I’m not the martial type and have no temperament, time nor tolerance for militarism as a political creed, but one of my favourite folk music records is a 1970, long out of print vinyl album called Songs and Music of the Redcoats. Never re-issued on CD, it is hard to find – but English folksinger Martyn Wyndham-Read kindly sent me a copy a decade or two ago. Its sequel, The Valiant Sailor: Songs & Ballads of Nelson’s Navy, followed in 1973.
The songs range from the English Civil War to the Boer War, in which the red coat was replaced by khaki, and all the wars between. The War of the Spanish Succession, the Seven Years War (in America, the French and Indian War), the American War of Independence, the French Revolutionary War, the Crimean and Afghan Wars, the Indian Mutiny, the Sudan wars, and the South African War. Standouts for me are The Girl I Left Behind Me, which dates back to 1758, The British Soldier, with its ominous line, “we marched into Kabul and we took the Balar Hizar”, Soldiers of the Queen, which enjoyed immense popularity during the South African War, and in latter days, in the film Breaker Morant, and Stand to Your Glasses Steady, a memento mori of the prevalence of death, most often from disease, in the service of the East India Company. The featured image is from Stanley Kubrick’s 1975 film Barry Lyndon, set during the Seven Years War.
This traditional English marching song has been around for four centuries, probably originating during the War of the Spanish Succession. It was published in Thomas D’Urfey’s Wit and Mirth, or Pills to Purge Melancholy in 1706 and appeared in The Recruiting Officer in 1706, a comedy by George Farquhar, and in John Gay’s The Beggar’s Opera in 1728. The lyrics refer to the War of the Spanish Succession (1701-1714), the Duke of Marlborough, and Queen Anne of England (1665 -1714).
It recalls a time when poor men joined the army out of need and the rich for glory, and when many a young man “took the king’s shilling” or bought an officer’s commission to fight in foreign wars for king or queen and country and to perish far away from home in “far away places with strange sounding names”.
So far away from home: the last stand of the 44th Foot at Gandamak during the disastrous First Afghan War of 1842.
It was very popular in Colonial and Revolutionary America, with both sides singing their own versions. The song remained popular throughout the British Empire although nowadays, its melody serving as an orchestral leitmotif in many movies, including the 1940 Hollywood classic, Northwest Passage which starred Spencer Tracy as Major Robert Rogers, leading is Rangers through French lines during the Seven Years War (1756-1763) to attack an Indian village allied to the French. But it largely faded from public consciousness, until its use in the television adaptation of Bernard Cornwell’s Sharpe series of the 1990s about the green-jacketed Rifles soldiers. I’ve heard the tune is also used in Morris dancing.
Winter Soldier 1702, Robert Payton
Batlle scene from Waterloo, 1970
The song may have actually originated in a nursery rhyme. Tom, Tom, the Piper’s Son” mentions a piper who knows only one tune, this one, although the children’s rhyme may have itself may have started actually started its life on the stagy, written for but not included) in Thomas D’Urfey’s 1698 play The Campaigners. This is the version we sang in primary school in late fifties Birmingham:
Tom, Tom, the piper’s son, He learnt to play when he was young, The only tune that he could play Was ‘over the hills and far away’; Over the hills and a great way off, The wind shall blow my top-knot off.
The words have changed over the years, the only consistent element in early versions being the title line and the tune. D’Urfey’s and Gay’s versions both refer to lovers, while Farquhar’s version refers to fleeing overseas to join the army, whilst Gay’s lyrics reference transportation and indentured labour in the American colonies – which is an altogether different and largely untold story.
MacHeath: Were I laid on Greenland’s coast, And in my arms embrac’d my lass; Warm amidst eternal frost, Too soon the half year’s night would pass. And I would love you all the day. Ev’ry night would kiss and play, If with me you’d fondly stray Over the hills and far away.
Polly: Were I sold on Indian soil, Soon as the burning day was clos’d, I could mock the sultry toil When on my charmer’s breast repos’d. I would love you all the day. Ev’ry night would kiss and play, If with me you’d fondly stray Over the hills and far away.
My favourite version is by English folksinger Martin Wyndham-Read. Based on Farquar’s song, it is well sung with a melodic and measured martial fife or flute accompaniments. Wyndham-Read renders it wistful, poignant, nostalgic, romantic even. It is in itself a perfect recruitment advertisement, part patriotic, part propaganda – the two often operate in unison – promising not only financial reward to folk in straightened circumstances, but camaraderie in a noble purpose, and to riff the Bard of Avon, a “happy few”, a “band of brothers”.
Hark now the drums beat up again For all true soldier gentlemen, Then let us list and march, I say, Over the Hills and far away.
(Chorus) Over the hills and o’er the main To Flanders, Portugal and Spain, Queen Anne commands and we’ll obey, Over the hills and far away.
All gentlemen that have a mind, To serve the queen that’s good and kind, Come list and enter into pay, Then over the hills and far away.
No more from sound of drum retreat, While Marlborough and Galway beat The French and Spaniards every day, When over the hills and far away.
The song is at 5.18 on the YouTube video below. It is a recording of the full album, so indulge yourselves and listen to it in its entirety. The Sharpe version, below, is also based on Farquhar’s, acquiring new lyrics for successive episodes. It was recorded by John Tams who played Dan Hagman in the series.
If I should fall to rise no more As many comrades did before Then ask the fifes and drums to play Over the Hills and Far Away
Postscript- Irish soldiers
By happenstance, as I was completing this post, I was reading The Great Hunger, published in 1962, by English historian Cecil Woodham-Smith (well known back in the day for The Reason Why, her acclaimed story of the Charge of the Light Brigade). It is, she wrote, “a curious contradiction, not very often remembered by England, that for many generations, the private soldiers of the British Army were largely Irish. The Irish have natural endowments for war, courage, daring, love of excitement and conflict; McCauley described Ireland as “an exhaustible nursery of the finest soldiers”. Poverty and lack of opportunity at home made the soldier’s shilling a day, and the chance of foreign Service, attractive to the Irishman; and the armies of which England is proud, the troops who broke the power of Napoleon in the Peninsula and defeated him at Waterloo, which fought on the scorching plains of India, stormed the heights of the Alma in the Crimean campaign, and planted the British flag in every quarter of the globe in a hundred forgotten engagements, were largely, indeed in many cases, mainly Irish”.
It has been estimated that during the American War of Independence, 16% of the rank and file in the British Army, and 31% of the commissioned officers, were Irishmen. There were indeed Irishmen fighting on both sides (Scots too, as portrayed in the final few series of that entertaining Highland fling, Outlander). In following years, the Irish would swell the ranks to the extent that by 1813 the British Army’s total manpower was estimated to be half English, a sixth Scottish and a third Irish.
In addition to Songs and Music of the Redcoats andThe Valiant Sailor: Songs & Ballads of Nelson’s Navy, I would also highly recommend Strawhead’s 1987 album Law Lies Bleeding (see below). My own marching song, The Marching Song of the New Republic is also included below.
