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Sleeve Notes
Love Songs Of Ireland From The Fifteenth To The Twentieth Centuries
Farewell But Whenever presents the shifting moods of love as expressed in the Irish literary and song tradition from the fifteenth to the twentieth centuries. The songs encompass love of God, love of child; the keen of a lover for his dead unconsumated love; the tension between body and soul, between the ideal and the real; an artist's song of love for the city in which he was born; the pains of unrequited love, of seduction, lust, and farewell.
Treasa O'Driscoll was brought up in Tuam, County Galway. Her mother is a singer and her maternal grandfather was a traditional musician and dancer from County Clare. Treasa became acquainted with the language and culture of the Gael-tacht at Colaiste Mhuire, Tuar Mhic Eadaigh, where Mairéad Nic Dhonncha, a teacher from Carna, inspired in her an abiding interest in the poetry and song of Connemara.
Treasa married Robert O'Driscoll, a Newfoundlander, in 1966 before he took up a teaching post at the University of Toronto. Her husband has presented the best of Irish drama, poetry and music to Toronto audiences for over a decade.
She in turn has contributed articles on Irish literature to various Canadian newspapers and has presented several programmes on Irish music on CBC. As a singer, she has appeared on radio and television in Ireland, Scotland, Canada and the United States and has toured extensively through North America with her one-woman show, 'I Am of Ireland'. In 1977 she presented it in 18 cities of the United States under the auspices of Eoin McKiernan, President of The Irish American Cultural Institute.
She presented concerts with Seán Ó Riada in Canada and in Ireland in 1971. The Scottish artist and impressario, Richard Demarco, introduced her to audiences in Scotland and she and her husband have travelled throughout Europe with him on two of his Edinburgh Arts journeys during which she performed in many major cities.
As an actress, Treasa has appeared at the Abbey Theatre, the Oxford Playhouse and the Edinburgh Festival. She lives in Toronto with her husband and four children but still considers Ireland her spiritual home.
Mícheál Ó Domhnaill is one of the principle innovators of the revival of traditional Irish music and song which was begun by Seán Ó Riada in the early sixties. He has many recordings to his credit as a singer, musician, arranger and producer. These include: "Skara Brae" (1971); "Celtic Folk-weave" —; with Mick Hanly (1974); and four widely acclaimed albums as a member of The Bothy Band: "The Bothy Band" (1975); "Old Hag You Have Killed Me" (1976); "Out Of The Wind And Into The Sun" (1977) and "Afterhours" (1978).
Of late he has been commuting between Ireland and the U.S.A., performing mainly with fiddler, Kevin Burke, another ex-Bothy Band member. Micheal and Kevin have released one album as a duet, "Promenade" (1978).
Song Notes
Farewell But Whenever presents the shifting moods of love as expressed in the Irish Literary and song tradition from the fifteenth to the twentieth centuries. The songs range from love of God to love of child; the keen of a lover for his dead unconsumated love; the conflict or tension between body and soul, between the ideal and the real; the artist's song of love for the city in which he was born; the pains of unrequited love, of seduction, lust and farewell.
Like all love songs these Irish songs arise from the unappeaseable longing of the human heart. They communicate a sense of the fragility of human emotions, the transitoriness of happiness and most of all, the sense of the quest, whether conscious or not, for the embodiment of the divine in life. The unique qualities that characterise the songs are despair, desire, a lack of licentiousness side by side with a sense of abandonment.
Bríd Thomáis Mhurcha — I learned this from the singing of Seán ac'Donncha. The tune is a kind of inverted version of An Páistín Fionn and I have changed the rhythm of the song to accommodate the tongue-in-cheek nature of the words.
The song of a man who, although he seems to have a way with women, has met his match in playfulness and is thrown into turmoil as a consequence. He accepts, however, the inevitability of a fate that keeps them apart, while acknowledging the attraction that binds them.
For Anne Gregory — Anne Yeats told me that this poem was the result of a conversation Yeats had with the young Anne Gregory (niece of Lady Gregory). The air for it came into my head one day.
The poem articulates the common dilemma of the physically beautiful girl whose looks excite in imaginative young men a passion for the ideal, disturbing for her because of her consciousness of the fact that her external beauty may not necessarily reflect the state of her inner being which only God can know.
