Triple Distilled

Songs

I've decided to start blogging again, now that we've run out of crisps.

There are thousands of breathtakingly good songs in the Celtic languages that are also folk songs: songs made in a traditional idiom whose original maker is no longer know, and which have passed through many singers before being taken down in print. (Not as unsanitary a process as it may sound.) 

Most of them are Irish or Scottish Gaelic, with Vannetais Breton in second place.

(My translation of another song below.This is not Roisin Dubh, sung above.)

Every man thinks that it's him I’m in love with, when he begins to swear oaths,

and two-thirds of them drop away from me, when I remember your words;

the snow blows in drifts in the endless storm on Sliabh Ui Fhloinn;

my love’s hair is the color of the sloes that grow on the blackthorn tree

I never thought that my dearest love would haggle over my dowry
or that he would desert me afterwards, over a matter of wealth;

its my desperate despair that I’m not with the man who so troubled my heart

in a little mountain glen far away from them all, with the dew coming down.

I have a present from my first love down in my pocket

 and all the men of Ireland couldn’t cure my sorrow, alas; 

when I remember your ways and your lovely brown hair, 

I spend a while weeping softly and a while sighing heavily.

I wish I had a present on the fair day from my handsome lad,
and sweet conversation after, with the flower of the men:
it's my desperate despair that we’re not there with a priest in front of us,
to join our lives together, before he leaves and goes away.

No matter what they think of it, I’ll praise my dearest love;
no matter what they think of it, I’ll sit down by his side;
no matter what they think of it, a thousand arrows through his heart;
and oh shining star before the people, it's you who’s troubled my heart.

Oh dear God, what will I do if you should leave me?
I don’t know the way to your house, your fire or to your hearth.
My mother is frantic, my father’s in the grave,
my people are enraged with me, and my love’s far away.

There's a darkness on my eyes and I didn't sleep a wink, 
thinking about you, my first love, though the night is long. 
The way that you denied me in front of the world, 

and oh, fragrant branch, why would you bear false witness to me?

Its a foolish man who’d be scrambling up a wall that’s high,

when there’s a low wall beside it, on which he could put his hand;

though the rowan tree is tall, its crop it is sour,

while blackberries and strawberries grow on a low little branch.

I send you two hundred farewells, my thousand love, 
the gossipers have poisoned your mind against me. 

I have no little boat to send after your ship 

the sea’s rolling high in front of me and I don’t know how to swim.

            Take my blessing to that village there west among the trees,

towards the village to which I’m wandering, both early and late;
there’s many a wet muddy road and a twisting path
stretching between me and the village where my sweetheart dwells.     

England, France, Germany...Boring!

In most of Western Europe, peasant communities were integrated more and more into the hegemonic urban and “official” culture and language during the 19^th century, so that their songs (as recorded mostly late 19^th century and after) are really tin pan alley songs: pop songs written by urban professional songmakers and sold (as broadsheets) for a profit. These songs are mostly pretty bad, or at least pedestrian and boring. Many are pretty trivial ballads; most are hackneyed; almost none are heartfelt. They are interesting social history, and the ones that entered the tradition can tell us a lot about the concerns of peasants and industrial and other workers in this period of change, but as songs….

I once investigated the sources fairly thoroughly, and came up with about five good English folk songs (that can compare to ordinary Irish and Scottish Gaelic songs), and that includes Ireland. (Doesn’t include America or Lowland Scotland, where older ballads kept going, and more “folky” communities continued producing interesting songs.) 

I’m not sure if I could come up with even five good French ones. (There were more interesting songs in French dialects, and in the Occitan language.) German is slightly different: there, peasant communities were integrated very early into mainstream society, thus producing very boring music (except in a few fringe communities cut off from mainstream Germany, such as Lorraine). Composed and often “romantic” lieder entered the folk tradition, often, I think, through the very common village choirs that sang middle class music. Same with Denmark, except a little less so.  I don’t know Spanish or Italian songs at all -- what I've seen isn't anything all that interesting -- but once you get into Slavic, Baltic and Rumanian territory, you’re back into the good stuff.

Lithuania: the band Obelija, and a male group whose name I forget. Most of the band has now emigrated in order to earn a living, as most young Lithuanians must do.

Wales

The religious revival of the early 19^th century convulsed Welsh society and reshaped it in a new form that was vital and vigorous until forty years ago, but if your eyes are on heaven and the Bible and respectability, you don’t have time for folk songs. The only places songs stayed vital were in north Pembrokeshire where the dialect was very aberrant, and where the Calvinistic Methodists never were strong; and in the mountains between Denbighshire and Merion. For the most part, the songs that survive are not that great, to be honest. The best most accessible collection is in in Kennedy’s Folksongs of Britain and Ireland.