All along the ancient wastes the thin reflections spin
That gather all the times and tides at once we love within
That build the edges round the shrouds that cloud the setting sun
And carry us to other days and other days to one
Roy Harper, The Same Old Rock, Stormcock
It must’ve been May 1969. A cold, wet and windy day in Hull, Yorkshire. I’d hitch-hiked from Reading in Berkshire to London and then northwards on the A1 to visit an old school chum in the Humberside port city. And it is there, in a student share house that I first dropped Mescaline, a derivative of peyote, an hallucinogenic psychotropic favoured by Mexican shamans of yore. In our circles, it was prized for its visual and aural delights rather than the more ”head trip”, mood-manipulating and psychologically unpredictable and potentially unsettling lysergic acid. And that evening, headphones on, I first listened to McGoohan’s Blues.
This eighteen minute digression from the concept if not the plot of an iconic if indecipherable ‘sixties’ television series (that’s the featured picture), was the penultimate track on Folkjokeopus, the third album of English folk singer, songwriter and acoustic guitarist extraordinaire Roy Harper. The song was indeed the whole point of Folkjokeopus – its raison d’être- the rest of the album was predominantly light-weight, comedic psychedelia – with the exception of the bleak and bitter but nevertheless captivating “love gone wrong” song She’s The One.
Wikipedia and generic music sites tell us that Folkjokeopus was released in June 1969, but more hip sources reckon it was released on May Day – and my memory concurs with that because Spring sprung as I was hitching homeward, and I revelled in the record all summer long.
Though I’d been going to folk clubs for several years, I’d not heard much of Roy Harper apart from a throwaway hippie-vaudeville track from his second album on The Rock Machine Turns You On, one of the many popular ”sampler” albums of that. The best was CBS’ double album gatefold Fill Your Head With Rock (loosely defined – it included Leonard Cohen and Laura Nyro).
Sunbathing in the rain …
And how does it feel with your god strapped to your wrist?
And him leading you such a chase …
Roy Harper, How Does It Feel, Flat Baroque and Berserk
So, there was I, on Humberside in a space “somewhere between Heaven and Woolworths”, to borrow from contemporary Mersey poet Brian Patten, who I was into at the time, listening to a sprawling and bawling, angry, eighteen minute solo acoustic guitar-driven folkie rant against capitalism, consumerism, hedonism, religion, conformity, ignorance, deceit, hypocrisy, the system, the establishment, the plutocracy, the banks, the media, the baubles and bibles, modern life … everything really. You can’t fight the manipulated, oppressive, powerless, pointless and utter futility of it all – as the song unfolds, you start out questioning but you end up obeying.
The singer had indeed become the eponymous Prisoner, yearning for liberty but trapped in a deceptively bucolic and scenic and yet sinister “village” that is in reality an open-air jail – kind of nightmare Butlins Holiday Camp (beloved yet satirised by a generation of Britons) with all attempts at escape foiled. It was in fact filmed in Portmeirion in North Wales, a town that has developed a robust tourist industry on the back of the cult classic.
Patrick McGoohan and Virginia Maskell in The Prisoner
Roy Harper was twenty eight years of age and already a jaded veteran of the folk-circuit and ad bitter divorcee with heavy personal baggage, a wee son he dotes on and chips on both shoulders (well-balanced, I suppose) raging against the machine. His is a seemingly nihilistic anomie with no direction home, denouncing “the deceit of my friends the betrayals of which I am part …” He sees himself as an outsider, “the festive consumer who end up consumed by the feast, but nevertheless questioning “the rules and the codes and the system that keeps them in chains, which is where they belong with no poems, no love and no brains”.
This is reflected in many of his songs from that era, most particularly those featured on his fifth and to many, his best album, Stormcock, released in May 1971; and this led me then and always to regard him a kind of high priest of Anglo angst.
He had a few more years on the clock than me. I was twenty. A naïf, ingenue, whatever, at the end of the beginning of my journey. I was optimistic, adventurous, devil-may-care, inexperienced with people and their variegated behaviours, untainted by pride and prejudice, and in retrospect unfamiliar with the bitterness and vitriol that he injected into his song. But I guess I “got it”, understood what he was saying to me through those headphones in the sanctum of my “trip” – yeah, that’s where I was at that point in time, for the want of a better description. Though I was aware of what he was preaching, I’d had precious little direct experience – those lessons were down the road apiece, and not that far away either. But that’s another tale … long story short, I was radical when I first heard the song. I remain so half a century hence. And. I still “get it”!
The title of this article, by the way, is taken from an entertaining an informative book by Welsh author Gwyneth Lewis: Sunbathing in the Rain – a cheerful book about depression. This is not to suggest that Roy Harper is actually a depressive – but he’s certainly a master of writing excruciatingly sad, depressing and borderline nihilistic songs and delivering them with an angry, emotional intensity. Having seen him perform live many many times over the following five years, I recall that many times he would deliver rambling and even disjointed introductions and extended soliloquies that taxed his audience’s patience and forbearance. I once walked out at the interval during a gig at the Royal Albert Hall even though he was accompanied by guitar icon and Led Zeppelin alumni Jimmy Page. The songs did indeed mirror the man.
Roy in his seventies, still rockin’ in the free world
But, back to Hull and my headphones …
Having ridden the rollercoaster through the seemingly stream of consciousness rant for some ten minutes, Roy imperceptibly segues into a lyrical, calmer (though still edgy) and quieter mood, a dreamy, trippy vision of hope and resilience, suggesting that despite all the difficulties and diversions, the compromises and cop outs that went with being being enveloped, embedded, trapped even, in the system, there is still hope for a better future. And climaxes in a folk-rock coda cum apotheosis.
The band kicked in – and so did the mescaline. Listening today, the band’s entry entrance feels contrived and ponderous, but in my minds eye, I can still recall the multicoloured images that flashed across bay closed eyelids. Disneyesque “Fantasia” forms of many ebbed and flowed, shape-shifted and morphed with the music and the lyrics. Rivers and rainbows, fairies and fires, sunrise and sunset, galaxies and stars.