(Printed by kind permission of Senator Michael Yeats) Air; Copyright Treasa O'Driscoll
The Maid on the Shore — I have spent a good deal of time in Newfoundland where this song originated. My husband, a Newfoundlander, is descended from a branch of the Irish who went out, as adventurers, to fish off the coast of 'Talamh an Éisc', his ancestors being, I suspect, originally from Cape Clear Island. Many of the Newfoundland traditional songs are connected with seafaring, with ships and fishing, for obvious reasons. I learned this from the singing of Stan Rogers, my favourite Canadian singer/songwriter, whose musical thrust is rooted in Nova Scotia.
A woman finds herself as an object of lust to searoving men who will pay any price for her indulgence. But she values her independence above all else and ingeniously eludes them.
Seacht nDólás na Maighdine Muire — The words date back to the 15th century; I learned this from the singing of Nóirín Ní Riain. I feel that the echo of a monastic chorus, miraculously embodied in the voice of Micheal Ó Domhnaill, gives it an authentic hymnal dimension.
The song is a litany of the sorrows endured by Mary during the passion and death of her Son. The chorus represents her keening, as a mother, the praises of a son who was God.
Christy Mahon's Song — Maureen Charlton and her sister, Nuala O'Farrell, adapted a musical version of J. M. Synge's Playboy of the Western World and called it "The Hearts a Wonder". Nuala chose the airs, all traditional, and Maureen the words.
No woman could fail to be moved by the simple passion of the words Christy Mahon used to melt the heart of Pegeen Mike. Taken out of the context of one of the greatest love scenes in 20th century drama, it stands on its own merits as a song of heroic farewell to the beloved and attests to the potency of the love memory.
(Printed by kind permission of Maureen Charlton and Nuala O'Farrell)
An Droighneán Donn — I first learned the words from Mrs. Costello's Amhrain Mhuighe Seola, but could only give it blas na Gaeltachta' after I heard it sung by Sean 'ac Donncha from Carna. Seósamh ó É gave me the story behind the song, otherwise known as ri na n-amhran (the king of songs)58; A wealthy farmer was attracted by a dark-haired girl he met at a fair in Galway. As they talked he drew her away from a crowd to sit beneath a brown thorn bush (an droighneán donn). Here they pledged their love and here, he gave her a ring as a keepsake. Bidding her farewell at the close of day, he promised to return in a year when his affairs would be in order and when they could marry. They went their separate ways. Some time later she learned that he was to marry a woman of class. She dressed in the disguise of a woman-of-the-roads and travelled to his part of the country, where a party to celebrate his forthcoming marriage was in progress. If a woman, or man-of-the-roads came to the door at such a moment it was customary to invite him or her inside. The bride-to-be would offer a drink, if it should be a man, or the bridegroom-to-be would proffer a glass to an itinerant woman. As it was, this girl was given a glass of wine by her beloved who of course did not recognize her. She drained the glass and returned it to him with the ring inside. Recognition dawned upon him. The fire of love re-kindled, he announced to the assembly that here, indeed, was his true love, the one he had first pledged to marry, and they departed together. This was the song she sang when she handed him the glass.
Red Roses For Me — This is taken from Sean O'Casey's play of the same name. I have altered the air a bit. It reflects O'Casey's love for the city of Dublin where he was born. In envisaging Ireland as a woman, O'Casey is in the tradition of Irish writers beginning with the Aisling of the 18th century and continuing in the work of modern Irish writers in English.
Synge said "Everything Irish became precious and had a charm that was neither quite human nor divine, rather perhaps as if I had fallen in love with a goddess". But O'Casey's Ireland was not the ethereal queen of Yeats and P.H. Pearse nor "the sow that eats her farrow" of James Joyce but the other Kathleen, "coarsely dressed, hair a little tousled … barefooted, sometimes with a whiff of whiskey off her breath; brave and tawny; at ease in the smell of sweat and the sound of bad language, vital and assurge with immortality".
This song has the visual appeal of a post-impressionist painting.
(Printed by kind permission of Eileen O'Casey)
Dandling Songs — These are snatches of work songs and dandling tunes that I string together when singing to my own children. All stem from remembered versions sung by Dolly McMahon, Sorcha Ní Ghuairm and Elizabeth Cronin.
Expressions of love on the part of a mother to amuse and cajole a child.
