《You Raise Me Up》(유 레이즈 미 업)은 시크릿 가든의 롤프 뢰블란(Rolf Løvland)이 편곡을 하고, 브렌던 그레이엄(Brendan Graham)이 가사를 쓴 노래이다.
이 노래는 현재 125번 이상 커버되었으며,[1] 이 중에 여러 제목의 한국어 번안곡들이 나왔다.
롤프 뢰블란은 원래 아일랜드의 민요인 런던데리의 노래를 편곡하여 기악곡을 만들고 그 제목을 "Silent Story" (사일런트 스토리, 조용한 이야기)로 하려 했다. 뢰블란은 아일랜드의 소설가이자 CCM 작곡가[출처 필요]인 브렌던 그레이엄의 소설을 읽고 그에게 다가가 자신의 곡에 노랫말을 붙여달라 하였다.[2]
이 노래는 2002년에 출시된 시크릿 가든의 앨범"Once in a Red Moon"에 들어있으며, 아일랜드의 가수 브라이언 케네디(Brian Kennedy)가 불렀다. 케네디는 시크릿 가든의 2002년 아시아 순회공연에 동행하려 했으나 병에 걸려 얀 베르네르 다니엘센(Jan Werner Danielsen)이 그 자리를 대신하였다. 다니엘센은 이후 시크릿 가든과 함께 같은 곡을 녹음했으나 출시되지는 않았다.
"You Raise Me Up"웨스트라이프의 5번째 앨범인 Face To Face의 첫 번째 싱글로 발매되었었다. 웨스트라이프가 부른 이 버전은 You Raise Me Up의 리메이크곡 중 가장 유명한 곡이며 유일하게 UK차트 1위를 달성했다. 또한 이 싱글은 웨스트라이프의 UK차트 1위를 달성한 13번째 싱글이자 브라이언 맥퍼든이 탈퇴한 후 첫 번째로 UK차트 1위를 달성한 싱글이다.
대한민국에서는 소향이 원곡을 불렀으며, 한국컨티넨탈싱어즈가 날 세우시네로, 소울도 날 세우시네라는 제목의 번역곡을 불렀다. 그러나 장윤영은 나의 영혼 연약하여 지치고라는 제목으로 앨범을 출시한 기록이 있으며, 이 외에도 여러 제목의 한국어 번안곡들이 존재한다. 이는 대한민국에서 You Raise Me Up의 원곡 저작권 행사를 시크릿 가든이 소속되어있는 유니버설 뮤직에서 담당하지만, 한국어 표준번역에 대한 저작권을 행사하는 기관은 공식적으로 존재하지 않아 아티스트들이 자의적으로 번안하기 때문이다. 한국어로 번역된 원곡과 의미는 비슷하지만, 시크릿 가든은 뉴에이지 색채가 강함[5]에도 불구하고 번안된 한국어 가사들은 대체로 자신이 믿는 신을 찬양하는 기독교적인 모습을 보인다. 최근 유명한 버전으로 조쉬글로반, 코니탤벗, 시크릿가든이 부른 곡이 유명하다.[출처 필요]
한국계 미국인 가수 박정현은 이 노래를 일본어로 부르고 영어 원곡을 따로 불러 2007년 6월 20일 일본에서 싱글을 냈다. 이 곡은 일본의 곤조가 제작하여 2007년 4월 첫 전파를 탄 TV 애니메이션 로미오와 줄리엣(ロミオ×ジュリエット)의 도입부에 사용되었다. 주로 일본어판이 사용되었으나, 7화와 24화에 영어판이 나왔다.
인기
2004년에 이 노래는 미국 라디오에서 50만 번 넘게 재생되었다. 2005년 말 미국에서만 이 노래에 80개가 넘는 버전이 있었으며 "올해의 노래"(Song of the Year)를 포함하여 가스펠 뮤직 어워드부분에서 4번이나 지명되었다.
기독교 단체 셀라에 나온 You Raise Me Up 버전은 빌보드지의 크리스천 차트에서 1위를 하였다.
2006년9월 21일에 You Raise Me Up은 팝 시트 뮤직 웹사이트[6]에서 20,000본이 넘게 판매된 최초의 노래가 되었다.[7]
After the song was performed early in 2002 by the Secret Garden and their invited lead singer, Brian Kennedy, the song only became a minor UK hit. The song has been recorded by more than a hundred other artists including Josh Groban, who popularized the song in 2003; his rendition became a hit in the United States. The Irish band Westlife then popularized the song in the UK two years later.[1] "You Raise Me Up" is sung as a contemporary hymn in church services.
The song was originally written as an instrumental piece and titled "Silent Story." Parts of the melody (especially the opening phrase of its chorus) resemble the traditional Irish tuneLondonderry Air, which is best known as the usual tune to the 1910 song Danny Boy. Løvland approached Irish novelist and songwriter Brendan Graham to write the lyrics to his melody after reading Graham's novels.[2]
The song was written by and for Løvland himself and performed for the very first time at the funeral of Løvland's mother. Here he noted “there's something about the song people are embracing - which becomes emotionally strong. [...] I believe people think of it as a song they use for their own stuff.”.[3][4]
In 2002, it was released on the Secret Garden album Once in a Red Moon, with the vocals sung by Irish singer Brian Kennedy, and sold well in both Ireland and Norway. Originally, Brian Kennedy was supposed to follow Secret Garden on their Asian tour in 2002, but fell ill, and could not attend. He was replaced by Norwegian singer Jan Werner Danielsen, who also later recorded the song together with Secret Garden. A demo version of this recording was released in 2010, on Danielsen's posthumous compilation album One More Time - The Very Best Of, which included several previously unpublished recordings.
Popularity
Although the original version did not chart internationally, the song has now been covered more than 125 times,[5] with the most successful covers being by Josh Groban (#73 in the US and #1 on the US Adult Contemporary chart), Westlife (#1 in the UK), Daniel O'Donnell (#22 in the UK) and Dutch Popstars winner Wesley Klein (#4 in the Netherlands). The song has also found success as part of a three-song EP entitled "George Best - A Tribute" by Peter Corry and the song's original vocalist Brian Kennedy, which reached #4 in the UK.
In 2004, the song was played more than 500,000 times on American radio. In late 2005, there were over 80 versions available in USA alone, and it has been nominated for Gospel Music Awards four times, including "Song of the Year."
On 21 September 2006, "You Raise Me Up" became the first song to have sold over 76,000 copies of the score on the popular sheet music website musicnotes.com.[6]
Josh Groban version
Groban in February 2009
"You Raise Me Up"
U.S. promotional CD release The file above's purpose is being discussed and/or is being considered for deletion. See files for discussion to help reach a consensus on what to do.
In 2003, David Foster decided to produce the song after being introduced to it by Frank Petrone of peermusic, the song's publisher. He chose the up-and-coming Josh Groban to record the song, which was accompanied by the great tenor Craig Von Vennik of the Establishment. Groban's version made it to #1 on the Billboardadult contemporary chart in early 2004 and remained there for six weeks. This version also peaked at #73 on the Billboard Hot 100, his first single to do so, and was nominated for a 2005 Grammy award.
On May 26, 2007, Josh Groban appeared on BBC's talent show Any Dream Will Do to select one of the remaining contestants (or "Josephs") to perform the song with him. He chose show favourite and eventual winner Lee Mead, whilst the other four contestants (Lewis Bradley, Craig Chalmers, Ben Ellis, and Keith Jack) performed as backing singers. Following this, the solo version of "You Raise Me Up" charted in the UK at #74, making it his first chart entry there.