Under the toadstool lover down by the dream
Everything flowing over rainbows downstream
Silver the turning water flying away
I’ll come to see you sooner I’m on my way
And there’s a mirror that I’m looking straight through
And I get it
And there’s a doorway that I’m ducking into
To forget it
But flashing just beyond the sky
The shattering midnight gathers
And reminding me behind my mind
The earth quakes, the sun flakes flutter
Over the mountain fairground
Candy flies stay
Under the moonshine fountain
I’m on my way
Lemon tree blossom ladies
Poured my tea
After the blue sky breezes following me
There’s a river that I’m making it with
And I know it
And I’m floating to I don’t care where
I just go it
But flashing just beyond the sky
The shattering midnight gathers
And reminding me behind my mind
The earth quakes, the sun flakes flutter
Daffodil April petal hiding the game
Forests of restless chessmen life is the same
Tides in the sand sun lover watching us dream
Covered in stars and clover rainbows downstream
And the question in the great big underneath is forever
And the fanfare that I’m forcing through my teeth answers “Never”
But flashing just beyond the sky
The shattering midnight gathers
And reminding me behind my mind
The earth quakes, the sun flakes flutter …
But it was not Roy’s way to end on a brighter note. As with all trips, there is often a comedown:
The pumpkin coach and the rags approach
And the wind is devouring the ashes
Words and images such as those McGoohan’s apotheosis were commonplace back in those days, when Marc Bolan could warble “My people were fair, and had sky in their hair, but now they’re content to wear crowns stars on their brows“. We thoroughly understood that and empathized. And we marveled at the Scottish bard who could pen ‘The Minotaur’s Song‘ and ‘Job’s Tears‘, and then run off with Old Father Hubbard. But then didn’t we all in the days when Tolkien was king, and elves and ents walked amongst us. So when Roy went gambolling through toadstools and daffodils, fairgrounds and fountains, that was just the way it was back then in that Middle Earth between Shangri La and the real world that we’d have to re-enter sooner or later – which I did adventurously two years later.
… down through the years
I dropped mescaline and acid many times over the next few months but though I longed to repeat it, never again did I recreate that very first journey. By year’s end, I’d done with both, and by the end of the eighties, was done with dope. But I remember it still over half a century down the road and I still get flashbacks and glimpses of those fantastical images … How does the great song by that Irish band go?
Unicorns and cannonballs, palaces and piers
Trumpets, towers, and tenements, wide oceans full of tears
Flags, rags, ferry boats, scimitars and scarves
Every precious dream and vision underneath the stars
Yes, you climbed on the ladder with the wind in your sails
You came like a comet blazing your trail
Too high, too far, too soon
You saw the whole of the moon …
And what happened next? I graduated, travelled, moved on, and following Roy’s lead, wrote lengthy, opaque songs well over ten minutes long with sonic, narrative and lyrical transitions just like he had done on Folkjokeopus and Stormcock. These include London John and Christopher Columbus in the seventies, and in latter days In That Howling Infinite which gave its name to this blog, an allegorical saga of a Mad Sea Captain and a White Whale , the dystopian E Lucivan le Stelle, and the irreverent O Jerusalem. Roy Harper is eighty one, with some thirty albums under belt. He was still touring in 2019, but is now officially ‘retired’, and living in a secluded corner of Ireland,
Nicky my child he stands there with the wind in his hair
Wondering whether the water the wind of the where
I fear that someday he might ask me if mine is the blame
And I’ve got no reply save to tell him it’s all just a game
And Heather and I lay together and I was in love
She weighted up the gains and the losses and gave me the shove
The fear of mankind’s untogetherness pounds in my heart
The deceit of my friends the betrayals of which I am part
And O how the sea she roars with laughter
And howls with the dancing wind
To see my two feet standing here questioning
And I’m just a social experiment tailored to size
I’ve tried out the national machine and the welfare surprise
I’m the rich man the poor man the peace man the war man the beast
The festive consumer who ends up consumed in the feast
And my fife eyed promoter is clutching two birds in the bush
He’s a thief he’s as bad as the joker they’re both in the rush
He’s telling me Ghandi was handy and Jesus sold his ring
(Dunno who to, God maybe)
“And everyone knows dat dis dough’s gonna make me de king”
And O how the sea she roars with laughter
And howls with the dancing wind
To see my two feet standing here questioning
Meanwhile the ticket collectors are punching their holes
Into your memories your journeys and into your souls
Your life sentence starts and the judge hands you down a spare wig
Saying: “Get out of that and goodbye old boy have a good gig”
And the town label makers stare down with their gallery eyes
And point with computer stained fingers each time you arise
To the rules and the codes and the system that keeps them in chains
Which is where they belong with no poems no love and no brains
And O how the sea she roars with laughter
And howls with the dancing wind
To see my two feet standing there questioning
Meanwhile the TV commercials are sweeping the day
Brainwashing innocent kids into thinking their way
The wet politicians and clergymen have much to say
Defending desires of the sheep they are leading astray
And Ma’s favourite pop star is forcing a grin he’s a smash
Obliging the soft-headed viewers to act just as flash
The village TV hooks its victims on give away cash
The addicts are numbers who serve to perpetuate trash
And O how the sea she roars with laughter
And howls with the dancing wind
To see my stupid poetry shuffleing
And the bankers and tycoons and hoarders of money and art
Full up with baubles and bibles and full of no heart
Who travel first class on a pleasure excursion to fame
Are the eyes that are guiding society’s ludicrous aim
And the village is making its Sunday collection in church
The church wobbles ‘twixt hell and heaven’s crumbling perch
Unnoticed the money box loudly endorses the shame
As the world that Christ fought is supported by using his name
And O how the sea she roars with laughter
And howls with the dancing wind
To see my stupid poetry burbling
And the pin-striped sardine-cum-magician is packed in his train
Censoring all of the censorship filling his brain
He glares through his armour-plate vision and says “Hmm, insane”
The prisoner is taking his shoes off to walk in the rain
And the luminous green prima donna is sniffing the sky
She daren’t tread the earth that she’s smelling her birth was too high
Her bank balance castle is built on opinion and fear
Which is all she allows within three hundred miles of her ear
And O how the sea she roars with laughter
And howls with the dancing wind
To see my stupid poetry burbling
And I’ve seen all your pedestal values your good and your bad
If you really believe them your passing is going to be hard
And I’ve thought through our thought and I know that its blind silly season
Occurs when our reasoning is trying to fathom a reason
And if you really know it’s all a joke but you’re just putting me on
Well it’s sure a good act that you’ve got ‘cos you never let on
But if all of that supersale overkill world is for real
Well there’s nowhere to go kid so you might as well start to freewheel
And O how the sea she roars with laughter
And howls with the dancing wind
To see my two feet standing there burbling
And I had this dream in here same time as standing awake
These various visions rushed through as I giggled and quaked
The distant guns thunder my end and I duck for a while
Auntie Lily is handing me candy she chuckles I smile
And our village is where I was born and it’s where I will die
And I’ll never be able to leave it whatever I try
The ebb and the flow of the forces of life pass me by
Which is all that I’ll know from my birth to my last gasping sigh
And O how the sea she roars with laughter
And howls with the dancing wind
To see the dying lying there obeying
My age and my time
The blood fire wine and rhyme
That fills my dream reminds me of an atom in a bubble on a wave
That held its breath for one sweet second then was popped and disappeared
Into fruitful futilities meaningless meaning
Meaningless meaning
Under the toadstool lover down by the dream
Everything flowing over rainbows downstream
Silver the turning water flying away
I’ll come to see you sooner I’m on my way
And there’s a mirror that I’m looking straight through
And I get it
And there’s a doorway that I’m ducking into
To forget it
But flashing just beyond the sky the shattering midnight gathers
And reminding me behind my mind the earth quakes the sun flakes flutter
Over the mountain fairground
Candy flies stay
Under the moonshine fountain
I’m on my way
Lemon tree blossom ladies
Poured my tea
After the blue sky breezes following me
There’s a river that I’m making it with
And I know it
And I’m floating to I don’t care where
I just go it
But flashing just beyond the sky the shattering midnight gathers
And reminding me behind my mind the earth quakes the sun flakes flutter
Daffodil April petal hiding the game
Forests of restless chessmen life is the same
Tides in the sand sun lover watching us dream
Covered in stars and clover rainbows downstream
And the question in the great big underneath is forever
And the fanfare that I’m forcing through my teeth answers “Never”
But the flashing just beyond the sky the shattering midnight gathers
And reminding me behind my mind the earth quakes the sun flakes flutter
The pumpkin coach and the rags approach and the wind is devouring the ashes
There is history in old songs, and particularly in the songs that tell the story of a nation’s resistance to invasion and occupation. Ireland’s long and troubled relationship with its powerful neighbour across the water has inspired a compendium of such songs of rebellion.
