs In squadrons passed me by Their faces long and hay-ropes strong As they went to the abhainn dubh To drown them all, the long and small On account of the Doggy Due.

But there’s one verse in it that’s really, really scathing, and I like it, it’s very nice. It’s very nice: The licence for our Black and Tan Was only half a crown When work was sure and cash secure In country and in town Now they keep their post, the Ministers Who have naught else to do And each fine job, they rule five bob Should now be the Doggy Due.

So there you go, it’s nothing different to what’s happening today. You get the Blueshirts in and look what they do . . . they have us all in tatters. Anyway, that’s getting too political, I suppose. But this is a nice verse: If we had England back again Our dogs their tails would wag And how they’d love to bite those men Who do so loudly brag Of splendid things they’ve done for us When only one thing’s true They’ve multiplied our miseries As they did the Doggy Due. We’ll soon have our elections now And they’ll bolster the Free State Although we have four counties less Than Redmond’s twenty-eight [that’s very interesting – than Redmond’s twenty-eight] But just to show our gratitude The mildest thing to do When they’ll ask us for our vote Is to sing The Doggy Due.

About seven or eight years ago, when Enda Kenny was going around the country, making shapes to become the taoiseach, which he did, the Kanturk Fine Gael party contacted me and asked me would I play a few songs, or play a few tunes, in the Alley Bar in Kanturk, where I spent most of my time for thrity-two years, on and off, my spare time I mean now, my drinking time like, kind of exclusively, and a great old house it was. Ned came from back around here. But anyway, no bother. I got well paid for it I made sure, you know. When you’re a musician and a singer you have to kind of put that behind you. It’s a bit like being an undertaker, you know, you can’t be that choosy. So I sang it that day, and there was no one in the whole place knew that it was a Blueshirt song. But I got my picture taken with him, and it took me five years to get it. And if any of you are interested I have a little blog on my website, I call it Muses mit der Man, and I have a little dialogue with him, and my next one is going to be about

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this song. I’m going to tell them that it is in there. You never realise that this is one of ye’er anthems there like. It’s just a little satirical commentary that I do whenever I have the time. I’ve done about nine or ten of them. I’m going to do another one, because they’re going to be electioneering mad and I’m going to remind them of what they were doing in the 1930s. The next one. Where will we go with the next one? I had it all written down here what I was going to do, the plan, and I got there a while ago, but it said Conclusion, so I went too many pages too quick. Are ye fed up of me yet? Will I keep going for another few minutes? We have to play a few tunes yet, and have the tay. I mentioned earlier on about the anthem Up, Up Newmarket. It’s a great song to hear thirty or forty people, after Newmarket winning the Duhallow Championship or the County, or whatever, to hear young fellas even, the next generation and the next, they all know it. And you can’t get better than that. You know, that everyone has it, and they have an identity towards that song. The same as in Sweet Kingwilliamstown or wherever, Kanturk, The Pride of Brogeen – these are anthems and you kind of strive after those things, they keep the whole thing together, the local anthems. So, for those that weren’t here at the start, I mentioned different types of songs that were contained in this volume, and this is just a little example of a small amount of material that comes from this area. So that was the example of satirical, political and comical. There’s another very good one in there called The Boycott of Ben Leader, and that was written – the 1910 election was a very hotly fought election because the Irish Parliamentary Party were . . . you know, you had the All for Ireland League and it was a big time in history . . . The Brits had the First World War already planned, the revolution is coming, there’s things going on to get guns etc. So this was the Boycott of Ben Leader, and he was a local man. It’s a very nice one as well, but I haven’t heard it sung. But seemingly around that time, they’d tell you in Newmarket, it was well known up to about thirty or forty years ago, it was sung, And it’s interesting for its historical recounting, its historical record. So, The Maid of Sweet Rathcloole is the quiz. I collected it from Dan Joe O’Keeffe and he told me, it is still popular and in fact the version I got of it, the version he recorded from his brother Jeremiah, who wrote great songs, he wrote some lovely modern ballads, and they were in a band, The White Diamond. They were modern songs, and I’ve heard him singing this song. It’s a very nice song. Dan Joe told me it was composed by a man called Sean T Ó Murchú who was a native of Kiskeam. Do you know him? Are you aware of this? This is the quiz. It’s a riddle, which is a very unusual . . . well it’s not that unusual, I’ve known other songs where there’s riddles, but this is a real riddle: A quadruped A torn cloth The Latin word for ‘and’ The first and second you’ll reverse The third you will leave stand. Behead and transpose an ivy leaf And if you went to school you’ll know The name and surname of The Maid of Sweet Rathcoole.

