Tag Archives: song

31 Jan

Tidy Irish Lad

I’m a tidy bit of an Irish lad, as you can plainly see,
And I like a drop of the creature when I go out upon a spree;
I like a drop of the creature in a good old Irish style,
And a better drop cannot be had than is sold in the Emerald Isle.

                                        Chorus—
Far away from our native country, me boys, we sometimes roam,
We won’t forget we are Irishmen, although we’re far from home.

Oh, they say no Irish need apply, it is a thing I don’t understand,
For what would the English army do if it were not for Paddy’s land?
Whenever they went to battle they never were known to win,
Except when the ranks they were filled up with the best of Irishmen.

It was at the battle of Waterloo, Sebastapool the same,
The sons of Paddy’s land they showed that they were game;
They gave three hearty cheers, me boys, in a good old Irish style,
And we walloped the Russians at Inkerman, did the boys of the Emerald Isle.

This year marks the 100th anniversary of the song book printed by Irish-Minnesotan Michael Dean. Its front cover reads: The Flying Cloud And 150 Other Old Time Poems and Ballads: A Collection of Old Irish Songs, Songs of the Sea and Great Lakes, The Big Pine Woods, The Prize Ring and Others. This June will also mark ten years that I’ve been writing Northwoods Songs. Most of the early columns were about Dean’s songs and I will return to Dean this year in honor of his book’s centennial. I continue to be fascinated by Dean’s story and music (there are actually 166 songs in his book and I have written about 37 of those here so far).

This month’s song is one that took some real digging to research but I recently had a breakthrough. Dean prints “The Tidy Irish Lad” in The Flying Cloud before the song “No Irish Wanted Here” and the two songs have an interesting relationship. Both reference versions of the much-discussed “No Irish Need Apply” that appeared in newspaper help wanted ads in 1850s New York and has exemplified anti-Irish discrimination for generations since. Several songs were written that mention variants of this phrase and these added, no doubt, to its prominent place in cultural memory. The most well-known “No Irish Need Apply” songs seem to have originated in the early 1860s in New York and possibly in England around the same time. “No Irish Wanted Here” was a take-off on this, by then, established theme penned by the great New York performer Ed Harrigan and debuted in January, 1875.

“The Tidy Irish Lad” may have been an early Dublin take on the theme. A broadside estimated to have originated in Dublin around 1870 and digitized by the National Library of Scotland titled “A New Song Call’d the Boys of the Emerald Isle” matches Dean’s text with an extra verse about Irish dance and music:

In Ireland you will see the boys [c]an dance a jig or reel,
With their pretty little colleen can shove both toe and heel,
The piper sits to play a tu[n]e to make the people smile,
While we dance our native musi[c] does the boys of the Emerald Isle.

I was delighted to discover that the song also appears in the repertoire of legendary Irish singer Paddy Tunney.  Tunney sings a version very similar in text to Dean’s beginning “I’m a tight little bit of an Irish lad” which you can hear online (starts at 39:29) via the Peter Kennedy collection at the British Library. I combined Tunney’s melody with Dean’s text above.

Broadside image from National Library of Scotland. Shelfmark Crawford.EB.2391

09 Dec

Exile of Erin

“Oh, sad is my fate,” said the heart broken stranger,
             “The wild deer and roe to the mountains can flee,
But I have no refuge from famine or danger,
             A home and a country remains not for me;
Oh, never again in the green shady bower,
Where my forefathers lived shall I spend the sweet hours,
Or cover my harp with the wild woven flowers,
             And strike the sweet numbers of Erin Go Bragh.

Oh, Erin, my country, though sad and forsaken,
             In dreams I revisit thy sea-beaten shore,
But alas! in a far foreign land I awaken,
             And sigh for the friends that can meet me no more;
And thou, cruel fate, will thou never replace me,
In a mansion of peace where no perils can chase me?
Oh, never again shall my brothers embrace me,
             They died to defend me or live to deplore.

Where is my cabin once fast by the wildwood,
             Sisters and sire did weep for its fall,
Where is the mother that looked over my childhood,
             And where is my bosom friend, dearer than all?
Ah, my sad soul, long abandoned by pleasure,
Why did it dote on a fast fading treasure?
Tears like the rain may fall without measure,
             But rapture and beauty they cannot recall.

But yet all its fond recollections suppressing,
             One dying wish my fond bosom shall draw,
Erin, an exile bequeaths thee his blessing,
             Land of my forefathers, Erin Go Bragh;
Buried and cold when my heart stills its motion,
Green be thy fields fairest Isle of the ocean,
And the harp striking bard sings aloud with devotion,
             “Erin Mavourneen, sweet Erin Go Bragh.”