"You Raise Me Up" was the lead single from Westlife's fifth studio album, Face To Face. This version is one of the most successful covers of the song, peaking at No. 1 on the UK Singles Chart,[8] the only version to do so. This was the band's 13th number-one single as well as the first single to be released following the departure of Brian McFadden from the group. The single has sold 540,000 copies in the UK so far.[9] Westlife performed this song with Secret Garden at the 2005 Nobel Peace Prize concert. On December 11, 2009, they performed it again at the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize concert celebrating US President Barack Obama. When Louis Walsh suggested the band to record it, Filan, Egan, Byrne, and Feehily were against it saying it was a church song, and would not be a success. They also said they did not want to record it. However, they have since claimed in 2011, six years after the single's release, that the song changed their careers and were glad they recorded it.
The backing track is re-used in the Spanish version of this song, "Por Ti Sere", performed by Il Divo in their Siempre album.
On the second season of Popstars in the Netherlands, "You Raise Me Up" was recorded by each of the four finalists - Kim Stolker, Kristel Roulaux, Joshua Newton and Wesley Klein. When Klein won, his version was released as a single in the Netherlands under the mononym Wesley, peaking at #4 in the Dutch Top 40 and staying in the charts for eleven weeks,[13] making it the first version of the song to reach the top 10 in the Netherlands. The song was subsequently released as the final track on his debut album Vandaag en morgen (meaning Today and Tomorrow in Dutch).
British singer Becky Taylor covered the song on her second album Shine (1 July 2003), released before Josh Groban's version.
The song was recorded by Daniel O'Donnell in 2003 and was a hit throughout Ireland and the UK, charting at #22 in the UK.
A version by Christian group Selah (with both verses included, as originally written) went to #1 on Billboard's Christian charts and was included on their 2004 album Hiding Place. This recording was nominated for Song of the Year at the 2005 Dove Awards.
Brian Kennedy re-released the single after performing it at Northern Irish football player George Best's funeral on 3 December 2005. The song charted in the UK at #4 in January 2006 (as part of a three-song EP entitled "George Best — A Tribute").
In 2005, Celtic Woman cover this song, and it is used as the theme song of a Japanese TV Drama Byakkotai.
The song was covered in Japanese by Korean-American singer Lena Park as the opening theme to the Japanese anime TV series Romeo x Juliet, which premiered in Japan on April 2007. Park also covered an English version of the song, which was featured in episodes 7 and 24 of the English version of the series, released in two sets in both June and August 2009.
Paul Potts and Il Divo separately recorded a Spanish version of this song called Por Ti Seré. This loosely translated version appears on Pott's One Chance album and Il Divo's Siempre.
On September 27, 2008, Korean Idol group TVXQ performed the song with blind pianist Ye-Eun on SBS Chocolate.[19]
On October 10, 2008, Czech singer Josef Vágner release an album Mě sílu dáš (translated You give me power) named by the first song in the album.
On October 19, 2008, the song was performed by later winner Freek Bartels in the semi-finals of 'Op zoek naar Joseph' (the Dutch version of BBC's talent show Any Dream Will Do).[20]
On December 9, 2008, Ysgol Glanaethwy, runners up in the BBC's Last Choir Standing, released a CD, O Fortuna, which had a Welsh version of You Raise Me Up 'Dyrchefir Fi'.
On March 28, 2008, runner-up, Laura, performed the song live in the final of the Danish X Factor.
On May 2, 2009, David Foster protegée Charice released a rendition of "You Raise Me Up" for a Mother's Day album. This song was produced by Star Records of the Philippines.
Also on May 2, 2009, South Korean boy band SHINHWA's lead vocalist Shin Hye Sung successfully performed You Raise Me Up towards the end of his concert during the 2009 Keep Leaves Tour in Seoul. The performance was featured in his DVD of the concert, which was released in the same year, as the 20th track.[22]
On May 9, 2009, Transmontuna (Tuna Universitária de Trás-os-Montes e Alto-Douro [23]) performed "Por ti seré" Video on YouTubeVideo on YouTube, the Spanish version of "You raise me up" together with an Orchestra that joined teachers and students from the Conservatório Regional de Musica de Vila Real, conducted by maestro Vasco Sousa. Luis Rocha, Gaiato, the soloist of this cover, was considered the best voice that ever stood on Vila Real's Theatre stage.
On May 9, 2009, Girls' Generation member Jessica and solo artist Lena Park performed "You Raise Me Up" at the Korea Times Music Festival at the Hollywood Bowl in LA.
On August 3, 2009, Rhap Salazar rendered the song at the funeral service of former Philippine President Corazon Aquino.
Paul Byrom of Celtic Thunder, produced by the producer of Celtic Woman, recorded a cover in spring 2009.
Australian duo Generation Gap recorded the song (complete with both verses) for their album, A New Beginning, which was released in December 2009.
German musical actor Andreas Bieber sang the song as a duet with international star Pia Douwes on his album No Frontiers.
In September 2008, Jewish pop star, Yaakov Shwekey covered the song with some minor changes to the lyrics, so as to be acceptable by the orthodox population.
In 2010 fans of Colchester United FC began to adopt the song as an anthem to be performed in traditional choral style on matchdays while travelling on public transport on the terraces at away matches and to the delight of the locals in pubs up and down the land.
In January 2010, a Tahitian adaptation by Ronny TERIIPAIA, titled "E AO MÄ'OHI"[24] (It's a mä'ohi (Polynesian) world by COJT (Committee of young people of The Tävini Huira'atira political party led by Mr Oscar TEMARU whose goal is the independence of French Polynesia) was released.
On February 17, 2010, this song was performed by Korean girl group Brown Eyed Girls to commemorate the return of the nation's popular Mnet Countdown 2010. It is also to perform for the survivors of the Haiti Earthquake.
On February 18, 2010, this song was again performed by Korean artists on the KBS Music Bank, ranging from Jokwon of 2AM, Kim Jong-kook, Taeyeon and Jessica of Girls' Generation, Jang Hee Young, Ming Kyung Hoon and Jung Yonghwa of CN.Blue. It was also performed for the survivors of the Haiti Earthquake.
In 2010, the German singer Helene Fischer performed the song on her "So wie ich bin"-tour.
A Finnish version of the song was recorded by Kari Tapio titled "Kuin taivaisiin".
Japanese voice actress Ayahi Takagaki covered the song in her cover album, "melodia". The track itself is firstly included in her single, "Kimi ga Iru Basho" as the secondary coupling song.
Hayley Westenra sang this song with the two Korean singers Park Gi Yeong and Son Ho Yeong in Opera Star in 2012 as the grand finale.
On December 30, 2012, The One sang an arrangement of this song during Season 2 of I Am A Singer.
On September 30, 2013, Filipina singer Jolina Magdangal sang this version in Filipino as "Nassang da Ong" for her upcoming album, released in March 2014.
American Singer Nick Palance performs live for charity at CVAP Coachella Valley Alumnae Panhellenic April, 2014, in Palm Springs[31]
In 2014, John Barrowman covered the song on his album You Raise Me Up.
On 30 July 2016, SNH48 and its sister groups performed the Chinese version of the song, "比翼齐飞", with lyrics written by its members, Wu Yanwen, Zhang Yunwen, Yan Jiaojun, Luo Xueli, Su Shanshan, Zhang Xiaoying and Feng Jiaxi at the closing of the concert held before the 3rd annual General Election.
The Baseballs also sang that song on the album Hit Me Baby.