One of my favourites, Let Erin Remember, encapsulates it: “
On Lough Neagh’s banks as the fisherman strays In the clear cold eve declining He sees the round towers of other days In the waters ‘neath him shining Thus shall memory often in dreams sublime Catch a glimpse of the days that are over Thus sighing, look through the waves of time For the long-faded glories they cover
In That Howling Infinite has published two essays about old Irish songs and their colourful history, Mo Ghile Mear and The Boys of Wexford. What follows is a song contemporary to these in composition, but takes us back a century and a half to Ireland’s struggle against the Tudor crown in the late sixteenth century.
O’Donnell Abú (Ó Domhnaill Abú) is a traditional Irish song. Its lyrics were written by Michael Joseph McCann, a Fenian, in 1843. It tells of the Gaelic lord Red Hugh O’Donnell who ruled Tyrconnell(present day County Donegal) in the late sixteenth century first with the approval of the Crown authorities in Dublin and later in rebellion against them during Tyrone’s Rebellion.
Hugh Rua O’Donnell (Aodh Ruadh Ó Domhnaill), also known as Red Hugh O’Donnell (30 October 1572 – 10 September 1602), was a sixteenth-century Irish nobleman who, with his father-in-law Hugh O’Neill of Tyrone, led an alliance of Irish clans in the Nine Years’ War against the English government in Ireland. He led an Irish army to victory in the Battle of Curlew Pass, but after defeat in the Siege of Kinsale, he travelled to Spain to in an unsuccessful effort to obtain support from King Philip III. He never returned to Ireland and he died in Spain.
There is no extant portrait or visual representation of Red Hugh though a contemporary suggested that he was “above middle height, strong, handsome, well built”. An idealised image of Red Hugh is this post’s featured image. Romantics picture the youthful Red Hugh as fiery, headstrong, quick-witted, passionate, committed to Catholicism, and to the preservation of the values, language, and culture of the Gaelic world into which he had been born and reared. Above all, he is determined to rid Ireland of its English overlords.
Though limited and often biased against him, extant historical records largely validate this portrayal. They also recapture the complexities of Red Hugh’s highly militarized world, where local lords raided for cattle and reduced neighbouring lords to submission, and show Red Hugh to be a wily negotiator, an effective and pragmatic power broker, and a brave soldier.
Hugh Rua O’Donnell Hugh Rua O’Donnell The Flight of Red Hugh
The title refers to the Gaelic war cry of “Abú,” “To victory,” which followed a commander’s name, and is the rallying cry for the O’Donnell clan, called to assemble at a location on the banks of the River Erne in Donegal. The Bonnaught and Gallowglass were Irish and Scots mercenaries employed by O’Donnell to guard the mountain passes. They were now summoned to join the rest of O’Donnell’s forces, who await the arrival of Hugh O’Neill, Earl of Tyrone and the Borderers who protect his lands.
Stylistically O’Donnell Abú draws on the romantic nationalism of the mid-nineteenth century, similar to those of Michael McCann’s contemporary Young Ireland nationalist Thomas Davis. who composed a number of songs, including The West’s Asleep“, A Nation Once Again“, and theLament for Owen Roe O’Neill set to an 16th Centryu compoition bt celebrated harpist
The song’s martial melody is proud and energetic, and its descriptive imagery is striking. You can almost visualize the war wolf and the eagle, the fires of the marauders, and the serried ranks of horsemen and foot soldiers in their chain mail advancing to avenge “Erin” with trumpets and war cries. To modern ears, the neo-Gothic romanticism of the lyrics and the aggressiveness of the melody may come across as jingoistic and over the top, but passionate nationalist McCann was probably endeavouring to emulate the bards of old. A stirring rendering of the song follows in a spirited live performance by the Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem. This world famous folk group was an especial favourite of mine back in my teenage and folkie days.
Proudly the note of the trumpet is sounding;
Loudly the war cries arise on the gale;
Fleetly the steed by Lough Swilly is bounding,
To join the thick squadrons on Saimear‘s green vale.
On, ev’ry mountaineer, strangers to flight or fear,
Rush to the standard of dauntless Red Hugh.
Bonnaught and Gallowglass, throng from each mountain pass.
On for old Erin, “O’Donnell Abú!”
Princely O’Neill to our aid is advancing
With many a chieftain and warrior clan.
A thousand proud steeds in his vanguard are prancing
‘Neath the borderers brave from the Banks of the Bann:
Many a heart shall quail under its coat of mail.
Deeply the merciless foeman shall rue
When on his ears shall ring, borne on the breeze’s wing, Tír Chonaill‘s dread war-cry, “O’Donnell Abú!”
Wildly o’erDesmondthe war-wolf is howling;
Fearless the eagle sweeps over the plain;
The fox in the streets of the city is prowling–
All who would scare them are banished or slain!
Grasp ev’ry stalwart hand Hackbut and battle brand–
Pay them all back the debt so long due; Norris and Cliffordwell can of Tirconnell tell;
Onward to glory–“O’Donnell abú!”
Sacred the cause that Clan Connell’s defending–
The altars we kneel at and homes of our sires;
Ruthless the ruin the foe is extending–
Midnight is red with the plunderer’s fires.
On with O’Donnell then, fight the old fight again,
Sons of Tirconnell, all valiant and true:
Make the proud Saxon feel Erin’s avenging steel!
Strike for your country! “O’Donnell Abú!’