Eibhlín a Rûn — I first heard this, superbly sung, by Gráinne Yeats who gave me a present of 'Ceol ár Sinsir' so that I could learn the words. Allegedly written by Cearbhall Ó Dálaigh of the doomed breed of 17th century harpists, it is addressed to Eleanor Kavanagh, a noble woman, whose parents prevented her from marrying him. However, on the eve of her wedding to somebody else he is said to have appeared at the feast in disguise, singing this song, which, for all its simplicity, seems to have had the desired effect on the object of his affections for she eloped with him after hearing it. It proves how effectively Irish can be the language of love.
Roll me from the Wall — I got the words out of Robin Morton's "Folksongs Sung in Ulster" and discovered they matched the air of Kitty from Ballinamore. The song may originally have come from Scotland.
Matchmaking was common practice in Ireland up until this century and they used to think there was a lot to be said for it. For they believed that in marriages of passion, men and women rushed in with blind eyes, only to recover sight later - while in marriages of arrangement rather less was expected and in the majority of cases there was less disillusionment. But it is no wonder that a situation, such as that presented in this song, should prove distressing to a young woman with no outlet for her natural earthiness. When the bed is pushed against the wall in a small cottage, as it usually was, the wife slept on the inside which accounts for the euphemistic title and needs no explaining. One of the reasons that farmers remained bachelors for so long is that there is only room on a small farm for one mistress and the Irish have a very good understanding of the difficulties that can arise between mother-in-law and daughter-in-law. "A mother-in-law and a daughter-in-law are like a cat and a mouse watching each other".
Mná na hÉireann — Seán Ó Riada chose to put an air to these words of Peadar Ó Doirnín's which he might easily have written himself. I include the song for the nostalgic reason of having sung it to the accompaniment of Ó Riada in Toronto in 1971 and because I had the privilege of taking part in two of the last four concerts he gave before his death.
The song describes the different kinds of women encountered by the rake in his travels through Ireland, from the industrious and virtuous to the unattainable and to the woman who could sleep with a man before her mother was cold in the clay. His popularity is so great with all these women that it has driven him to drink.
Farewell! But, Whenever you Welcome the Hour — I heard a lot of Thomas Moore in my childhood —; nobody in the early fifties in Ireland, growing up in a small town, could escape learning them and my mother was a very good singer of Moore's melodies. We cannot blame Moore for wanting to escape the fate of the 17th century bards who preceded him. His Gaelic origins he chose to ignore apart from resurrecting certain 'ancient' symbols and presenting them as 'respectable' to the conquerors for the first time. He used the model of an exotic Gaelic world of the past, to draw attention to the 'remnants' of a civilization of which, intrinsically, he knew very little. And, just as Bunting had taken modal tunes and forced them into minor and major keys, his lyrics were often too mannered for the simple traditional airs he used. However, in this as in many other songs of his, the lyrics and air are well married.
Joxer Daly remarks in Juno and the Paycock that "memory is the only friend that grief can call its own". Here is a song associated with love or friendship an experience or exchange with another human being which can constitute some of the happiest moments of life and the moments most worthy of recall, the stuff of involuntary memory. It also expresses everyone's natural fear of being forgotten by those whom we love.
Úna Bhán — My favourite song and the best example of a keen that I know. Grief has to be indulged, and Tomas Ó Coistealbha, a man renowned in seventeenth-century Ireland, for fighting prowess and eloquence, gave it splendid indulgence here. I learned it from the singing of Maire Áine Nic Dhonncha, but I have chosen some verses from Douglas Hyde's lengthy version of the poem. The first verse I sing gives vent to the poet's outrage at the death of his beloved, Una, and is couched in archetypal imagery. He rails against women who renege on their kisses. A sense of unfulfilled physical desire is inherent in the song. Una had been prevented from marrying him and had fallen seriously ill. Her father reluctantly granted her permission to see Costelloe. He spent a few happy hours by her bedside and left the big house in which she lived in hopes of being called back. He slowly went on his way, determined that if her call did not come by the time he reached Áth na Donóige he would never return. By the time the servant came to hail him, he had gone beyond the ford and, in stubborn pride, he refused to return. Una died and he, in his blinding grief, swam out to the island where she was buried and for three nights he composed this lament at her graveside. According to Douglas Hyde, his pleas for her return were finally heard. She did manifest herself to him on the last night, giving him a certain peace of mind.