A cover version is included as a bonus track on Elisa's 2016 album GENETICA.
Secret Garden's version of the song was used in an episode of As the World Turns on April 20, 2002.
In 2004, Australian Idol Top 12 contestant Daniel Belle sang the song for his "Pop" song selection, and it has become one of the most performed songs on similar shows across the world.
RTÉ (Ireland's national television station), screened a Roy Esmonde-produced documentary titled You Raise Me Up on New Year's Day 2006. First screened a year earlier, this updated edition included the most recent successes for the song, as well as the story of how the song first came to be written by Løvland and Graham.
Shizuka Arakawa, the 2006 Olympic gold medalist in figure skating, used the piece as an exhibition number for many shows and professional competitions from 2005–2010. Michelle Kwan skated to the song during the 2004 Champion on Ice Tour and other competitions in 2005. Caroline Zhang skated this song in her exhibitions in the 2006–2007 and 2007–2008 skating season.
On July 26, 2007, the song was performed on 6th International Competition of Young Singers of Popular Music the "New Wave" (Jūrmala, Latvia) by Andris Ērglis representing Latvia on this contest. Song accompaniment recorded by Swedish producers from "Sunday Music" for Latvian music company "Microphone Records".
On March 27–29, 2009, The Australian Foster Care Conference in Fremantle, Western Australia David Witt Rachel Spratt Cleon Prineas Richie Conroy Holly Lyons Phil Smith Melanie Alexander Jane Schneider David Evans used the title of the song You Raise Me Up as the Conference Theme and the song lyrics were posted on their website Raise me up in the context of foster care carries the dual meaning of raising bringing up or growing up foster child and in doing so lifting them up high and giving them the opportunity to achieve great things.
On July 23, 2010, the song was used as background for the announcement of the winners of the "Time of My Life" duet winners on Big Brother Ten as part of the series’ two-day Glee-themed task.
The song is played on a car radio during a sequence in the 2012 film Fun Size.
The song was translated into Japanese by Korean-American singer Lena Park and this version was used as the opening song of the AnimeRomeo X Juliet.
I.K. Start, a Norwegian football club, uses this song as a club anthem.
X Factor judge Simon Cowell has named "You Raise Me Up" one of his favourite songs.
Recently, the song got played in the bus radio for The 465 CT Transit driver, a Hamden, Connecticut-based Pop/New Age Artist during The 465 CT Transit driver's upcoming 1st instrumental debut album, The Bridge promotional advertisement.
In the show Big School, Mr Martin (Daniel Rigby), along with the school choir, sang "You Raise Me Up" for Ms Postern's (Catherine Tate) charity talent show. This was Episode 2 of the show.
Hayley Westenra performed You Raise Me Up at the opening ceremony of the 2015 Cricket World Cup on 12 February 2015 in Hagley Park in her hometown of Christchurch, New Zealand
The popular Australian and Irish children's television show Skinner Boys: Guardians of the Lost Secrets which is known for naming each season 2 episode which is named after this song.
The group won the Eurovision Melody Grand Prix Contest for Norway's second time in 1995 with the composition "Nocturne". It was the only time to date that a predominantly instrumental piece has won the Eurovision Song Contest, although a few Norwegian lyrics, written by screenwriter Petter Skavlan, were included to ensure that the entry adhered to the contest's rules. Norwegian singer Gunnhild Tvinnereim sang the song in the Eurovision Song Contest and Swedish nyckelharpistÅsa Jinder also guested on the occasion, although neither is a regular member of the group. Ten years earlier, Rolf Løvland had been co-writer of the song "La det swinge" (Let it swing) that secured Norway its first Eurovision Song Contest victory in 1985.[1][2]
Songs from a Secret Garden
Their success at Eurovision spearheaded the success of their first album Songs from a Secret Garden. It sold a million copies around the world going platinum in Norway and Korea, gold in Ireland, Hong Kong and New Zealand and spending two years in the Billboard new-age charts in 1996 and 1997. Barbra Streisand adapted "Heartstrings" from this album as the song "I've Dreamed of You" on her A Love Like Ours album. She also used "Heartstrings" in her wedding to James Brolin.
White Stones
The album White Stones followed in 1997 also making the top ten on Billboard New Age charts. Dawn of a New Century, again with lyrics by Norway's Petter Skavlan, in 1999, Dreamcatcher in 2001 and Once in a Red Moon also enjoyed success around the world including reaching top ten on the Billboard.
Secret Garden has released a Dreamcatcher: Best Of album for its tour through Australia and New Zealand in 2004. It reached the top of the Australian New Age charts and the ARIA top 50 album charts.
Secret Garden published a book written by Rolf Løvland with Fionnuala Sherry as co-writer entitled "You Raise Me Up: The Story of Secret Garden" in 2015. The book tells their story from the inside - their triumphs as well as the trials and tribulations they've endured along two decades.
Brendan Graham (born 1945)[1]) is an Irish songwriter and novelist. Among songs he has written or co-written are "Rock 'n' Roll Kids" (1994) and "The Voice" (1996), both of which won the Eurovision Song Contest for Ireland in their respective years, and "You Raise Me Up"(lyrics) (2002), which was an international hit as covered by various artists.
When I am down and, oh my soul, so weary; When troubles come and my heart burdened be; Then, I am still and wait here in the silence, Until you come and sit awhile with me.
You raise me up, so I can stand on mountains; You raise me up, to walk on stormy seas; I am strong, when I am on your shoulders; You raise me up… To more than I can be.
You raise me up, so I can stand on mountains; You raise me up, to walk on stormy seas; I am strong, when I am on your shoulders; You raise me up… To more than I can be.
There is no life – no life without its hunger; Each restless heart beats so imperfectly; But when you come and I am filled with wonder, Sometimes, I think I glimpse eternity.
You raise me up, so I can stand on mountains; You raise me up, to walk on stormy seas; I am strong, when I am on your shoulders; You raise me up… To more than I can be.
You raise me up, so I can stand on mountains; You raise me up, to walk on stormy seas; I am strong, when I am on your shoulders; You raise me up… To more than I can be.
When I am down and, oh, my soul, so weary; When troubles come and my heart burdened be; Then I am still and wait here in the silence, Until you come and sit awhile with me.
You raise me up, so I can stand on mountains; You raise me up to walk on stormy seas; I am strong when I am on your shoulders; You raise me up to more than I can be.
You raise me up, so I can stand on mountains; You raise me up to walk on stormy seas; I am strong when I am on your shoulders; You raise me up to more than I can be.
There is no life - no life without its hunger; Each restless heart beats so imperfectly; But when you come and I am filled with wonder, Sometimes, I think I glimpse eternity.
You raise me up, so I can stand on mountains; You raise me up to walk on stormy seas; I am strong when I am on your shoulders; You raise me up to more than I can be.
You raise me up, so I can stand on mountains; You raise me up to walk on stormy seas; I am strong when I am on your shoulders; You raise me up to more than I can be.
When I am down and, oh my soul, so weary When troubles come and my heart burdened be Then, I am still and wait here in the silence Until you come and sit awhile with me
You raise me up, so I can stand on mountains You raise me up, to walk on stormy seas I am strong, when I am on your shoulders You raise me up, to more than I can be You raise me up, so I can stand on mountains You raise me up, to walk on stormy seas I am strong, when I am on your shoulders You raise me up, to more than I can be There is no life - no life without its hunger; Each restless heart beats so imperfectly; But when you come and I am filled with wonder, Sometimes, I think I glimpse eternity You raise me up, so I can stand on mountains You raise me up, to walk on stormy seas And I am strong, when I am on your shoulders You raise me up, to more than I can be
내가 힘들어 내 영혼이 너무 지칠 때에 괴로움이 밀려와 내 마음이 무거울 때에 당신이 내 옆에 와 앉으실 때까지 나는 고요히 이 곳에서 당신을 기다립니다.