The hyperlinks in the song link specific names to their Wikipedia references, but here is a brief glossary:
Bonnaught is type of billeting or a billeted soldier. From Irish buannacht, billeting or billeting tax. A gallowglass (from gallóglach) was a Scottish Gaelic mercenary soldier in Ireland between mid 13th and late 16th centuries. A hackbut is a harquebuss or arquebus, the first long-arm gun fired from the shoulder. John Norris and Conyers Clifford were English commanders who fought O’Donnel and O’Neill, whilst Tír Chonaill, a kingdom of Gaelic Ireland, associated geographically with present-day County Donegal the home of the the Ó Domhnaill clan. It was the location of fighting during the Nine Years’ War
The Red Earl and the Dark Daughter
“It is hard to think, looking at the peaceful countryside of modern Donegal, “writes Ciaran Conliffe in an excellent post on his Scribbler blog, “that in days gone by men fought, bled and died on these hills. But the history of Ireland, up until relatively recently, was one of almost constant strife”. So begins his enthralling tale of Red Hugh and his feisty mother Iníon Dubh. Read it HERE
An impassioned ballad, entitled in the original Roisin Duh (or The Black Little Rose), was written in the reign of Elizabeth by one of the poets of Red Hugh’s entourage, and translated by nationalist mid-19th Century Irish poet James Clarence Mangan. It is an allegorical address by Hugh to Ireland, represented in this and many other Irish songs as a beautiful woman, of his love and his struggles for her, and of his resolve to raise her again to the glorious position she held as a nation before the irruption of the Saxon and Norman spoilers – for that’s how the romantic poets saw it: “Sons of Tirconnell, all valiant and true: make the proud Saxon feel Erin’s avenging steel! Strike for your country! “O’Donnell Abú!'”
Donegal, Norther Ireland
The Red Hand
Red Hugh’s soldiers had their war cry with O’Donnell Abú. That of the O’Neill clan, led in O’Donnell’s ally Hugh O’Neill of Tyrone, was Lámh Dhearg Abú! – The Red Hand to Victory!
The Red Hand symbol and the war cry are believed to have been used by the O’Neills during the Nine Years’ War (1594–1603) against English rule in Ireland, A contemporary English writer observed: “The Ancient Red Hand of Ulster, the bloody Red Hand, a terrible cognizance! And in allusion to that terrible cognizance—the battle cry of Lámh Dhearg Abú!”
The motif of the Red Hand is a common one in Irish and particularly Ulster folklore. It originated in in Gaelic culture and, although its origin and meaning are unknown, it is believed to date back to pre-Christian times. There is a theory that the ancient Phoenicians may have brought the symbol to Ireland. able seamen and adventurous traders that they were, the Phoenicians of the Levant did indeed venture as far as what are now the British Isles.
A story is also told that the Red Hand symbol originated in a legendary ancestor who put his bloodstained hand on a banner after victory in battle. Bards and balladeers argue its origins, harking back to real and legendary heroes and kings, and commonly relating to shedding the blood of enemies. It was adopted by the O’Neills around 1335. Whilst demonstrating their ancient lineage, they may also may have regarded it as signifying divine assistance and strength.
The Red Hand is present in the arms of a number of Ulster’s counties, such as Antrim, Cavan, Londonderry, Monaghan and Tyrone. Itt also appears in the Ulster Banner, and is used by many other official and non-official organisations throughout the province. It can be regarded as one of the very few cross-community symbols used in Northern Ireland (which makes up six of Ulster’s nine counties) crossing the sectarian political divide.
Let Erin remember the days of old
Ere her faithless sons betrayed her
When Malachy wore the collar of gold
That he won from the proud invader
When her kings with standards of green unfurled
Led the Red Branch Knights to danger
Ere the emerald gem of the Western World
Was set in the crown of a stranger
On Lough Neagh’s banks as the fisherman strays
In the clear cold eve declining
He sees the round towers of other days
In the waters ‘neath him shining
Thus shall memory often in dreams sublime
Catch a glimpse of the days that are over
Thus sighing, look through the waves of time
For the long-faded glories they cover
Dark Rosaleen
James Clarence Mangan
O my dark Rosaleen,
Do not sigh, do not weep!
The priests are on the ocean green,
They march along the deep.
There’s wine from the royal Pope,
Upon the ocean green;
And Spanish ale shall give you hope,
My Dark Rosaleen!
My own Rosaleen!
Shall glad your heart, shall give you hope,
Shall give you health, and help, and hope,
My Dark Rosaleen!
Over hills, and thro’ dales,
Have I roam’d for your sake;
All yesterday I sail’d with sails
On river and on lake.
The Erne, at its highest flood,
I dash’d across unseen,
For there was lightning in my blood,
My Dark Rosaleen!
My own Rosaleen!
O, there was lightning in my blood,
Red lighten’d thro’ my blood.
My Dark Rosaleen!
All day long, in unrest,
To and fro, do I move.
The very soul within my breast
Is wasted for you, love!
The heart in my bosom faints
To think of you, my Queen,
My life of life, my saint of saints,
My Dark Rosaleen!
My own Rosaleen!
To hear your sweet and sad complaints,
My life, my love, my saint of saints,
My Dark Rosaleen!
Woe and pain, pain and woe,
Are my lot, night and noon,
To see your bright face clouded so,
Like to the mournful moon.
But yet will I rear your throne
Again in golden sheen;
‘Tis you shall reign, shall reign alone,
My Dark Rosaleen!
My own Rosaleen!
‘Tis you shall have the golden throne,
‘Tis you shall reign, and reign alone,
Over dews, over sands,
Will I fly, for your weal:
Your holy delicate white hands
Shall girdle me with steel.
At home, in your emerald bowers,
From morning’s dawn till e’en,
You’ll pray for me, my flower of flowers,
My Dark Rosaleen!
My fond Rosaleen!
You’ll think of me through daylight hours
My virgin flower, my flower of flowers,
My Dark Rosaleen!
I could scale the blue air,
I could plough the high hills,
Oh, I could kneel all night in prayer,
To heal your many ills!
And one beamy smile from you
Would float like light between
My toils and me, my own, my true,
My Dark Rosaleen!
My fond Rosaleen!
Would give me life and soul anew,
My Dark Rosaleen!
O, the Erne shall run red,
With redundance of blood,
The earth shall rock beneath our tread,
And flames wrap hill and wood,
And gun-peal and slogan-cry
Wake many a glen serene,
Ere you shall fade, ere you shall die,
My Dark Rosaleen!
My own Rosaleen!
The Judgement Hour must first be nigh,
Ere you can fade, ere you can die,
My Dark Rosaleen!
Many’s the lad, fought in that day
Well the claymore did wield;
When the night came, silently lay
Dead on Culloden’s field.
There are many folk songs that we are convinced are authentically “traditional”, composed in the days gone by an unknown hand and passed down to us by word of mouth and then, perhaps, by broadsheets and handbills, rustic kitchens and Victorian parlours, until finally pressed into vinyl during the mid-twentieth century folk revival. And yet many such songs were indeed written by poets and songwriters of variable fame. One such is The Skye Boat Song.
