Folk songs

About the lyrics to “Cailleach an airgid”–say wh-a-a-a-a-t?

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I know. This song is, like, seriously crazy. Right? Well, yes and no.

First of all, the crazy part. Or at least the let’s-not-take-this-too-seriously part. This is a get-up-and-dance, stomp-those-feet kinda tune. (Okay, I’ll try not to use any more hyphens.) The words don’t really matter all that much in the final analysis. I’ve been in a Celtic concert before in which we sang a song about a lonely fish! By comparison this one is a model of reason and logic. Still, by the time it has repeated “Si do Mhaimeoi I” about five hundred times any sense of the words is lost, whether you know the translation or not.

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“Danny Boy” and His Descendants–A Musical Journey through Time

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Where did the tune originate?

The tune used for “Danny Boy” is a true folk melody, originally called “Derry Air,” because it was first written down in County Derry, Ireland, in the town of Limavady. Once Ireland became an official part of Britain, the county was renamed “Londonderry,” with the choice of name somewhat determined by one’s political views. But whatever the name of the county, the origin story seems fairly straightforward: Jame Ross, a collector of Irish traditional folk music, heard a harpist (or a fiddler, depending on the version, and usually identified as blind) performing in the street outside her house and rushed out to copy down the tune he was playing. Unfortunately, she neglected to get the performer’s name, but she sent in her notated manuscript, along with a number of others she had collected. to the musicologist George Petrie, whose 1855 book The Ancient Music of Ireland listed the tune as an anonymous air but with a note attributing its collection to Ross. The tune was published as an instrumental piece with no lyrics but quickly became extremely popular with songwriters. The most well-known of these settings is the song “Danny Boy,” written in 1910 by an English lawyer named Frederic Weatherly. The meaning of the lyrics has been consistently misunderstood, however, leading to the next question:

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What does “hang your head over” mean in “Down in the Valley”?

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Picture​I’m sure I sang “Down in the Valley” in grade school, and I know I’ve had a picture in my mind of someone on the edge of a cliff overlooking a valley, lying face down and literally hanging her head over the edge, with her hair falling over her face and blowing in the breeze. (I guess I always thought it was “her” since I pictured long hair.) The image seemed pretty strange to me. Why would anyone do that?

So when my choir sang an arrangement of this song I decided it was time to step up and find out just what was a-goin’ on. It’s been a fascinating journey.

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Is “Oh Shenandoah” About the Shenandoah River?

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Charles Deas’ The Trapper and his Family (1845) depicts a voyageur and his Native American wife and children. Perhaps the daughter of Shenandoah and her “Yankee skipper”? Who knows? Image accessed via Wikipedia.

Hoo boy. I seem to start out a number of these articls saying, “I’ve always vaguely thought . . . “ and then explaining why I was wrong. Well, here’s another one. I’ve always vaguely thought that “Oh Shenandoah” was about the Shenandoah River and/or Valley Didn’t you? The river with that name runs through the valley in Virginia and West Virginia, although it’s not a major one but instead a tributary of the Potomac. (There’s also a Shenandoah River in New Zealand, but we won’t worry about that one.) So my vague impression was that the speaker was from the Shenandoah Valley/River and loved that part of the country but he was having to leave it to cross the wide Missouri.

Here’s an important line that gives a helpful clue: “Oh, Shenandoah, I love your daughter.” Let’s parse this out. If the Shenandoah in the song is a river, then the river’s daughter is . . . what? A stream? Doesn’t make too much sense, does it?

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Who Is Michael, and Why Is He Rowing a Boat?

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PictureThis is yet another of those songs everybody sings and nobody thinks about. Come on, now. Have you ever asked yourself this question? I sure hadn’t.

Once again my good friend Wikipedia put me onto the right track and I’ve gone on from there. As with so many wonderful songs that are entrenched in American music, this one stems from slave spirituals. And, as with the meaning of so many spirituals, it’s a mix of biblical and historical ideas.

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What’s A-Goin’ on with Cindy?

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PictureWe know that any true folk song will always have multiple versions, since they weren’t composed in any formal way and were passed down orally for some time before being written. One aspect or the other of the original may be prominent in each variant. “Cindy” has an almost infinite variety of verses and also has the characteristic of having been built at least partly from “call and response,” which in this case has someone start out with a line and then others in the group have to come up with a second line that rhymes with the first, whether or not the lines add up to a coherent story. (This type of activity is also common in some churches in which the preacher says something that is clearly asking for a response, even if it’s just “amen.” My favorite such line is something I heard at a wedding I attended many years ago; when the preacher performing the ceremony started to feel that he wasn’t getting enough feedback, he’d say, “Am I talkin’ to anybody out there?” which would be greeted with a chorus of “amens.”)