당신이 일으켜 주시기에 나는 산 위에 우뚝 설 수 있고 당신이 일으켜 주시기에 나는 폭풍의 바다 위를 걸을 수 있습니다. 당신의 어깨에 기댈 때에 나는 강해지며 당신은 나를 일으켜 나보다 더 큰 내가 되게 합니다.
당신이 일으켜 주시기에 나는 산 위에 우뚝 설 수 있고 당신이 일으켜 주시기에 나는 폭풍의 바다 위를 걸을 수 있습니다. 당신의 어깨에 기댈 때에 나는 강해지며 당신은 나를 일으켜 나보다 더 큰 내가 되게 합니다. 저마다 굶주림 없는 인생은 없습니다 저마다 불안한 가슴은 불완전하게 고동칩니다. 그러나 당신이 오셔서 내 가슴이 경이로 가득찰 때에 때때로, 나는 영원을 살짝 엿본다고 생각합니다.
당신이 일으켜 주시기에 나는 산 위에 우뚝 설 수 있고 당신이 일으켜 주시기에 나는 폭풍의 바다 위를 걸을 수 있습니다. 당신의 어깨에 기댈 때에 나는 강해지며 당신은 나를 일으켜 나보다 더 큰 내가 되게 합니다.
The Londonderry Air is an air that originated in County Londonderry, Northern Ireland. It is popular among the Irish diaspora and is very well known throughout the world. The tune is played as the victory anthem of Northern Ireland at the Commonwealth Games. The song "Danny Boy" uses the tune, with a set of lyrics written in the early 20th century.
The title of the air came from the name of County Londonderry, and was collected by Jane Ross of Limavady in the county.
Ross submitted the tune to music collector George Petrie, and it was then published by the Society for the Preservation and Publication of the Melodies of Ireland in the 1855 book The Ancient Music of Ireland, which Petrie edited.[1] The tune was listed as an anonymous air, with a note attributing its collection to Jane Ross of Limavady.
For the following beautiful air I have to express my very grateful acknowledgement to Miss J. Ross, of New Town, Limavady, in the County of Londonderry—a lady who has made a large collection of the popular unpublished melodies of the county, which she has very kindly placed at my disposal, and which has added very considerably to the stock of tunes which I had previously acquired from that still very Irish county. I say still very Irish, for though it has been planted for more than two centuries by English and Scottish settlers, the old Irish race still forms the great majority of its peasant inhabitants; and there are few, if any counties in which, with less foreign admixture, the ancient melodies of the country have been so extensively preserved. The name of the tune unfortunately was not ascertained by Miss Ross, who sent it to me with the simple remark that it was 'very old', in the correctness of which statement I have no hesitation in expressing my perfect concurrence.[2]
This led to the descriptive title "Londonderry Air" being used for the piece.
The origin of the tune was for a long time somewhat mysterious, as no other collector of folk tunes encountered it, and all known examples are descended from Ross's submission to Petrie's collection. In a 1934 article, Anne Geddes Gilchrist suggested that the performer Ross heard played the song with extreme rubato, causing Ross to mistake the time signature of the piece for common time (4/4) rather than 3/4. Gilchrist asserted that adjusting the rhythm of the piece as she proposed produced a tune more typical of Irish folk music.[3]
In 1974, Hugh Shields found a long-forgotten traditional song which was very similar to Gilchrist's modified version of the melody.[4] The song, Aislean an Oigfear (recte Aisling an Óigfhir, "The young man's dream"), had been transcribed by Edward Bunting in 1792 based on a performance by harper Donnchadh Ó Hámsaigh (Denis Hempson) at the Belfast Harp Festival. Bunting published it in 1796.[5] Ó Hámsaigh lived in Magilligan, not far from Ross's home in Limavady. Hempson died in 1807.[1] In 2000, Brian Audley published his authoritative research on the tune's origins. He showed how the distinctive high section of the tune had derived from a refrain in "The Young Man's Dream" which, over time, crept into the body of the music. He also discovered the original words to the tune as we now know it which were written by Edward Fitzsimmons and published in 1814; his song is "The Confession of Devorgilla", otherwise known by its first line "Oh Shrive Me Father".[6]
The descendants of blind fiddler Jimmy McCurry assert that he is the musician from whom Miss Ross transcribed the tune but there is no historical evidence to support this speculation. A similar claim is made that the tune came to the blind itinerant harpist Rory Dall O'Cahan in a dream, and a documentary detailing this version was broadcast on the Maryland Public Television in USA in March 2000;[7] reference to this was also made by historian John Hamilton in Michael Portillo's TV programme "Great British Railway Journeys Goes to Ireland" in February 2012.[8]
The most popular lyrics for the tune are "Danny Boy" ("Oh Danny Boy, the pipes, the pipes are calling"), written by English lawyer Frederic Edward Weatherly in 1910, and set to the tune in 1913.
The Confession of Devorgilla
The first lyrics to be sung to the music were, "The Confession of Devorgilla", otherwise known as "Oh! shrive me, father".
'Oh! shrive me, father – haste, haste, and shrive me,
'Ere sets yon dread and flaring sun;
'Its beams of peace, – nay, of sense, deprive me,
'Since yet the holy work's undone.'
The sage, the wand'rer's anguish balming,
Soothed her heart to rest once more;
And pardon's promise torture calming,
The Pilgrim told her sorrows o'er.
The first writer, after Petrie's publication, to set verses to the tune was Alfred Perceval Graves, in the late 1870s. His song was entitled "Would I Were Erin's Apple Blossom o'er You". Graves later stated "that setting was, to my mind, too much in the style of church music, and was not, I believe, a success in consequence."[6]
Would I were Erin's apple-blossom o'er you,
Or Erin's rose, in all its beauty blown,
To drop my richest petals down before you,
Within the garden where you walk alone;
In hope you'd turn and pluck a little posy,
With loving fingers through my foliage pressed,
And kiss it close and set it blushing rosy
To sigh out all its sweetness on your breast.
Irish Love Song
The tune was first called "Londonderry Air" in 1894 when Katherine Tynan Hinkson set the words of her "Irish Love Song" to it:
Would God I were the tender apple blossom That floats and falls from off the twisted bough To lie and faint within your silken bosom Within your silken bosom as that does now. Or would I were a little burnish'd apple For you to pluck me, gliding by so cold While sun and shade you robe of lawn will dapple Your robe of lawn, and you hair's spun gold.
Yea, would to God I were among the roses That lean to kiss you as you float between While on the lowest branch a bud uncloses A bud uncloses, to touch you, queen. Nay, since you will not love, would I were growing A happy daisy, in the garden path That so your silver foot might press me going Might press me going even unto death.
W. G. Rothery, a British lyricist who wrote the English lyrics for songs such as Handel's "Art Thou Troubled," wrote the following lyrics to the tune of "The Londonderry Air":
In Derry Vale, beside the singing river,
so oft' I strayed, ah, many years ago,
and culled at morn the golden daffodillies
that came with spring to set the world aglow.
Oh, Derry Vale, my thoughts are ever turning
to your broad stream and fairy-circled lee.
For your green isles my exiled heart is yearning,
so far away across the sea.