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So, her first name is very easy to get anyway. And I’ll let it at that. So if anyone gets it I’ll give you a CD, for free. All you need to do to enter the competition is to put your name on the back of a £20 note, and the first correct answer will be . . . I’m only kidding, I’m only kidding! The way he finishes though it is lovely as well: I’ve lived for years in a foreign land And I long to see once more The village and the Barrack Cross And the hill at Boulamore The faithfull friends who are dear to me And the boys I taught in school I now regret I ever met That jade from sweet Rathcoole.

So, in closing, I’m going to finish . . . I haven’t time to get into Bill Cody. He’s one of our best. He was a great songwriter. He just recorded everything that was gallant in the 1950s and sixties and seventies. He was the correspondent for The Corkman and he wrote some great stuff and I was lucky to be able to source several of his songs. And Dan Joe had it very handy for me because he kept the newspaper cuttings, with the dates of when they were published on his page, so I was able to get it off the microfilm easily enough, in Tralee County Library. Great songs altogether. And one of the them was a very funny one. It is very popular at the moment and has been for the last ten years, called The Ballad of Ned Jones’ Toyota. That’s what we called it for the collection. As I mentioned earlier, Ned Jones was a publican from Meenganine that had a pub in Kanturk, and he won a car in a raffle in Kiskeam, a Toyota 20. It was a huge prize at that time, back in the 1970s, and the song is legend, because there are so many characters mentioned in it. I have another one here that’s like it, in that it records so many people – The Youths of Kiskeam – you know that song? – and it’s great, it gives a very very good account of social life of the people, what they did, their nicknames etc. We’ll wind up, and this is the song we’re going to finish with if that’s OK. Take one and pass them round. I’ve only 12, so if you could share. If you want to sing it, it’s to the air of Phreab san Ól, As we said earlier about this, this song was composed by John Philpot Curran, who was the father of Sarah Curran, and I started off singing that poem that Donal made about Sarah Curran, who was John Philpot Curran’s daughter, so we’re finishing up, two hundred and fifty years back, with a song that Padraig Colum said marks the departure from the . . . We started off with that . . . Curran also wrote a very interesting poem called The Monks of the Screw, a song, and it was collected . . . the music for it was collected by George Petrie. And it’s very very good, because if you follow that, with Petrie, it shows that Curran was well up into . . . he was a musician, and he was playing the traditional music of his own area, and the melodies he was using were from tunes form his own place. Petrie says that he got it from his son and he said it’s a version of Táim in Arrears, which is a very popular melody. If you don’t know the air, of Phreab san Ól, this is more or less what we’ll do, we’ll just do one verse quick, and then do the whole lot. It goes:

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If sadly thinking and spirits sinking Could more than drinking my cares compose,

Are you OK with that? Right so, a haon, a dó, a trí, and we’ll finish it up. But before we do that Pat is going to say a few words. Thanks very much for coming. Sorry for all the waffle, I’m not used to this. I’m more comfortable sitting down playing tunes. But thanks for the opportunity, it’s been a great couple of days trying to revise some of this. I had a lot of it forgotten, in fairness, and I apologise for the mistakes and things like that. So we’ll have a shot at it anyway. The Deserter’s Lament Words by John Philpot Curran Air: Traditional (Phreab san Ól) If sadly thinking and spirits sinking Could more than drinking my cares compose, A cure from sorrow from sighs I borrow And hope tomorrow would end my woes; But since in wailing there’s naught availing And face unfailing will strike the blow Then for that reason and for a season Let us be merry before we go. To joy a stranger, a way-worn ranger In every danger my course I’ve run Now hope all ending and death befriending His last aid lending my cares are done; No more a rover or hapless lover Those cares are over my glass runs low Then for that reason and for a season Let us be merry before we go.

Go raibh míle maith agaibh go léir! References Tim Browne: Stories in Song Vol.1 - a miscellany of Songs, Lyrics & Anecdotes from the Barony of Duhallow Donal Ó Siodhacháin (ed): The Road To Song, Sean McCarthy, His Songs, Their Music and Story, Clo Dunaire/Irish & Celtic Publications Concluding words by Patricia Herron Ó SIodhacháin