This famous song is one of many inspired by the Scottish Jacobite Rising against Protestant England’s rule in 1745. It recalls the journey of Prince Charles Edward Stuart, “Bonny Prince Charlie”, from Benbecula to the Isle of Skye as he evaded capture by government troops after his defeat at the Battle of Cullodenin 1746. The Jacobite Rebellion was sparked by many political, cultural and economic factors. but essentially, it was a dynastic civil war.
He was aided in his flight by minor aristocratFlora MacDonaldwho was subsequently arrested for her role and consigned to the Tower of London, but later amnestied. She married an army captain also named McDonald, and they later emigrated to the American colonies. Her captain served with the British forces during the American War of Independence, and as a result, their property was confiscated. They relocated to Canada and soon, after, returned to Scotland.
Songwriter and philanthropist Sir Harold Boulton, 2nd Baronet composed the lyrics to an air collected by Anne Campbelle MacLeod in the 1870s. According to Andrew Kuntz, a collector of folk music lore, MacLeod was on a trip to the isle of Skye and was being rowed overLoch Coruisk (Coire Uisg, the “Cauldron of Waters”) when the rowers broke into a Gaelic rowing song “Cuachag nan Craobh” (“The Cuckoo in the Grove”). MacLeod set down what she remembered of the air, with the intention of using it later in a book she was to co-author with Boulton.
It was first published in 1884 Around 1885 the famed author Robert Louis Stevenson, considering Boulton’s lyrics words “ unworthy”, composed verses “more in harmony with the plaintive tune”. Purged of Jacobite content, these mentioned neither Charlie nor Culloden.
Boulton’s is the one that endured, along with the sentimental perspective Bonny Prince Charlie
Charles Stuart was the “Young Pretender” to the Protestant Hanoverian English throne that once belonged to the Roman Catholic Stuart clan, who after the bloody failure of the ’45 rebellion, fled into exile in France. And that’s where he remained, although his last resting place is in the crypt of Saint Peter’s Basilica in Rome – an ironic ending for this could’ve been champion of Catholic hopes.
He had many romantic and rousing songs written about him. But in reality he wasn’t the dashing, gallant leader that the songs portrayed and that the Scots and their Celtic Irish allies yearned for. He was an indecisive and vacillating leader, who thought himself much cleverer and popular than he actually was, and when the going got rough, he got going – and left the the Scots and Irish who supported him with blood and treasure to the tender mercies of the Sassenach foe.
But historical fact has never dimmed the popularity of the song. It is often played as a slow lullaby or waltz in many and varied contexts including soundtracks, including Outlander (adapting the text of the text Robert Lewis Stevenson’s poem “Sing Me a Song of a Lad That Is Gone” (1892), pipe bands and weddings. It entered into the modern folk canon in the twentieth century with renderings by singers as diverse and indeed betimes idiosyncratic as Paul Robeson, Tom Jones,Rod Stewart,Esther & Abi Ofarim, The Corriesand Tori Amos.James Galwayand The Chieftains recorded an instrumental version, as did The Shadows, whilst Roger Whittaker whistled it as comedic crooner Des O’Connor sang.
The song was played by pipers as the coffin of Her Late Majesty Queen Elizabeth II travelled up the Long Walk to Windsor Castle on 19 September 2022. Media comment included speculation that this was to ‘put to rest’ the conflict between the old Jacobite and Hanoverian royal houses. Maybe so, but it probably will not dampen the enthusiasm of many Scots for independence from the United Kingdom.
We much prefer the version presented below sung by the Choral Scholars of University College, Dublin, an amateur, mostly acapella bunch of Irish students. These young folk formally audition for a scholarship with the ensemble. There is little glamour or artifice, no fireworks or vocal gymnastics. Plainly dressed, they look like folk you would pass on the streets of Dublin or Galway.
Below that is a link to British film-maker Peter Watkins’ acclaimed film Culloden (1964).
See also in In That Howling Infinite, a discussion about another famous Jacobite song: Mo Ghile Mear – Irish myth and melody.This song is presented below.
Speed, bonnie boat, like a bird on the wing,
Onward! the sailors cry;
Carry the lad that’s born to be king
Over the sea to Skye
Loud the winds howl, loud the waves roar,
Thunderclaps rend the air;
Baffled, our foes stand by the shore,
Follow they will not dare.
Many’s the lad, fought in that day
Well the claymore did wield;
When the night came, silently lay
Dead on Culloden’s field.
Though the waves leap, soft shall ye sleep,
Ocean’s a royal bed.
Rocked in the deep, Flora will keep
Watch by your weary head.
Burned are their homes, exile and death
Scatter the loyal men;
Yet ere the sword cool in the sheath Charlie will come again.
I am not one who makes much of the festive season, but inspired by the example of my favourite blog, Thom Hickey’s Immortal Juke Box, here are five favourite Christmas songs. No Neil Diamond or Mariah Carey here.
Five
The King, sung here by Canadians Loreena McKennitt and Cyril Smith, from Loreena’s Christmas album To Drive the Cold Winter Away, hails from a long tradition of “Wren King” songs. The king of the title is the wee wren, “the king of all birds”, as many old songs tell it. Through December until Twelfth Night (the sixth of January), it was common among Celtic-speakers in Brittany, Wales, Manx, Scotland, and Ireland for children and adults to cruise their neighbourhoods cadging food, money or booze in return for seeing a Wren that they had captured. This particular “King Wren” song dates from the eighteenth century, although the heavy weaponry was added in the nineteenth.
Health, love and peace be all here in this place By your leave we shall sing, concerning our King Our King is well-dressed in silks of the best In ribbons so rare no king can compare We have travelled many miles over hedges and stiles In search of our King unto you we bring. We have powder and shot to conquer the lot We have cannon and ball to conquer them all. Old Christmas is past, twelve tide is the last And we bid you adieu, great joy to the new
Four
Of all the trees that are in the wood, the holly bears the crown. Northumbrian Kate Rusby’s rendering of the old English carol The Holly and the Ivy is gorgeous. I reblogged Thom Hickey’s tribute to this lovely song earlier this month. It is worth another look and listen. The lyrics are so bucolic, so timeless:
The rising of the sun The running of the deer The playing of the merry organ Sweet singing in the choir
Three
Loreena sings a lovely version of The Wexford Carol on her Christmas album. But Christmas songs don’t get much more beautiful than this beautiful version by American bluegrass diva Ali Krauss and cellist virtuoso Yo Yo Ma. The carol is believed to have originated in twelfth century Ireland in my mother’s home town of Inis Córthaidh.
Two
In 1961, Dusty Springfield was but a young lass, but even back then, she had a fabulous voice! I was twelve years old and this was the first time I’d heard the Springfields, the Americanesque folk trio founded by her brother Tom. It was the beginning of unrequited puppy-love that ended when I heard the Bobster’s Love Minus Zero No Limit – see my reverie What’s Bob Got to Do With It? Dusty went on to become one of the greatest soul singers of all time, and Tom gave the world The Seekers. He adapted Bambino from a traditional Italian carol, just as he was later to transform a Russian folk-song into The Carnival is Over.