In Derry Vale, amid the Foyle's dark waters,
the salmon leap, beside the surging weir.
The seabirds call, I still can hear them calling
in night's long dreams of those so dear.
Oh, tarrying years, fly faster, ever faster,
I long to see that vale belov'd so well,
I long to know that I am not forgotten,
And there in home in peace to dwell.
Far Away
George Sigerson wrote lyrics arranged by T. R. G. Jozé. These words were made popular in the early 20th century by the Glasgow Orpheus Choir under Sir Hugh Roberton. A pdf copy of the SATB arrangement by Jozé is available from the University of Michigan musical archives.
The melody was used to words in Irish and sung by the Bunratty Castle chorus during the 1970s. The title used was "Maidín i mBéara". The words are from a poem of the same title by Irish poet and scholar Osborn Bergin (ó hAimheirgin)(1872–1950).
Belgian singer Helmut Lotti featured the song on his 1998 album "Helmut Lotti goes classic, Final Edition" under the title "Air from County Derry" to his own lyrics.
Instrumental settings
Frank Bridge used the melody as basis for his An Irish Melody, H.86 for string quartet (1908) or string orchestra (1938).[11]
American composer Frank Duarte used the air in the trio of his march, The Valiant Green Company for military band.[12]
Australian composer Percy Grainger wrote numerous settings, which he called "Irish Tune from County Derry", in his British Folk-Music Settings.[13]
Jump up ^Petrie, The Ancient Music of Ireland (Dublin, 1855) page 57
Jump up ^Gilchrist, Anne Geddes (1934). "A new light upon the Londonderry Air". Journal of the English Folk Dance and Song Society.
Jump up ^Shields, Hugh (1974). "New dates for old songs 1766–1803". Long Room (the journal of the library of Trinity College, Dublin).
Jump up ^Bunting, Edward (1796). A General Collection of the Ancient Irish Music.
^ Jump up to: abAudley, B. (2000). "The Provenance of the Londonderry Air". Journal of the Royal Musical Association. 125 (2): 205–247. doi:10.1093/jrma/125.2.205.
런던데리의 노래(Londonderry Air)는 북아일랜드의 민요이다. 런던데리는 북아일랜드의 도시 데리의 공식명칭이다. 아일랜드 이민자들 사이에서 인기가 높은 노래로 알려져 있으며 영연방 경기 대회에서 북아일랜드의 국가로 사용된다. 단 북아일랜드 축구 국가대표팀은 이 곡을 사용하지 않고 영국의 국가를 사용한다.
가사
Would God I were the tender apple blossom That floats and falls from off the twisted bough To lie and faint within your silken bosom Within your silken bosom as that does now. Or would I were a little burnish'd apple For you to pluck me, gliding by so cold While sun and shade you robe of lawn will dapple Your robe of lawn, and you hair's spun gold.
Yea, would to God I were among the roses That lean to kiss you as you float between While on the lowest branch a bud uncloses A bud uncloses, to touch you, queen. Nay, since you will not love, would I were growing A happy daisy, in the garden path That so your silver foot might press me going Might press me going even unto death.
[A photograph of the tune as it appeared when first published, and a midi recording of this arrangement of the air, is linked near the end of this discourse, immediately before Appendix 1.]
The following information on the Londonderry Air is largely drawn from research done for my article entitled The Provenance of the Londonderry Air which was published in the Journal of the Royal Musical Association [125 (2): autumn 2000. Oxford University Press. pp.205-247]. That article was intended for a readership with a practical and technical knowledge of music; this web version is for the general reader. Those interested in detailed references and a wider body of supporting material should consult the JRMA article. This web site, though, contains supplementary material, not included in the JRMA article, mostly related to the air's collection. One of the reasons for establishing this web site is the desire to correct numerous inaccuracies and misleading statements related to the air which have appeared, and are being repeated, in books and on internet sites, to the point of myth making. I also provide errata to the JRMA article.
The JRMA article's abstract reads - The internationally known Londonderry Air carries the status of a cultural symbol of Ireland. Both its collector and publisher claimed in 1855 that the music was very old, a belief which has passed into conventional wisdom. In 1934 and 1979 two writers cast doubts on the tune's age and suggested that its 'collector' had more to do with the moulding of the tune than the process of tradition. Subsequently, doubts about the music have prevailed in academic circles but remained unexamined. This article queries the deductions of these writers and explores the musical origins and evolution of the air. The methodology is historical and musicological. From an examination of collections of Irish traditional music evidence is presented in support of the tune's age and fashioning by tradition. The lost verses of a song, known to have been accompanied by the tune in the nineteenth century, are revealed as the likely original words to the music.
Note. In 1992 I wrote a booklet called Denis O'Hampsey, the harper, c1695-1807 and material which I collected in the course of preparing that publication was the starting point of the concentrated research on the Londonderry Air. A tune, notated from Hampsey towards the end of his life, called The Young Man's Dream was shown in 1979 to be a precursor of part of the Londonderry Air. Hampsey lived near the town of Limavady in which lived Jane Ross, the collector of the Londonderry Air. In 1994 I was graciously given access to the family records of the descendants of Jane Ross in which the material related to the air consisted only of modern newspaper cuttings which, however, proved to be useful in plotting the air's history. My principal findings were discovered prior to February 1996; confirmatory and additional material was gathered until 1999. An interim paper was submitted to a journal in 1996 and then withdrawn. The full article appeared in 2000.
The Londonderry Air: facts and fiction
Public and Scholarly Notice of the Air. The Londonderry Air was first published by The Society for the Preservation and Publication of the Melodies of Ireland, which was founded in Dublin, in1851. The society advertised its intention to collect, classify and publish appropriate Irish music and songs and invited people to send copies of any such material to a central depot in Dublin. It seems likely that the air was acquired by the society in response to this invitation. George Petrie was its president and was solely responsible for the preparation and editing of the society's first and only book, The Ancient Music of Ireland (1855), which was mostly part of Petrie's own collection. Although the hard-backed book appeared in 1855, subscribers were given the option to acquire the volume in parts of approximately 40 pages each as soon they came from the presses and the first of these parts was issued in 1853.
George Petrie
In his book Petrie lists the air as a 'song' in a category of 'Anonymous Airs'. It wasn't called the Londonderry Air in print until 1894 when this was the name given it as the tune accompanying Irish Love Song, written by Katherine Hinkson, in a book edited by Alfred Perceval Graves called Irish Song Book. Graves and Hinkson wrote three sets of words to the air between the late 1870s and 1894 but it became a popular success only after Fred Weatherly wedded his verses of Danny Boy to it in 1912 and published it in 1913 [see also appendix 2]. Besides the perceived beauty of the music, the factors which probably contributed to its popularity at this time are the sentiment of the verses, its availability as sheet music and the distribution in both America and Europe of an American recording made by the internationally respected opera singer Ernestine Schumann-Heink in 1915.
Ernestine Schumann-Heink
Between 1913 and 1918 Danny Boy and its music gathered increasing attention within Ireland and Britain, and also internationally; in 1918 the publishers issued a new edition to meet demand. In that year an article on the air appeared in the Musical Times, London, in which the author, Henry Coleman stated
Of all the national tunes which have been rescued from oblivion....non has achieved such striking popularity as the old Irish tune known as the 'Londonderry Air'....this very beautiful tune seems to be taking such an extraordinary hold upon the people - for hardly a week passes by without its appearing in some form or another on concert programmes....within the last few years a perfectly bewildering array of settings and arrangements has appeared.