We return this month to the repertoire of Minnesota singer Michael Cassius Dean who printed “Exile of Erin” in his songster The Flying Cloud. Dean’s book reaches its 100th birthday next year having been printed in Virginia, Minnesota in 1922 while he was employed as night watchman for the Virginia-Rainy Lake Lumber Company mega-mill in that city. As I have written here before, Dean was visited by the wax cylinder recording machine of Robert Winslow Gordon in 1924 but his version of “Exile of Erin” does not appear to have been recorded at that time. We only have his text from the songster. The melody above is my own transcription of a version sung by Belle Luther Richards at Colebrook, New Hampshire for Helen Hartness Flanders in 1943. That recording is available on archive.org.

The Richards and Dean versions are the only versions collected from North American singers I have found. This is somewhat surprising given that the song was extremely popular in Ireland throughout the 1800s. It was popular enough to spark widely-publicized controversy over who wrote it! It seems fairly certain that the author was Scottish poet Thomas Campbell (1777-1844) who also authored “The Wounded Hussar.” Campbell reported that he wrote the song in 1800 in Hamburg after meeting a man named Anthony McCann who was exiled there for his role in the Rebellion of 1798.

It’s possible that Dean learned it from his Mayo-born parents. Mayo was a focus of action during the excitement of 1798 when French General Humbert landed with over 1000 troops at Cill Chuimín Strand, County Mayo in support of the revolutionaries in August of that year. It is also possible that Dean learned it from a source here in Minnesota. Minneapolis’ Irish Standard newspaper, to which Dean subscribed while living in Hinckley, printed the text of the song in 1886 and again in 1900.

21 Nov

Young Matt Ilan

There was a lord, lived in the north,
He had one fair and comely daughter,
She fell in love with a young man,
He was a servant to her father.
But when the old man came to know,
He swore that he would quit that island,
The lady cries, “My heart will break,
If I must part with young Matt Ilan.”

One night he discussed his lady fair,
All in her silent, lonely chamber,
Saying, “Matt Ilan I’ll transport,
I fear my child she stands in danger.”
His daughter she in ambush lay,
Oppressed with grief, she went off smiling,
Saying, “My father I’ll deceive,
I will protect my young Matt Ilan.”

Then to his room straightway she went,
Desiring him for to awaken,
Saying, “Rise, my love, and go your way,
Or else I fear you will be taken.
This night I heard my father say,
In spite of fate he would transport you,
So go your way before it is day,
You know, my love, that I do adore you.”

She sat her down on his bedside,
For about the space of half an hour,
And every word her true love spoke,
The tears down from her eyes did pour.
Her arms about his neck she threw,
His arms about her waist he twined them,
“No lord nor duke will e’er I wed,
My heart will go with you, Matt Ilan.”

“And must I go away?” he said,
“Just like some poor, forlorn ranger,
And leave my service in distress,
And must I go without my wages?”
“Oh, here are fifty pounds,” she says,
“’Tis more than all my father owed you,
So now away before it is day,
And I wish, my love, I had gone before you.”

Then after this came many an earl,
And many a lord to court this lady,
‘Twas all in vain, it was all no use,
No lord nor earl could gain her favor.
Her father asked the reason why,
At which his daughter plainly told him,
“No lord nor earl will e’er I wed,
My heart has gone with young Matt Ilan.”

Oh, then up speaks her father dear,
“I did not know how dear you loved him,
Now, I will bring young Ilan home,
Since none there are you adore above him.”
A letter then she wrote straightway,
Her heart to him it was inclining,
So, to church away without delay,
And she made a lord of young Matt Ilan.

This month we have a beautiful, unique version from Maine of a song that is well-known in Irish music circles thanks to its popularization in the 1970s. The great Ulster musician, co-founder of The Boys of the Lough and song collector Robin Morton published “Matt Hyland” in his 1970 book Folksongs Sung in Ulster. (Morton, sadly, passed away last month.)  Morton’s source was Sandy McConnell, the father of his soon-to-be bandmate, Fermanagh musician Cathal McConnell. Sandy got it from another Fermanagh singer, Tommy McDermott. Morton observed that the song seemed to only be found in tradition in south Ulster.

As has often been the case in my research, the north woods of North America turn out to have been a place where Ulster songs migrated and survived. Carrie Grover sang the above version for collector Sydney Robertson-Cowell in 1941. Grover, born in Nova Scotia and based for most of her life in Maine, wrote in her book A Heritage of Songs “I have never heard anyone but my father sing this song, and he said he never heard anyone sing it but the man from whom he learned it. It is so long ago that I can’t be sure, but I think the singer was a man from New Brunswick whose name was Davidson.”

The source for my transcription was the audio recording of Grover made available online through the wonderful work of Julie Mainstone Savas on her Carrie Grover Project site (carriegroverproject.com). I recommend listening to the recording for Grover’s effective use of a sort of “in between” pitch at the peak of the opening phrase.