“A Parting Glass” Is Offered to Those Who Stay Behind

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PictureThere are many versions of this song, with varying words and melodies. I’ve tried to distill the various ideas down into something digestible, always keeping in mind that it’s a folk song and its origins are therefore murky. The initial inspiration may have come from a farewell letter written by Scotsman Thomas Armstrong on the eve of his execution in 1605 for border raiding. Here’s what he wrote:

This night is my departing night, For here nae langer must I stay;
There’s neither friend nor foe o’ mine, But wishes me away.
What I have done thro’ lack of wit, I never, never, can recall;
I hope ye’re a’ my friends as yet; Goodnight and joy be with you all!

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Hard drinking and highway robbery—Whiskey & the Wild Rover

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IImage by JamesDeMers from Pixabay

Several years ago, my own choir, the Cherry Creek Chorale, performed the suite Letters from Ireland, with arrangements of folk songs and also excerpts from letters. all put together by the contemporary composer/arranger Mark Brymer. I was so taken with the music that I wrote a companion book covering historical and literary information for the pieces. It’s available on this website and also from Amazon.

For our upcoming Celtic concert in March 2025 we’re singing just one arrangement from the suite, so I’ve extracted that material and am providing it for free on the blog. I’d encourage you, if your choir is singing the entire work, that you get the book.

For one section, Brymer combines two songs, “The Wild Rover” and “Whiskey in the Jar.” Here’s what I had to say about these two songs:

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Is the song “Grace” based on real people and events?

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Gifford standing outside Kilmainham Jail on 2 May 1916; image accessed via Wikipedia

The answer is a resounding “Yes!” You just never know until you start diving into a piece how much you can find out. Such is the case here–I’ve had quite a time finding out about the tragic love story of the Irishman Joseph Mary Plunkett and his beloved Grace Gifford. It’s hard to know even where to start, but here goes:

You may have looked at Joseph’s full name and questioned why his middle name is “Mary.” Was that his mother’s name, perhaps, and he had no sisters to carry it on? No. It was a symbol of his deep Roman Catholic faith and his devotion to the Virgin Mary. (I’m assuming that he added the name himself.) Plunkett seems at first glance to be a contradictory figure in Irish history, combining religious mysticism and hard-headed military abilities. In reality, though, Ireland’s desire to be an independent country and not under Protestant English rule stemmed at least in part from its loyalty to Catholicism. So Plunkett could help plan a violent bloody uprising against the British government and see it as a profoundly moral cause, which is exactly what he did with his fellow Irish revolutionaries in the spring of 1916 for an event known as the “Easter Uprising” because it started in Dublin on the Monday after Easter. “Wait!” you might say, “1916? World War I is going on at the same time. How did anyone have spare energy for carrying out a revolution?” Good question. In reality, at least part of the reason for this specific rebellion was that it was seen as a way for Irish men to escape conscription into the British army to fight in that war, since they certainly had no great loyalty towards England.

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Why is the song “Amazing Grace” so popular, and, as a sidenote, why is it seen as particularly suitable for the bagpipes?

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A Canadian bagpiper playing “Amazing Grace” during a memorial service, 29 October 2009, at Forward Operating Base Wilson, Afghanistan. Image soure Wikipedia

Probably everyone who’s attended some kind of Christian funeral has heard this hymn, as it’s especially popular for those occasions. And you can see why. The words are beautiful and striking, and the melody is at the same time lovely and singable. What’s not to like?

Then there’s the backstory to the song, which contains drama and irony in about equal parts: John Newton, a slave trader, is converted to Christianity and leaves his dreadful business, becoming a part of the anti-slavery movement. We all love a good redemption story, don’t we?

Real life, however, is seldom if ever so simple and straightforward. The more you delve into a person’s actions the more complicated and messy they become. I used the example in an earlier post about fractals, those designs that reveal new layers as they are magnified. There is never an end to the detail. The same is true in your life, even if you think of it as rather mundane. So it is with John Newton.

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Amazing Grace Part II: How did a hymn written by a former slave trader become an icon of the civil rights movement?

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JohnNewtonColour.jpg
Contemporary portrait of Newton; image source Wikipedia.

We left John Newton on the way back to England after having been rescued from slavery to the African Princess Peye. Be sure to go back and read Part I if you haven’t done so already to find out how he got himself into this pickle to begin with. The ship ran into a severe storm off the coast of Ireland and almost sank. At this point of crisis Newton turned to God, praying for mercy. The storm died down and the ship was able to reach port. For the rest of his life Newton marked the anniversary of this event: March 10, 1874. However, he didn’t give up participation in the slave trade, signing on with a slave ship after he got back to England and making several more voyages. He did not leave active participation in this horrible business until he suffered a stroke in 1754, when he stopped going to sea but continued to invest in others’ efforts. It isn’t clear to me exactly when he gave up even that support of slavery. Here’s a good summary from Wikipedia, however:

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Is It Better to Take the High Road or the Low Road?