Charles Villiers Stanford, Percy Grainger, Frank Bridge and others were attracted to write orchestral and solo arrangements of the music. The tune also found its way into the choir books of St Patrick's cathedral's in Dublin and Londonderry as the hymn O Strength and Stay and also became adopted by the Royal Inniskilling Fussiliers as the regiment's premier slow march. In his book Petrie agreed with the opinion of the tune's collector, Jane Ross, that the air was 'very old'. However, in 1934, Anne Gilchrist put a musicological question mark against the music's heritage in an article called A New Light Upon TheLondonderry Air [Journal of the English Folk Dance and Song Society ,vol.1, no 3. London, 1934, pp. 115-21] and this was amplified by Hugh Shields in his 1979 article entitled New Dates for Old Songs, 1766-1803 [Long Room, nos. 18-19. Trinity College Library, Dublin, 1979]. Their work cast doubts on Petrie's judgment that the tune was old and Shields suggested that the air may be a 'domestic adaptation' by Ross of a traditional tune. The arguments which have been raised against it may be outlined as follows; (a) if it were as old as was claimed its notated structure would be expected to fit a traditional Irish ballad metre (that is, a literary metre), which it does not; (b) as an old tune one would legitimately expect some evidence of variants, which there has seemed not to be, prior to its publication in 1855; (c) the distinctive high point of the tune pushes its pitch range to an octave and a sixth, making it so unusually wide for a traditional song that this part, at least, seems unlikely ever to have been sung in Ireland's lanes or streets - the suspicion being that it is a mid-nineteenth century, Romantic, creation of the contemporary drawing room. In Gilchrist's 1934 article she suggested that the air's 4/4 time-signature - the metre in which the tune appears in Petrie and, by inference, the metre in which Ross notated the tune - could be a mistake. She speculated that Ross incorrectly perceived the tune's actual 3/4 time-signature as 4/4 due to the manner of performance by the musician from whom the tune was collected and argued that if the air were reorganised, in a specifically simple way, back to 3/4 it would match an identifiable old Irish literary metre called 'Ochtfhoclach Bec'. Gilchrist cited six songs with a 3/4 time signature which do reflect this metre and whose structure the reformed air would match - The Colleen Rue, The Star of Slane, The Ugly Thief, Sweet Castle Hyde, The Groves of Blarney and The Bells of Shandon. She made no comment on the melodies of these songs, the last three of which share the same music, but in the introduction to his book Petrie gave a clue to the air's source when he stated that he believed that the music of one of them, The Groves of Blarney, was related to an older tune called The Young Man's Dream. This connection was also indicated by Alfred Moffatt, in his book Minstrelsy of Ireland, (London, 1897). In a note on Thomas Moore's The Last Rose of Summer, the music of which is known to be based on The Young Man's Dream, he also mentioned the music's relatedness to Castle Hyde and The Groves of Blarney and reiterated Petrie's statement that the oldest of these is The Young Man's Dream.In 1979 Shields convincingly showed in his article that a particular version of The Young Man's Dream matches the Londonderry Air in much of its melodic contour and pitches, indicating that the air is a variant of this music. The version of The Young Man's Dream which Shields specifically cited was one collected in county Londonderry, not far from Limavady, sometime in the period 1795-1796, some sixty years prior to Petrie's publication. It was collected by Edward Bunting (1773-1843), from the hundred year old harper Denis O'Hampsey (c.1695-1807), commonly known as Hempson.
The Bunting Manuscripts. Edward Bunting was a nineteen year old Belfast organist who was employed to notate tunes from participants attending the harpers' festival in Belfast in July, 1792. Hampsey was about ninety seven years old at the time and was able to pass on to Bunting many valuable pieces from his considerable repertoire which stretched back, at least, to the seventeenth century. Bunting continued collecting after 1792 and devoted much of his life to the publication of three volumes of Irish music: A General Collection of the Ancient Irish Music (London, 1796/7?); A General Collection of the Ancient Music of Ireland (London, 1809); The Ancient Music of Ireland (Dublin, 1840). His manuscripts lay in the archives of his descendents until Mrs Charlotte Milligan Fox discovered their existence and whereabouts in 1907 while shopping for a harp at Erards, the London outlet for harp maker George Morley, in Kensington. The possessors of the manuscripts, Dr Louis MacRory of Battersea, and Lady Deane of Dublin, entrusted the collection to Mrs Fox who subsequently passed as much of it as she held to Queen's University, Belfast, where it is now housed in the Special Collections Department of the library. Fox drew upon the Bunting material for her publications, Songs of the Irish Harpers (1910) and Annals of the Irish Harpers (1911). In surveying the Bunting material and compiling the latter book Fox was assisted by her sister Alice.
Charlotte Milligan Fox
The Collector of the Air. The air was, almost certainly, collected by Jane Ross (1810-1879) of Limavady, county Londonderry. Jane's older brother, William, and one of her sisters, Theodosia, were also collectors of traditional music. There is a Ross family record written by one of Jane Ross's great nephews, the Reverend William Manning, concerning the air's collection. It has to be said that the first part of the story, that relating the composition of the air, is romanticised fiction but the rest of the story has a ring of truth, being more factual with more specific detail. Being the account nearest in time and personal connection to the air's collection, it demands attention Manning's story is purportedly that told to him by his mother (Sophia Matilda, the daughter of Jane's brother, William) who, it is claimed, heard it from Jane. It is a six page account, written as if coming from Sophia Matilda's mouth, which says that the tune was first heard by William who told Jane about it and whistled it to her. He told her where to find the "...mountain cabin where he heard it played on a fiddle as he passed". She made "...a long drive from Limavady" and found "...a very old man" from whom she learned the tune and the story that the old man's father had got it from a harper. It also indicates that Jane collected the tune after the severities of the famine - possibly meaning sometime after 1849.
Jane Ross.
When Collected. There is no reliable evidence pointing to a collection date. In 1928 Jane Ross's nephew, Rev. J.T.Trelawny-Ross suggested, in a letter to the Northern Whig [Belfast newspaper], that the tune may have been collected prior to 1853. He said,
She probably took her collection of old Irish music to Petrie about 1853, when I was an infant.
This speculative date for the passing of the music to Petrie has been restated by subsequent writers as fact. In his book Petrie introduces another tune from Ross's collection, The Advice, saying
This very characteristic air is one of the many interesting tunes sent to me, during the last year, by Miss Jane Ross, of Newtown-Limavady, in the county of Derry.
This would seem to indicate that he received Ross's tunes sometime close to 1855, the publication date of the book. In fact, Petrie's papers contain an arranged notation of the air with the appended date "October 25, '53" thus providing the only reliable current evidence of a date before which the tune must have been collected and passed to Petrie. In a 1941 radio programme, Sam Henry (1878-1952), a collector and folklorist from the Coleraine/Limavady area, related a story about the tune's collection. He began "About the year 1851 Miss Jane Ross.... heard a tune....." He continued, stating as a fact but with no supporting evidence, that "In 1853 she communicated the air and many more to George Petrie." In 1963, Wilfreda Trelawny-Ross, the wife of Ross's great nephew, wrote a letter to London's Daily Telegraph in which she says, without substantiation, that "The tune was brought to light in 1851 by Miss Jane Ross." Neither Henry nor Trelawny-Ross offer evidence for the assertion that the tune was collected in 1851 and it seems likely that this date stems from the known date of the establishment of the society which published Petrie's book.
