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Sleeve Notes
Her Mantle So Green — Though the people of Ireland had great sympathy for and high expectations from the French Revolution, the British Army was well stocked with Irishmen in the ensuing Napoleonic wars. Soldiering then, as ever, was the resort of men born without pedigree or chance of bettering themselves; The motif of this song is as old as time: a soldier returning from a long campaign is not recognized by his sweetheart, whose loyalty he briefly tests by pretending to be someone else. I learned the words from a recording of Jim O'Neill, Markethill. County Armagh.
The Rainbow Mid the Willows — Learned many years ago from a recording collected in the Ozark Mountains by Alan Lomax. The tune is adapted from a Hungarian Csango song recorded by the band Muzsikas.
Spanking Maggie from the Ross — The sport of "trolling" — racing horses that are not allowed to break into a canter and are driven by a driver in a two wheeled 'car' — seems to have been a particularly Northern tradition, often taking place along the seashore. The action of this inter-county race lakes place on the shore at Glenarm in County Antrim, though Len Graham tells me this seems strange as the coastline there is pebbles and a more likely spot would have been further round the coast on the sandy beaches near Portrush. The words were learned from Arthur Coulter. who, very obviously, came from somewhere in Country Antrim.
When Adam was in Paradise — A song learned from the late, lamented Eddie Butcher. Obviously Scottish in origin. Len Graham tells me that when he was newly married to Pádraigín Ní Uallacháin and visiting the Butcher household, Eddie looked at them with a twinkle in his eye and introduced this song by saying, "Love is like honey trickling down the shuck of your back — and you can't lick it."