The Mysterious and Haunting “Skye Boat Song”—Tragic History told in Beautiful Music

February 6, 2023February 4, 2023 by debisimons

Isle of Skye, Photo by Piotr Musioł on Unsplash

You’ll probably think as you read the lyrics below that they sound familiar, and you’d be right. This song has had a very long and popular life, starting with its first publication in the 1880’s. The most recent incarnation has been as the theme song for the long-running drama Outlander, based on a series of novels by Diana Gabaldon. I’m not going to deal with anything outside of the actual historical origins of the song, as there’s plenty to say just in that area.

The short version of the story behind the lyrics is that it centers around the Battle of Culloden in 1746, in which the Scots were soundly defeated by a much-larger English force. The battle had come about through an attempted restoration of the Stuart dynasty to Britain’s throne, with the Scottish forces being led by Charles Stuart, or “Bonnie Prince Charlie” (and often referred to in the material below as “BPC.”) It’s an incredibly complicated bit of history that I won’t go into in detail here. If you’d like to get a more thorough overview of the events referred to in the song, let me direct you to a post I wrote several years ago that tells the story behind yet another very famous song associated with this battle: “I’ll Take the High Road and You’ll Take the Low Road.”

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

February 1, 2023January 31, 2023 by debisimons

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

Oh my goodness to gracious yes. You just never know until you start diving into a piece how much background there is to find. 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 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.

Dan Forrest Breathes Life into “the breath of life”

January 25, 2024January 26, 2023 by debisimons

the breath of life

The contemporary choral composer Dan Forrest had no way of knowing when he was contacted by the professional choir Bel Canto for a commission that he would write something audiences would associate with the COVID pandemic and the death of George Floyd. Since the premier took place in October 2019, though, the association was inevitable. The piece poignantly represents the truth that “There’s beauty and joy and wonder in every breath we take.”

Is “The Days of the Kerry Dancing” a happy song? Well, no.

January 20, 2023January 20, 2023 by debisimons

Imge accessed via https://explore.blarney.com/irish-dancing-history-today/

I’ve had the privilege of singing most of the pieces I write about on this site with my wonderful choir the Cherry Creek Chorale, and I remember getting the sheet music for “Kerry Dancing” on the first night of rehearsal for our March 2023 Celtic concert. As I glanced through it and read the words I felt a sense of longing and sadness. Why was that?

The first clue is the word “oh.” Not to belabor the point here too much, but have you ever thought about the rich array of meanings in this two letter word? It can mean:

Robert Burns’ Duncan Gray: Spurned, then Haughty, then Happy

January 28, 2023January 16, 2023 by debisimons

Portrait of Robert Burns by Alexander Nasmyth, 1787, Scottish National Portrait Gallery. Image accessed via Wikipedia.

Original Scottish dialect: Standardized English:

Duncan Gray cam here to woo                                 Duncan Gray came here to woo,
(Ha, ha, the wooing o’t!—repeated refrain)           (Ha, ha, such was the wooing of it!)
On blythe Yule-Night when we were fou                On merry Christmas Even when we were drunk,

Maggie coost her head fu’ high,                               Maggie cast her head full high, (raised her head)
Look’d asklent and unco skeigh,                             Looked askance (scornfully) and very skittish,
Gart poor Duncan stand abeigh –                           Made poor Duncan stand off

Duncan fleech’d, and Duncan pray’d                     Duncan wheedled/beseeched, and prayed
Meg was deaf as Ailsa Craig                                     Meg was deaf as Ailsa Craig (a rocky island)
Duncan sigh’d baith out and in,                              Duncan sighed both out and in,
Grat his een baith bleer’t an’ blin’,                         Wept his eyes both bleary and blind,
Spak o’ lowpin o’er a linn –                                       Spoke of leaping over a waterfall

William Butler Yeats’ Dreams of the Countess Kathleen and Her Blessed Spirit

February 8, 2023January 11, 2023 by debisimons

Dante Gabriel Rossetti The Blessed Damozel.jpg — “The Blessed Damozel” by Dante Gabriel Rossetti; image accessed via Wikipedia.

William Butler Yeats, the great Irish poet of the late 1800’s and early 1900’s, was obsessed with Irish legends and the occult. The story behind his poem “A Dream of a Blessed Spirit” neatly encapsulates both ideas, since it concerns a mythic Irish character, the Countess Kathleen O’Shea, who sold all her goods and finally her soul to help her starving tenants. Because the Countess had given her soul for the good of others and not to enrich herself, God refused to let her be damned and instead brought her to heaven. Yeats also wrote a whole play about her, but it’s safe to say that it’s never performed these days. The poem, on the other hand, has provided the text for a lovely art song that is quite popular. My own group, the Cherry Creek Chorale in the Denver metro area, has programmed it several times. I found the words to be fascinating and puzzling:

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

January 20, 2023January 6, 2023 by debisimons

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.

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

January 18, 2023January 5, 2023 by debisimons

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:

In “It Came Upon A Midnight Clear,” What’s “It”?

November 28, 2022November 27, 2022 by debisimons

Image by b0red from Pixabay; I like this image because the angel isn’t doing anything not included in the biblical story.

I classify this carol along with “Hark! The Herald Angels Sing” as having a very confusing title. In order to understand the meaning we’ll have to dive into a little grammar wonkery, with some biblical doctrine along the way.

Okay. Everybody got that? The lyrics were written by an American Unitarian Universalist minister, Edmund H. Sears, and, notably, they do not mention the actual birth of Christ at all. Let’s look at the first two lines of the carol itself:

It came upon a [or the] midnight clear,
That glorious song of old,

Did the lyricist of the famous song actually get to go “walking in a winter wonderland?”

November 18, 2022November 14, 2022 by debisimons

In a word: No. Why not? Because he was in a tuberculosis sanitarium. How weird and sad is that? Very.

So, back in the winter of 1934, 33-year-old Richard Smith was sitting in his room at the West Mountain Sanitarium after having a recurrence of his TB, trying to keep himself occupied by entering jingle contests for ad copy. (He actually won the Maybelline eye shadow contest with the slogan “The Eyes Have It.” Clever!) He could see children playing in the snow outside his window and was reminded of how much he’d enjoyed those same activities when he was growing up in the small town of Honesdale, Pennsylvania. A powerful nostalgia was at work here, but, given the actual wording of the song I think there was something else going on: he missed his wife, Jane, whom he’d married in 1930.