Where Collected. As stated above, the Manning document says the air was collected some distance away from Limavady, from an old man living in a mountain cabin. There is no other recorded statement by members of the Ross family to contradict this, until 1963, when Wilfreda Trewlany-Ross's Daily Telegraph letter said that Jane Ross
...heard it being played in the streets by an itinerant musician. Keenly interested in the traditional music of Ireland she brought him in, memorised the melody and later passed it on to George Petrie, the Irish antiquary.
Wilfreda was replying to a claim by a previous correspondent that the air may have been an old Scottish tune which found its way to Ireland. Her assured tone may be a reflection of her determination to refute this claim. The question remains, from whom, or how, did Wilfreda get this version of the tunes collection? It could be that she is simply repeating received wisdom created by Sam Henry's 1941 broadcast. In it he romanticised the air's collection and this version has, with variations, been repeated by subsequent generations of writers about the air. His radio script reads
About the year 1851 Miss Jane Ross, a lady who was deeply imbued with the music of her native land, was sitting at breakfast in her house in Main Street, Limavady, when she heard an itinerant fiddler play a tune new to her, although it was her life to nobly collect the music of her native district. She brought this wandering son of Orpheus into her house and regaled him with food. He then played the beautiful air again and again until Miss Ross had memorised it.
But Henry is not the originator of this 'itinerant musician' story. It seems to have started in the 1928 newspaper correspondence. A letter written by 'John Riky (Major), L.R.A.M.. Dublin' to the Sunday Times said
The Londonderry Air was rescued from oblivion by the late Miss Honoria Galwey (about fifty years ago). She heard it played by an itinerant musician on the street in Limavady, Co. Londonderry. Miss Galwey, an old lady, herself well skilled in music, jotted down, with much care, the tune, and brought it to her friend the Rev. Canon Armstrong (the celebrated musician, organist and composer) to whom she entrusted her MSS. Canon Armstrong harmonised the tune and became the first musician to do so.
While other letters clarified the issue of the air's first collector and publication, the nature of its place of collection was ignored, remaining neither confirmed nor denied. Riky's 'street musician' may well be the source of this part of the Ross story. However, one other man, writing to Henry from Canada in 1934 made reference to his street musician father as Ross's informant; see next section. [More on Honoria Galwey follows]
From whom was the Air collected? One writer from Northern Ireland, Jim Hunter, is keen to promote one particular fiddler and song writer from the Limavady area, popularly known as Blind Jimmy McCurry (c1830-1910), as the musician from whom Jane Ross noted the air. While it is not impossible that McCurry was indeed the musician in question the evidence for this claim is scant and dubious, and became enthusiastically asserted only after Hunter's views were given publicity via an interview in 1995 for a British television documentary called In Sunshine or in Shadow. Hunter keenly supports the claims of cousins Hugh and Wallace McCurry, descendants of Blind Jimmy, who say their respective grandfathers told them that Jimmy passed the tune to Jane Ross. Their story conflicts significantly with Manning's. It is known that Jimmy McCurry did not live a long drive away from Limavady, in a mountain cabin nor would have been a very old man when the tune was collected - at the time when the tune was published he was, approximately, only twenty five years old. If it is claimed that the McCurrys' grandfathers learned their alleged facts directly from Blind Jimmy it leads one to ask why he would have passed on that particular piece of information. Jimmy died in 1910 and the Londonderry Air became popular only after 1913 when Weatherly's song, Danny Boy, was published and sung. So what reason would Jimmy have had, before 1910, to recall an incident from his twenties related to one tune in his repertoire? What would have stimulated him to claim the kudos. Being blind in later life, he wouldn't have seen any published versions of it, which were, in any case, mostly classical arrangements, and being for classical performance we can question the likelihood that he would have heard such a rendering. Petrie's book was limited in number and sold to subscribers. O'Neill's Music of Ireland, published in America in 1903, did contain simple versions of the tune under the titles Londonderry Love Song and Drimoleague Fair but this book only made its way to and through Ireland, via Dublin, around the time of Jimmy's death. The popularity of the tune really gathered pace only after Danny Boy was first printed in 1913, and recorded in 1915 by opera singer, Ernestine Schumann-Heink, in America. The dependability of McCurry family memory, and also local tradition, may also be called into question. In the 1950's, '60's and '70's Hugh Shields spent much time in the Magilligan area, near Limavady, recording songs sung by traditional singers for his subsequent bookShamrock Rose and Thistle (Blackstaff Press. Belfast. 1981). He also recorded their stories and reminiscences on tape. One of the people he talked with extensively, and recorded, was Bob McCurry, born in 1900, a great nephew of Jimmy McCurry about whom Bob spoke freely. If ever there was an opportunity for a member of the McCurry family to establish Jimmy McCurry's place in Irish musical history as Ross's source of the Londonderry Air this would seem to have been it, but no assured claim was made. Sam Henry wrote a weekly column called Songs of the People, in the Coleraine Constitution newspaper, during the 1920's and 30's. It comprised music and songs sung and collected in Northern Ireland. He printed and commented on the Londonderry Air in December 1923, ending his column saying
This series of Songs for[sic] the People will render a signal service to the musical world if it elicits from our readers some old words or titles for this air, which surely can not, with its arresting beauty, have come down nameless and wordless through the ages.
And in the 1941 BBC programme he said
I set myself the task of tracing the air and it has taken me some years of very intensive research and the path was full of glaring inconsistencies and palpable errors.
In spite of his 'intensive research,' and being in a position to look closely at any claim of a Jimmy McCurry connection, through having worked in Limavady as an Excise man, he never promoted Jimmy McCurry's name as Ross's source. In the television documentary In Sunshine and in Shadow I stated that Sam Henry 'made the connection' of McCurry,Londonderry Air and informant to Ross as a possibility, merely because McCurry was an obvious contender, being a well known nineteenth century writer of surviving local songs, and fiddler. I must emphasize that I was not claiming that Henry ever believed that the connection was true - there is no evidence at all to this effect, indeed it is all to the contrary. My information came from Jack McBride, a friend of Henry's and fellow folklorist, whom I interviewed in 1971/2. John Moulden, the spiritual custodian of Sam Henry's material, has informed me that
Although there is substantial material on the Londonderry air in Sam Henry's papers he did not associate it at any time with Jimmy McCurry.
This indicates the degree of credibility which Henry gave to McCurry 's association with the Londonderry Air. One is also drawn to ask the question - if, for some reason, Jimmy felt it important enough to pass on information about the tune, and indeed claim to be Ross's source, wouldn't he also have passed on a title for it? It is hard to believe that he continued playing the tune, for sixty years, as an anonymous air or that his contemporary relatives did not learn its title in the course of listening to numerous performances. The McCurrys have not said that Jimmy had a name for the tune though Hugh McCurry stated in 1996, in a letter to the Coleraine Chronicle
From the much talking that went on in my grandfather's house around the fireside, [This would have been in the 1940's] I also learned that the name given to this air at the time it was being played was O'Cahan's Lament, written or composed by a member of this clan for his leader.
This has echoes of a statement originating in Henry's 1941 broadcast in which, while speculating on the original words, he said
...the most likely would be a song called The Downfall of O'Kane by......the bard to O'Cahan, the head of the clan to which Rory O'Cahan belonged. To me the music vivadly conveys the story of the clan; its past glory and eclipse at the confiscation of their estates by Queen Elizabeth.