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How Is the Song “Men of Harlech” Connected to 9/11?

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First a little background on the song itself. Harlech Castle was built in northern Wales by Edward I of England in the late 1200’s after he put down a Welsh rebellion against his rule. Harlech then became embroiled in the Wars of the Roses that raged between the houses of Lancaster and York in the 1400’s. From 1461 to 1468 the Lancastrians managed to hold onto the castle even as other strongholds fell to the Yorkists. Edward IV finally got fed up and ordered a huge army to besiege the castle, which surrendered after a month. This siege is often described as lasting for seven years, which is, we will charitably say, a slight exaggeration. The song originates from these events, but there are several versions and none of them was written before the 1800’s. It’s interesting to note that this stirring paean to freedom and bravery is actually about a civil war. One version includes the words “Now the Saxon flees before us . . . Britain wins the field!” So the Yorkists were seen as equivalent to the Saxon invaders of centuries before, but it’s fair to point out that the Lancastrians were being helped out by the French. Hmmm. Anyway, howe’er it was, the song itself is stirring and dramatic, and it’s very popular as a regimental march and is used in an adapted form by several Welsh football (er, rugby) teams.

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Is Wales Known for its Ash Groves?

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PictureWhen the choir to which I belong first started rehearsing “The Ash Grove” for a Celtic-themed concert in the spring of 2016, I thought, ‘Wait a minute–that tune is familiar. I’ve played it for church services.’ Turns out I was remembering “The Master Hath Come,” but two other hymns use the same tune, “Let All Things Now Living” and “Sent Forth by God’s Blessing.” Folk tunes are often used with varying lyrics; it’s a little ironic that this particular one made its way into the Christian hymnal, since the words most associated with it have pagan roots.

The original lyrics have to do with what’s usually called “a sense of place.” As a certain site builds up associations because of events that have happened there, the place itself becomes suffused with meaning. So the speaker says that he sees “a host of kind faces” looking down on him whenever the wind rustles the branches. First are his childhood friends, but they are just a memory. He often roves pensively in the lonely ash grove, at twilight or in the moonlight. Then he meets “the joy of my life,” and builds his home there, while blackbirds and bluebells add to the happy scene.

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Why Is Mary Treated So Badly in “Téir Abhaile Riú”? Or . . . Is She?

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PictureThe translation of the title means “Go away home” or “home you’ll go.” A girl named Mary is told in no uncertain terms that she’d better “go away home and stay there because your (marriage) contract Is made.” It doesn’t matter whether or not she’s the one who made the contract; it’s done, and that’s it. Or, as the notes on one version of the sheet music say, “The girl, Mary, having been forced into an arranged marriage with a piper, is advised to go home and accept it.” Seems a little harsh, doesn’t it? And not the mood that would fit the rousing music. That meaning would mesh better with some kind of melancholy ballad, with perhaps the unhappy girl drowning herself at the end.

But I think this interpretation is mistaken. The website SongsInIrish.com says, “This traditional song teases the girl ‘Máire’ about her possible relationship with the piper at the dance. The singer and Máire argue back and forth about whether her ‘match is made.’”

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Why is the joyful “Carol of the Bells,” written in a minor key? Aren’t minor keys supposed to sound sad?

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Now bear with me here. I’m not a music theorist, so you musicians reading this may wince a little in places. This post will be very much of a layperson’s view of the whole major/minor issue and its relationship to the mood of a piece. I’m probably spelling out more than I need to in places; no intention is meant to insult anyone’s musical intelligence!

Where to begin? I guess with the question of what makes a key minor. Hoo boy. That question opens up a real kettle of fish of a different color. In modern tuning there are 7 major keys using sharps and 7 using flats (with some overlap, but I’m not going to get into that). There is also one key, C major, which has no flats or sharps. If you want to find the minor key that has the same key signature, that is, the same number of flats or sharps, as the major, then you count down three half steps and that’s the starting point for your relative minor scale. Even if you don’t play an instrument you probably have access to a keyboard of some sort. So start on middle C and play just the white keys up to the next C. There’s your C major scale.

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