Below: one of the great Welsh folk songs. From Morgannwg, of course.

Lliw’r Heulwen (The Color of the Sun)

 The gleam of the sun on the hillside,

the sheen of the lily on the mountain;

when I leave and go away from here,

my love, remember this.

Your form, your hand, your eye,

your fair ways, girl,

your dear quiet nature

have taken my love.

It's easy to know the squirrel

running along in his haste;

it's easy to know the partridge

when they rise in uproar;

it's very easy to know the oak

among the small clover:

alas for me, it's not so easy

to know a dear pretty girl’s heart.

The mill is obliged to grind

when the water turns it;

the smith is obliged to work

as long as the iron is hot;

the sheep is obliged to love

the little lamb while it's weak:

I am obliged to love

the one who is fated to me.

Penillion and Tribannau (in Morgannwg/Gwent) were the great folk lyrics of Wales. These were single stanzas, sung in apposition to stanzas from other singers, or strung together in longer forms. They were mostly a northern Welsh thing, though, and stopped in the religious revival. Modern concert pennillion are not the same, but are a light classical music exercise using stanzas of poetry sung in apposition to a different harp tune, usually played in a plodding piano-based style.

Isle of Man: Cornwall

See my blog entry on Manx for information on Manx songs. The situation there was similar to in England. There is one good love song (At the Fiddler’s), a Fenian ballad (Fionn Mac Cumhail, not O’Leary!), some good lullabies etc. and lots of ribald or obscene stuff. No Cornish songs were ever written down. Well, one was, but it's a translation of an English one.)

Brittany

Breton folk songs were generally ballads used for dancing, and they are often broadside ballads produced in the late 19^th century These probably pushed out older ballads like those published in Barzaz Breiz in 1839. (This collection was assumed, up until thirty years ago, to have been modern romantic songs composed in the 19th century in order to meet a need for "old Breton ballads," but research shows them to be actual folk ballads taken down from old people in the early 19^th century. Good collections are Luzel (lsate 19th century), and Pengwern (manuscript published only recently).

There is a tradition of lyrical song in Breton (at least in central Brittany in the late 20^th century)  that is really not well known. It may mostly be modern. Very little has been published. I'm familiar with it from the "radio-cassettes" series produced in Bro-Plinn and Meneziou in the 1970s and 1980s. I wish I could say something more intelligent here, but…You see how it is.


Below is an old ballad.

The southeastern Breton province of Gwened/Vannes does have great lyrical songs. These were is a local tradition that is dying with the language and rest of the culture, and were so distinctive probably because of  the extremely aberrant Breton dialect and its culture. There was a lot of singing in groups while walking, working or just sitting around here, so there were more opportunities for non-dance song. Diberder is the main collection (also Herrieu), only actually published in the last few years. (The tradition belongs really only to “Upper” Gwened (i.e. Pontivy town to Vannes town to Lorient/Quimperle, and Baud; rather than to the Guemene area (Lower Gwened) which was a transition to the rest of Brittany.)

Below, are bits of two songs from Gwened, but not the ones I translate below that.

E Han Me Hoah ur Huiah...(I Will Go Once More)

I will go once more to the house of my love,

and if it brings sorrow, it is not the first time.

I will go once more in order to greet her,

and, if it brings sorrow, what then is sorrow?

“Come with me, my love, to walk under the trees,

and we will listen to the songs of the birds.”

On a deep green branch, that bird began to sing,

the girl listened to him, she began to weep.

She: “The little bird sings there, he says in his song

that your sorrow is at an end, my love.”

He: “Sooner will the wide sea want fishes,

than I will prove false to my promise, my love.”

Sung by Lisa Lucas from Carnac, 1912. I used the text published in Chansons Populaires Bretonnes.

Ireland

Irish songs (in Irish!) are great, but we all know that. I've written several blog posts on the topic. Please go there in order to be inspired. All you'll get here is the facts about collections.

The first collections were those made in 1796 by a County Down Irish scholar, O Loinsigh, who was employed by Bunting (harp music collector) to wander around and collect the songs sung to the harp tunes taken down by Bunting at the Belfast harp festival.  The portions of O Loinsigh’s notes for Counties Leitrim and Mayo survived, and were published as issues of the Journal of the Irish Folk Song Society. They have been republished recently, but I don’t have the details.


The only other 19^th century collection was made by Charlotte Brooks (Reliques of Irish Poetry, 1789 ), and by Hardiman (Irish Minilstery, 1831 ). Both of these books include poems, as well as songs. Hardiman had songs collected that survive as manuscripts in the British Museum (Egerton 117: 105 songs entered by Philip Gibbons and another in phonetic script some time after 1814: Egerton 151; and Egerton 130, O’Donovan’s transliteration of the phonetic songs into regular Irish.)  There were some broadsides in Irish, mostly also in English-based phonetic script,  and a list was published in Eigse years ago, but I’m too lazy at find it right now.

