Folk Songs

 

Folk Songs in Celtic Languages

There are thousands of breathtakingly good songs in the Celtic languages that are also folk songs: that is, 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 and Welsh penillion.

In most of Western Europe, peasant communities were integrated more and more closely 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 and sold (as broadsheets) for a profit. These songs are mostly pretty bad, or at least pedestrian and boring. Most are hackneyed and almost none are heartfelt. They are interesting social history, and the ones that were accepted into 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, well...

I once investigated the sources fairly thoroughly, and came up with about five good English folk songs, and that includes Ireland. (Doesn’t include America or Lowland Scotland, where older ballads kept going, and more “folky” communities continued producing more interesting songs). I’m not sure if I could come up with five good French ones. German is maybe even worse: there, peasant communities were integrated very early into mainstream society and produced very boring music, except in a few fringe communities cut off from mainstream Germany, such as Lorraine. Composed and often “romantic” lieder often entered the folk tradition. Denmark is a bit similar, though there are great earlier ballads.  I don’t know Spanish or Italian songs at all, but I do know that once you get into Slavic territory, you’re back into the good stuff.

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 also in the mountains between Denbighshire and Merion. 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.

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

Here is a song, but not a penill.

 

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.

See my blog entry on Manx for information on Manx songs. The situation there was similar to England. There is one good song (At the Fiddler’s), a Fenian ballad (Fionn Mac Cumhail, no very like Irish som=ngst O’Leary!), and lots of ribald or obscene stuff. 

No Cornish songs were ever written down, except one that's in A Celtic Miscellany.

Breton folk songs were generally ballads used for dancing or for singing, of course (gwerz), and these are often produced broadside ballads of the late 19^th century that probably pushed out older ballads. Older ballads were published in Barzaz Breiz in 1839 (see also the Pengwern Collection, only recently published). Barzaz Breizh (Poetry of Brittany) was assumed in the 20^th century to have been composed by the collector in order to supply an Breton ancient and national literature, but research thirty years ago showed them to be actual folk ballads taken down from old people in the early 19^th century. They are ballads, though, not lyrical songs, which I guess is what I'm focusing on here.

Yann-Fanch Kemener is the great modern (though still dead) singer.

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 wish I could say something more intelligent here, but…You see how it is.

The southeastern Breton province of Gwened/Vannes does have great lyrical songs, though, be it that the song tradition is dying with the language and rest of the culture. The songs are very different from other Breton songs probably because of the extremely aberrant Breton dialect and the distinctive culture. There was a lot of singing in groups in Vannes while walking, working or just sitting around, so there were more opportunities for non-dance and non-ballad song than in other provinces. 

Diberder is the main collection (also Herrieu), only actually published in the last few years, and 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.

A song.

E Tan-Me ag er Hoed (I will Go to the Wood)

 

            I will go to the wood, my love, to hear the the nightingale,

            singing a song there on the top of the whitethorn tree.

 

            He sings, again and again, he says in his discourse

            “Those that love never sleep, during the day or at night.”

 

            Those that love never sleep, during the day or at night;

            neither their heart or their mind can find rest.”         

           

            You speak the truth, little nightingale, it's true what you                   say,

            for since I have come to love, I can no longer sleep.

 

            When I arrived in this village, my heart leapt(???) up,

            because in this village lives my chosen love Marion.

 

“I have come to this village, my love, to know how you are,

            I cannot forget you, I think of you every day.

 

            Between your house and my house there are three leagues?

            I has taken me barely an hour to come here to see you.

 

            Anyone who saw me coming would think that I was flying.

            No, no, I didn’t fly, but I walked a right good pace.

 

            Will you open your door to me, my love,

            since it's your dearest beloved that asks you to open?”

 

            “I will not open my door at this hour of the night,

            eleven o’clock sounded long ago, soon it will be midnight.

 

            Eleven o’clock sounded long ago, soon it will be midnight;

            it's past time for you to go home, to take your rest.”

 

            “I would like for us to go together, my beloved Mari,

            before the moon goes to its rest, to walk in the woods.

 

            We’ll hear the rain, the wind stirring in the branches

            and the happy little birds singing their joys.”

 

            “So late to the wood with you, indeed  I will not go.

            the birds have long since ceased to sing in the trees.”

 

            “I will go home then, my love, but I cannot sleep,

            for my mind is troubled, my heart is bewildered.

 

            There are two flowers between your house and mine;

            one of them opened, the other did not.

 

            One of them opened, the other did not.

            All that shows that you do not love me, my love.

 

            With my poor heart heavy with sorrow I went home alone.

            When I rose in the morning, I heard a bird singing.

 

            That bird was singing in glorious joy on a branch,

            but I, alas, sighed in anguish at every note.

 

            “Young man, tell me why it is that you sigh,

            do you have some sorrow, some pain, some secret love?”

 

            “Sorrow and pain I have, surely, and unrequited love.

            I love, little bird, but I am not loved in return.

 

            Since you have wings and feathers, go now, little red bird,

            go, fly as fast as you are able to my love’s window.

 

            Tell her, in your song, that I have money and farm stock,

            enough to make her happy as long as she lives.”

 

            “That’s enough, young man! Silver and gold,

            when love is lacking, will never bring happiness.”

 

Irish songs are great. I’ve written a few blog posts about various aspects, and waxed poetic in those places, so please go there for more information, or to be inspired.