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View of loch lomond
View of Loch Lomond; Image accessed via Wikimedia Commons

My friends, let me warn you that the history behind this innocuous-sounding song is right in my wheelhouse, or up my alley, or whatever expression you want to use. I’ll try to rein myself in, but it’s going to be hard. So hang in there with me to find out more than you thought possible about a song you’ve probably heard many times but never questioned. Let me just quote the chorus before we get started:

O you take the high road, and I’ll take the low road,
And I’ll be in Scotland afore ye,
But me and my true love will never meet again,
On the bonnie, bonnie banks of Loch Lomond.

 The person who takes the low road is going to get to Scotland first, but he won’t ever see his true love again. So is he better off than the person who’s taking the high road? Well, it depends on the specific way that the words are interpreted.

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So, What’s Up with the Celts, Anyway?

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PictureCeltic crosses, Celtic love knot jewelry, Celtic dancing, Celtic music . . . it’s an industry. Since my own choir, the Cherry Creek Chorale, does a Celtic-themed concert every other year, I wanted to find out more about the history of this term. Turns out that, as is usual when you try to reconstruct the past, especially the ancient past, it ain’t all that easy to nail things down. We’re used to thinking in terms of clear-cut events and eras when we look at history, but those divisions are often more for the sake of convenience than reflections of actual reality.

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A Christmas Lagniappe

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Hello Friends! Here’s a little something to listen to as you wrap up your Christmas preparations, or whatever holiday you may celebrate–or perhaps you can put in your earbuds and put your feet up while you drink a nice hot toddy–or a nice wassail cup:

Wassail, Wassailing, and the 16th Century Songs to Sing

I was extremely honored to be invited onto the podcast That Shakespeare Life to talk about the traditions associated with wassailing with the host Cassidy Cash. She tracked me down because of this post that I had written several years ago:

The Wild and Wacky World of Wassailing

I’ll be back in January with posts about Celtic music. See you then!

What does macaroni have to do with the carol “In Dulci Jubilo”?

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Image by Dorothée QUENNESSON from Pixabay–note the correct use of

Picture this: You eat a plate of macaroni and cheese, followed by a macaron cookie, all the while listening to music with a macaronic text and wearing the costume of a macaroni. Have I finally gone completely over the edge, and what on earth does all this have to do with the Christmas carol “In Dulci Jubilo”?

Well, I’ll tell you. No, I haven’t lost it, because all of these macaronical words are related and come, at least indirectly, from the Sicilian word maccarruni, which refers to foods made from some type of paste, either flour based or almond based. (The word “pasta” in and of itself simply means “paste.”) There’s a long, long trail a-windin’ here, with Arabic influences in Sicily resulting in the melding of many North African foods with Italian ones. Here’s a summary from an excellent article in Slate:

The pasta and the almond-pastry traditions merged in Sicily, resulting in foods with characteristics of both. Early pastas were often sweet, and could be fried or baked as well as boiled. Many recipes from this period exist in both a savory cheese version and a sweet almond-paste version that was suitable for Lent, when neither meat nor cheese could be eaten. . . . Out of this culinary morass arises, circa 1279, the word maccarruni, the Sicilian ancestor of our modern words macaroni, macaroon, and macaroni.1

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The Birds that Sing in Christmas Carols

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Image by nathalieburblis from Pixabay

I would challenge you to find any animals in the actual nativity story of the Gospels with the exception of the “flocks” over which the shepherds are watching in the fields. We usually assume that these were flocks of sheep, but there could have been goats too. Other than that, I regret to inform you that those cleaned-up, prettified little animals that show up in manger scenes almost certainly weren’t there—with the exception, perhaps, of some ewes and newborn lambs. So when the little drummer boy says that “the ox and lamb kept time” while he played his drum for the Christ child, we can be quite sure that this is a later interpolation into the story, at least as far as the oxen are concerned.

Regardless of any scriptural basis for animals in attendance, there are surprisingly many carols that include animals, and not just as window dressing. Below is a selection of carols that include birds. (My own choir, the Cherry Creek Chorale, is singing a couple of them for our December 2024 concert. Follow the link if you live in the Denver area to get your tickets!)

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