The great Irish collections start with Hyde’s Love Songs of Connacht (1893), and keep going into the 1930s. They include O Maille’s Amhrain Chlainne Gael (Connacht); Ceol na nOilean, O Ceallaigh, (Conamara islands) 1931: Padraig Breathnach’s various Munster collections from Fuinn na Smol (1913) on into the 1920s; Freeman’s Ballyvourney (Cork) collection (Irish Folk Song Society, 1920-21):  Ni Annagain’s Londubh an Chairn, 1927 (mostly Waterford): and Costello’s Amhrain Muighe Seola, from the Tuam, Galway area, 1919.


Not forgetting of course the great Ulster collections: Cead de Cheolta Uladh, and Dha Chead de Cheoltaibh Uladh, both by O Muirgheasa. The first includes a lot of south Armagh, south Monaghan songs, and Meath, from 19^th century manuscripts. Amhrain Chuige Uladh, by Muireadhach Meith is mostly from Omeath, County Louth, and should be read with P Ni Uallachain’s A Hidden Ulster, (2003) which publishes a lot of songs from the same area collected in the early 20^th century.

Below is a great Ulster song from a great Ulster choir. Below that is a Scottish song.

Scottish Highlands

Is Luaineach Mo Chadal Anochd (My sleep Is Fitful Tonight)

I live, but I’ve lost every joy.

My heart in my breast has withered;

it has blackened now just like the coal.

Down in Earrach, down there yonder.

loveliest of women, fairest of body;

her teeth, they are white as chalk,

her voice is sweeter than string-music.

Like the foam of fair water,

like the swan on the flowing stream,

a precious jewel like falling snow,

my love for you grew all unnoticed.

Fair sapling of the golden hair,

your head glimmers like the gold.

your cheeks are like the rowan berry,

they are alight with the beauty of the rose.

White fingers and palms like ivory,

a shining breast of a fair color;

this love I have given you;

ochone, I’m in a desperate way.

I will not climb the hill or mountain,

there’s a heaviness in my step.

To ascend Iuchair na Cist’ is a struggle,

though that’s but a little lowly hill.

Like the topmost grain of the crop,

like a sapling in the verdant wood,

like the sun that conceals the stars,

beside you, all women fade away.

(Translation by me.)

Scottish Gaelic also has thousands of great songs, and they were recorded starting early, thanks to the fact that the people loved the songs (Scottish Gaelic literature is really a song/poetry literature), and to the fact that there was a Gaelic “middle class” (mostly clergymen and minor landlords/clan chiefs) in the late 18^th century who had time and writing apparatus.

The MacLagan manuscript collection dates from the 1760s on. It has never been published, except for some songs in older issues of Gairm by Derick Thomson, but it is catalogued in MacKinnon’s Descriptive Catalogue of Gaelic Manuscripts. There are probably two hundred great lyrical songs in it, as well as Fenian ballads, and poems from poets like Ian Lom, Alasdair Mac Maighistear Alasdair, Robb Donn and so on. Versions of some of the folk songs show up in the recently-published MacDiarmid Ms. Anthology of 1790  (Thomson, 1992), and in the unpublished MacNicol collection. The first two collectors were from Perthshire; the last from Argyll.

There are many many collections in Gaelic published from about 1790 on into the 1930s: too many to list. They were aimed at the literate Gaelic society that existed in those times (thanks to religion) in the Highlands and in Glasgow and in Cape Breton. 

Aimed at a more general and/or English audience were the very dubious Songs of the Hebrides (Fraser); the wonderful Shaw’s Folksongs and Folklore of South Uist (1955); J.L Campbell’s three volumes of Hebridean Folksongs (actually all waulking songs); Francis Tolmie’s really fascinating collection from Skye, published in the Journal of the Folk Song Society in Volume, IV, 1910-14. (They are “Songs of Occupation”, which means a lot of spinning songs, lullabies, waulking songs, etc, but lots of great songs): Gaelic Songs from Nova Scotia (I think I have the title right), collected by MacLeod; Songs Remembered In Exile, from Cape Breton, edited by Shaw; and a few more recent volumes. 

The magazine Tochar published a lot over the years, and the School of Scottish Studies etc. collection of tapes is online at Tobar a Dualchais – an incredible resource of incredible songs that shames Ireland, Wales and Brittany...

No, I didn't provide lists of YouTube videos. I will do that next time.

Why do these songs even matter? I'll leave it to you to decide, or not, as you prefer. It's possible it's simply that I'm a spoiled librarian/archivist, and should go work in the garden instead.