Santo natale bambino mio… To you and all mankind, To you and all mankind, maybe, And from strife we shall be free.
One
It’s been voted the best Christmas song of all time – in the U.K, that is, because Americans don’t get it, as The Independent discovered – and, yes, it’s my number one because it IS the best Christmas song of all time. And yet, it seems, the “bah humbug!” straighteners and virtue signallers are out to get it, as reported recently by Aussie writer Mark Mordue: Sanitize Clause would rob a Christmas ballad of its soul.
The irascible, untuneful, dentally-disadvantaged Shane McGowan and his hot ceilidh band hit the big time with this “Christmas Eve in the drunk tank” shanty, wonderfully aided and abetted by the gorgeous and doomed Kirsty MacColl, who could’ve been famous but for a rich Mexican in a speedboat. The repartee between these loser-lovers is up there with Burton and Taylor:
I could have been someone Well so could anyone You took my dreams from me When I first found you…
You’re a bum You’re a punk You’re an old slut on junk You scumbag, you maggot You cheap lousy faggot Happy Christmas your arse I pray God it’s our last
When it comes to a Christmas song, how low can you Go? And, as the band kicks in with the accordion and pipes, how high can you fly?
We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.
TS. Elliot, Little Gidding
“One of those days in England, with a sword in every pond”, sang Roy Harper, the high priest of anglo-angst. And so it was when we looked out on England and imagined a wider world. Our journey took us to this farthest shore on the brink of the mighty Pacific.
This month saw the passing of a fine old friend whom I’d first met fifty years ago this September when we arrived as young freshmen at the provincial red-brick university in Reading, Berkshire, a provincial southern town on the banks of the River Thames, less salubrious than its famous riverine neighbours Oxford and Windsor, and noted mainly for biscuits and beer. Fate determined that a bunch of disparate ingenues from all parts of the island boarded at the same ‘hall of residence’.
It was there that John and I bonded through folk music. I had a battered Spanish guitar that I’d strung with steel strings, and had started writing songs and playing them to our friends. One day, I left my guitar with John and headed to Hull to visit an old school chum and do my first trip (“those were days, yes they were, those were the days”). When I’d landed and hitch-hiked home, John had not only mastered the instrument, but was able to play me a couple of his favourite songs – Ralph McTell’s Streets of London and Michael Chapman’s One Time Thing (see below). Very soon, he could play them note-perfect from just listening to the vinyl. Instead of me showing him chords and finger picking, he was teaching me. And whilst emulating his guitar idols, over time he assembled a fine repertoire of his own songs.
With a bunch of university friends, we later flatted in London whilst they earned enough money to get themselves overland to Australia. There, two of the fellowship settled down, built families and careers, and raised a mob of clever, creative and beautiful children. I was never born to follow; but life seeks out its own highways and byways, and in time these led me also DownUnder.
Those London days inspired my Harperesque, navel-gazing epic London John (see below).
Though his later life rendered him victim to a treasonous DNA, he fostered and followed through a passion for the wide, dry flatlands west of the Great Divide. He would undertake long-distance solo driving tours “beyond the Black Stump” (which is to say “the back of beyond”, or more prosaically, “to buggery”); and would send us dispatches of his journeying, with beautiful photographs and stories of shooting the breeze with the locals and playing his guitar in pubs and by camp fires. When driving was physically no longer an option, he’d catch the train to outback Broken Hill.
Like Banjo Paterson, one of our national bards, and his poetic alter-ego Clancy of the Overflow, he treasured “the vision splendid of the sunlit plains extended, and at night, the wond’rous glory of the everlasting stars.
All those years ago …
Northern lads in a southern town.
Working-class in a middle-class world.
To Reading we’d come and then to London Town.
We are all compadres still.
Lent you my old guitar when I was roved out.
I came home and you’d played like a pro. Streets of London and One Time Thing.
Note perfect played by ear.
And you were teaching me.
In London we busked on the Undergound
Got busted when playing Pavan.
Bow Street Magistrates Court.
“Soliciting reward without license”.
The only record we’d make together.
You took the hippie trail to Asia and beyond.
Bound for Bondi Beach.
Sang of mushrooms and a dog on the shore.
Four amigos washed ashore DownUnder.
Where you found your true home.
I came hither by another road.
Our paths forever criss-crossed.
Like ships passing in the night.
You headed always to the bush
But got to see our forest home.
Once you lent me your Martin guitar.
And I went and lost it.
You probably never forgave me for that.
But maybe you’ll find it again in the valley beyond.
Because old friends always meet again.
There’s a song we’d all sung
When we were all young.
Of when we were no longer so.
Written by an ancient Greek
Over two thousand years ago.
I’d rolled it into a song of my own
As bold songwriters do.
And as years run us down and transfigure us
It echoes through the foggy ruins of time.
I hear it now as clear as the days we sang:
In those days when were men, Ah, you should’ve seen us then. We were noted our for our courage and agility. We carried all before us In battle and in chorus, And no one could’ve doubted our virility. But those days are past and gone And the feathers of the swan Are no whiter than our heads For now we’re old. And yet, as you can see, Thinning relics we may be, In spirit, we’re still Manly, young and bold.
Farewell, old friend,
And flights of angels sing you to your rest.
Vale John Rugg 1949 -2018
Valances
(early in the morning at break of day)
Valance: The capacity of something to unite, react, or interact with something; connections; relationships.
In the afternoon they came upon a land in which it seemed always afternoon.
Lord Alfred Tennyson, The Lotus Eaters
Out of the cradle so restlessly rocking,
Ringing the changes that resonate still,
The rolling momentum of memory sailing
Like some graceful galleon, onwards until
We came in due course to harmonious havens,
Seeking the warmth of another land’s sun –
Such was the feeling, and such was the motion
Of onwards, and upwards, and endlessly on,
Out of those valances, casual, knowing,
Seeking out payments for debts never due,
The curious cadence of melodies flowing,
Gathering vagrants in pastures anew,
Forgotten weekends of such transient yearnings,
The edginess felt as we near a strange land,
Vanishing echoes of strange dreams returning,
Just out of reach of the memory’s hand,
They’re falling like mist through my arms,
Flowing like mist through my arms,
Broken memories, fractured songs
Are flowing like mist,
Flowing like mist through my arms,
Flowing like mist through my arms,
Broken memories, fractured songs
Are flowing like mist, like mist through my arms.
Out of the days of such recklessly wandering,
Seeking sensation and stretching the mind,
Journeying aimlessly, canyons and castles
Pass ageless and ageing and captive in time,
What lies before us and what lies behind us
Are little compared to the treasures we find,
Are nothing compared to what’s lying within us
As secrets unfold and the stories unwind,
And down through the ages, the prophets and sages
Set beacons to guide us both forward and aft,
We rise on the billow, descend to the hollow,’
Climb to the top-mast, or we cling to the raft,
And when all is unravelled, the road that’s less travelled
Winds back to the start, and we know it again
For the first time, and we know that there’s no more to say,
So early in the morning, at breaking of day.