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 that were 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. They are be referred to as the Bunting Collection, and are great.

Other 19^th century collections wereb made by Charlotte Brooks (published as Reliques of Irish Poetry, 1789 ), and by Hardiman (published as Irish Minsteltry, 1831 ). Both of these books include poems, as well as songs. Hardiman also collected a lot of songs that now survive as manuscripts in the British Museum (Egerton 117: 105 songs entered by Philip Gibbons and another in phonetic script some time after 1814: in Egerton 151; and also in Egerton 130, which is O’Donovan’s transliteration of the songs from a phonetic spelling into regular Irish.)  

There were also broadsides in Irish, mostly in a similar English-based phonetic script. A list was published in Eigse years ago, but I’m too lazy at find it right now.

The text of the Irish original of Donal Og is in Nua-Dhuanaire, Cuid I, edited by Padraig de Brun, Breandan O Buachalla and Tomas O Concheannain, and published by Institiud Ardleinn Bhaile Atha Cliath (Dublin Institute for Higher Studies), in 1975. That is a great anthology of modern (circa 1500 - 1900) Irish poetry and songs. There are also volumes II and III,  just as good.

Yes, everybody knows this song, but I like it a lot.

 

 My love’s hair is the color of the blackberries,

the color of blackthorn fruit on a fine sunny day,

the color of blackest bilberry that’s on the mountain,

black hair and a shining white body.

 

 My heart is as black as the blackthorn fruit,

black as the black coal that’s burnt in the forge,

black as the track of shoes on white hall floors,

and there’s a great melancholy behind my laugh.

 

 Oh Dónal Óg, you’d be better off with me

than with a proud demanding noblewoman;

I’d milk the cow for you and I’d churn the butter,

and if you were in danger, I’d strike a blow for you.

 

 Late last night the dog was speaking about you,

the snipe was speaking of you deep in the marsh,

that you’re a lonely wanderer through the wood,

and may you have no mate forever until you take me!

 

 You promised something to me, but you lied to me,

that you’d be waiting there at the sheep-pen for me;

I whistled and I called out twelve times for you,

but there was nothing there for me but the lambs bleating.

 

 You promised me something that wasn’t easy to do;

golden ships under silver masts,

twelve market towns,

and a fine white palace beside the sea.

 

Your love was only like a drift of bright snow,

like a sandbar in the middle of the sea,

like a wind  running over the top of the gardens,

like the torrent of a stream after a rainy day.

 

 My mother told me not to speak to you,

not on any day of the week or on Sunday;

it's a poor time she chose to give me a warning--

like a wall around a garden after it's been plundered.

 

 I denounce love--alas for she who gave it

to yon mother’s son who never understood it;

he left my heart black in the center of chest,

and I can’t see him in the village or any place at all.

 

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 Gaedheal (Connacht); Ceol na nOilean, O Ceallaigh, 1931 (islands of Conamara): Padraig Breathnach’s various Munster collections from Fuinn na Smol (1913) on into the 1920s; Freeman’s Ballyvourney collection (Irish Folk Song Society, 1920-21):  Ni Annagain’s Londubh an Chairn, 1927: 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.

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 issues of Gairm by Derick Thomson, though it is catalogued in MacKinnon’s Descriptive Catalogue of Gaelic Manuscripts. There are probably two hundred great lyrical songs there, 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 songs show up in the recently-published MacDiarmid Manuscript 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. The first to include “folk” songs is the Gillies Collection. All 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.

A song.

Faill Ill O Agus Ho Ro Eile

 

These are meaningless vocables of the chorus, sung by everyone present when the sung was sung. (You are excused from this.) Scottish Gaelic songs were traditionally sometimes known by the pattern of vocables of the chorus, rather than by a title.

 

Chorus:

            Faill ill o agus ho ro eile,

            faill ill o agus ho ro eile,

            air faill ill o agus ho ro eile,

            I am sad and weary, going to sleep and rising.

 

            Don’t you think yourselves that I was wretched

            of an Autumn evening on the harvest field;

            every woman had her own man by her side,

            but my own fine love is away at sea?

 

            I would go, I would go, I would go with you,

            I’d go far through the leafy woods with you;

            when I was young and had little sense,

            it was love for you that wounded me.

 

            My mother promised  me a golden ring;

            my father promised me a fold of cows;

            though I got those and all the world too,

            I’d much prefer to have that young man’s love.

 

            Dear sister, be kind to me,

            keep the cows and the calves apart;

            even were I to take up the sack and go begging,

            don’t keep me from my choice of husband.

 

            God, if I saw you going past the cattle fold,

            I’d smash the pail and toss away the rope,

            I’d put my own two arms all around you,

            and who, love, would keep you from me?

 

            Primroses flower and grow in the spring:

            Apples grow on the tops of the branches;

            those things remind me of my lover’s kiss,

            every one of them with the taste of honey.

Aimed at an English audience were the dubious Songs of the Hebrides (Fraser, Kennedy); Shaw’s Folksongs and Folklore of South Uist (1955) (great!); J.L Campbell’s three volumes of Hebridean Folksongs (actually all waulking songs but great!); 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!): Gaelic Songs from Cape Breton (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 incredibly shames Ireland, Wales and Brittany.

(Many of the early (up to about 1900) Scots Gaelic published collections were digitalized and available on the Internet Archive. Not sure if they're still there or if it is.)

If anyone would like to know more, you have only to ask.