Falling like mist through my arms,
Flowing like mist through my arms,
Broken memories, fractured songs
Are flowing like mist,
Flowing like mist through my arms,
Flowing like mist through my arms,
Broken memories, fractured songs
Are flowing like mist, like mist through my arms.
In those days when men were men,
Ah, you should have seen us then
We were noted for our courage and agility.
How we carried all before us,
Both in battle and in chorus,
And no-one one could have questioned our virility.
But those days are past and gone,
And the feathers of the swan
Are no whiter than our heads, for we are old;
And yet as you may see,
Thinning relics we may be,
In spirit we’re still manly young and bold.
Though we may be phased out crocks,
The whiteness of our locks,
Does the country better credit, I should say,
Than the ringlets and the fashions
And the wild immoral passions
Of the namby-pamby youngsters of today.
But for all our sacrifice for to make a better life,
For those who followed to be proud and free.
Oh, we had to watch you grow
Into some horticultural show.
“Was it thus worth all our toil?” The dead ask me.
We lived like men, we looked the part;
We held our country to our heart;
We always did our best and better still;
But you who came too late to fight,
You’re living off the state alright,
And from our hard exertions, take your fill.
But those days, alas, are gone,
And the feathers of the swan
Are no whiter than our heads for now we’re old.
But if we could have seen
What the fruits of toil would’ve been,
Would we still have been so manly, young and bold?
Part Two
The image of my life is laid out before me:
It shows how well I fate, how hard I fall;
How people curse and jibe, how friends ignore me;
And I scream in a soundless voice, “I don’t care at all”.
You look at the world through different eyes to me:
You see life in a greyer shade of white;
Embrace the past, dictating what is there for me;
Telling me what is wrong and just what is right.
But I tell you I just don’t care.
You can’t change my mind.
And all your stories just won’t wear.
Let se speak my mind.
So i don’t fit your picture of the ideal man,
And if I don’t impress your sight – you say I must.
If I don’t don’t suit your taste like so many others can,
Must I conform to gain your meaningless trust?
I tell you I just don’t care.
You can’t harm my mind.
And all your fictions just won’t wear;
Let me speak my mind.
You say my behaviour’s a disgrace to modern life.
This permissive way of living’s got to stop!
“Why can’t you accept the guidance
Of those who are older and wiser?”
But then I just don’t have a wife to swap,
Or the guns to kill,
Or the power to guide men’s lives,
Or to bend their will,
And I don’t have the blood on my hands,
And I don’t have lies in my mind,
And your explanations won’t wear,
And you won’t change my nine.
And my ears are not deaf to the tears,
And my eyes are not blind to the plight,
And my senses not numb to a world
That has yet to emerge from its night.
Put me on the road to God;
I know it’s the path to Hell;
Ins if I fall, don’t heed my call.
Just say it was just as well.
Michael Chapman: One Time Thing. This was one of John’s early favourites back in the day. He’d borrowed guitar when I’d gone off on a frolic and when I’d got back. he’d not only learned how to play guitar, but he played this note perfect – and sang it much better than Chapman.
Amazing Blondel : Pavan. We got busted when we played this on the London Underground. John used to play the flute riff on his guitar. It was the only record we made together – in Bow Streets Magistrates Court!
Al Stewart. Ivich. Al was a longtime favourite of John’s, from Reading days, and we used to go to see him in Cousins in Soho when we lived in London. John admired his excellent guitar-work. A friend of ours – ex-GF of one of our flatmates, actually – went out with Al for a while. I think John had left for Australia by then, but I got to know him. He even came for supper at my folks’ home in Birmingham when he played there once. And most amusing, that was.
Here’s another Al Stewart song that John liked, In Brooklyn
Roy Harper, the English High Priest of Angst, was another of John’s favourites. Here’s one of his ‘softer’ songs. Very nice. Another Day.
And probably, John’s all time favourite, Ralph McTell’s Streets of London. John played this note perfect too, from the get-go. I hated it, but there’s no accounting for bad taste.
Photo Gallery
Picnic in Whiteknights Park 1969. The M1, Summer 1972. Brendan, John, Eric and Paul Hemphill Family Home, Birmingham, Summer 1972 Bardwell Park, October 1983 Paul, John, Andrew, Damian, Christian and Jean Federal Hotel, Bellingen, December 2013
Of all the trees that are in the wood, the holly bears the crown
A Christmas gift from In That Howling Infinite.
Probably one of the loveliest traditional English carols, sung by melodious English song-bird Kate Rusby.
Written by Thom Hickey in his excellent blog The Immortal Jukebox – a treasure trove of well-written words and excellent music.The post is below the lyrics. Wander through it and enjoy.
The holly and the ivy,
When they are both full grown
Of all the trees that are in the wood
The holly bears the crown
O the rising of the sun
And the running of the deer
The playing of the merry organ
Sweet singing of the choir
The holly bears a blossom
As white as lily flower
And Mary bore sweet Jesus Christ
To be our sweet Saviour
O the rising of the sun
And the running of the deer
The playing of the merry organ
Sweet singing of the choir
The holly bears a berry
As red as any blood
And Mary bore sweet Jesus Christ
To do poor sinners good
O the rising of the sun
And the running of the deer
The playing of the merry organ
Sweet singing of the choir
The holly bears a prickle
As sharp as any thorn;
And Mary bore sweet Jesus Christ
On Christmas Day in the morn.
O the rising of the sun
And the running of the deer
The playing of the merry organ
Sweet singing of the choir
The holly bears a bark
As bitter as any gall;
And Mary bore sweet Jesus Christ
For to redeem us all.
O the rising of the sun
And the running of the deer
The playing of the merry organ
Sweet singing of the choir
The holly and the ivy
Now both are full well grown,
Of all the trees that are in the wood,
The holly bears the crown.
O the rising of the sun
And the running of the deer
The playing of the merry organ
Sweet singing of the choir
There is a power beyond all analysis in the Christmas Carol – especially those which emerged from the folkloric tradition of England’s rural heartlands.
I could give you a learned analysis of, ‘The Holly and the Ivy’ noting it is numbered 514 in the Roud Folk Song Index and waxing lyrical on its symbolism and use of Christian iconography.
Somehow, as soon as Kate Rusty starts to sing all that appears superfluous.
For Kate is for my money the finest English Folk Singer since Sandy Denny and you would have to be made of stone not to be moved by the tender beauty of her voice.
Hearing her singing such a song I feel as if I had wandered from the snow into a Yorkshire Romanesque church.
Resting in a time worn pew, hunched against the draughts all around I am startled by the emerging sound of a rustic band…
In That Howling Infinite 