Henry, apparently, found more substance in a story of the air's collection from one Frank Thomson, an Irish Canadian, who wrote to him in 1934. This gentleman said that, while living in Ballymena, county Antrim, he bought a fiddle from a street musician sometime around 1911-12, whose name he thought was McCormick. The fiddle had been his father's who was also a street musician. McCormick claimed that his father told him that the tune of the Londonderry Air was copied from him by a man or woman, whose name he thought was Ross of Limavady. According to Henry's subsequent research, this man's father, one McCormick, was a member of a entertainment group called McCormick's Wee Show, which, he said in the radio programme, "Was well known in all the towns from Ballymena to Ballycastle." Henry does not give the period during which the 'Wee Show' was active. Thomson writes with seeming sincerity in his letters, however the story needs to be treated with caution. The first thing one must note in Henry's story is that Limavady does not lie within the compass of the area between Ballymena and Ballycastle. It is about thirty five miles, by road, from Ballycastle and forty five miles, by road, from Ballymena. Another point worth examining is the projected age of the people concerned. Using the most favourable projections one can postulate the following chronology and scenario. According to Thomson, and his mother, the street musician was estimated to be between twenty six and thirty years old in 1911-12. If we assume he was thirty in 1911 it means he would have been born in 1881. And if we assume that Ross collected the air in 1850 and the musician from whom she collected it was, not an old man as quoted by Manning, but a mere twenty year old - then by the time street musician McCormick was born his father would have been fifty one years old and also, quite likely, his mother. It's not impossible that his mother could have been around fifty years old and still producing a child, however, it must be remembered that this is a 'best case' scenario. The doubt that is raised here is that McCormick's father may not have been of sufficient age to be playing, competently, or at all, on a street in Limavady, miles away from his seeming home area of Ballymena. One may also ask the same question that was applied to McCurry - why would McCormick's father have bothered to pass on to his son information regarding the playing of the tune, perhaps some forty odd years previously, for someone who wrote it down, and have imparted this information at a time which preceded the tune's great popularity? Another question comes to mind; could the person to whom McCormick passed the tune, if at all, have been Honoria Galwey? In assessing this story it has to be kept in mind that, as far as dates are concerned, Thomson was reflecting on events in 1934.
The Composer of the Music; Rory O'Cahan? Rory Dall O'Cahan was a harper composer whose history is vague but who has, through some handed-down stories and associated compositions acquired semi mythical status, part of which has to do with the fact that he has been, and still is, confused with another Rory Dall, a Scottish harper, Rory Dall Morison. O'Cahan was born in the late sixteenth century and died shortly after 1650 and came from the Limavady area while Morison's dates are c1656-1714/15. [Scholars wishing to investigate O'Cahan and Morison are directed to the book Tree of Strings by Keith Sanger and Alison Kinnaird. 1992.]. There is no existing historical or musicological evidence connecting O'Cahan with the composition of any of the Londonderry Air's preceding variants. There is a musically unrelated tune in a Scotttish manuscript, compiled in1620-7, simply called 'A Port' which, in a later book of Daniel Dow's, A Collection of Ancient Scots Music for the Violin c1775, is called 'Cumha Peathar Ruairi' (Lament for Rory's Sister). This tune was included in Captain Francis O'Neill's influential book of 1903, The Music of Ireland under the title Rory Dall's Sister's Lament. The first written mention of a connection between O'Cahan and the Londonderry Air came in 1912 from Charlotte Milligan Fox, the discoverer of the Bunting manuscripts and all claims of O'Cahan's authorship appear after this time. In all the collections of Irish music up to the beginning of the twentieth century, including Bunting, Forde, Pigott, Petrie, Joyce, Hardimann, Goodman, Roche, there is not a single collected variant of the air with an O'Cahan appellation. The nearest we come to any wording like O'Cahan's Lament is in Joyce's Old Irish Folk Music and Song (1909) where we find a variation of The Young Man's Dream called The Young Man's Lamentation. Milligan Fox's misleading statement appeared in an article in the Journal of the Irish Folk Song Society (vol.12. October, 1912) in which she said
Some of the most beautiful airs have owed their origin to Northern genius, notably the compositions of the famous harper, Rory Dall O'Cahan, who composed such airs as Rory Dall's Purth, to which Robert Burns wrote Ae fond kiss and then we sever, The Minstrel Boy, and Emer's Farewell (I am giving the names of the modern poems to which they are set). Stanford, Percy Grainger, and Mrs. Needham have all tried their skill in bringing out the beauties of Emer's Farewell, which comes from Limavady, in the County Derry; but, fine as are their settings, none seem to me the genuine frame for an air of such remarkable character.
Emer's Farewell is the song written in the 1880's, by Alfred Perceval Graves, to the music of the Londonderry Air. Fox was writing at a time when Petrie's and Ross's statements that the air was an 'old' one was still believed, and when she uses the word 'origin' she is speaking of the composers rather than the musical roots of the tunes. We now know that the tune is not old (neither is The Minstrel Boy) but a nineteenth century variant and that Fox's statement is wrong. In 1928 there was considerable correspondence on the Londonderry Air in both the British and Irish press after someone requested information on the tune. Fox's claim, that O'Cahan was the composer, was mentioned and in reply to this her sister wrote a letter to the Belfast newspaper, the Northern Whig(August, 25th). She said
Though I helped Mrs Fox (my sister) to edit the Annals of the Irish Harpers and to scrutinise the Bunting collection, I have no distinct memory on this point. It is possible that it was a mere surmise on her part, founded on her knowledge of the style of melody in the few ascribed to this famous harper, and suggested by the fact that the part of County Derry in which Petrie took it down was O'Cahan's native territory.
Fox's coupling of the Londonderry Air and O'Cahan's name was not based on scholarship, as later studies have proven. Neither the structure nor the style of melody are anything like those reputedly composed by O'Cahan. Anne Gilchrist showed in 1934 that the air is clearly not a seventeenth century piece by demonstrating that it does not conform to any Irish ballad metre, which, if it had been composed by a seventeenth century harper/composer, it would have done. My research demonstrates its development as a nineteenth century manifestation. A comparison of Fox's book and her source, the Bunting manuscripts, does reveal Fox to be a less than scrupulous writer/researcher. In his 1941 radio programme Sam Henry surmised that O'Cahan could have been the composer of the air. He based this on two loose criteria (a) the harper's existence in the area, (b) the 'high musical excellence' of the airs attributed to him. He concluded
If it be conceded that the Londonderry Air is the world's finest melody, who but Rory Dall could have composed it.
Unfortunately this obvious and admitted speculation became translated, through the oral tradition, as fact. Henry also mentioned, in the programme, the correspondence he had with Frank Thomson, in which Thomson said he believed he had heard the tune called, Rory's Lament or O'Cahan's Tune, in Ballymena, County Antrim, sometime around 1910-1912. It should be noted that this period is close to the time of Fox's statement but of course it is not impossible that someone else, around the turn of the nineteenth century, coincidentally attributed the tune to O'Cahan and that some musicians called it by an eponymous name; if they did so they did without proof of connection. Also; Rory is a common name in Ireland and the Rory of Rory's Lament , if such a title ever existed, does not have to be Rory O'Cahan! It was, and still is, fairly common practice in musical circles to refer to a musician's 'party piece', or a piece without title, by the name of the person who plays it, such as 'Johnny's jig' and 'Conor's slow air'; indeed, a variant of The Young Man's Dream was collected by Bunting called Haly's Dream. Thomson could have heard the tune called 'Rory's Lament' and afterwards put two and two together when the myth of attribution to O'Cahan became popularly known, and come up with the second title O'Cahan's Lament; he was writing to Henry in 1934 and had plenty of time to be exposed to the developing myth. In any case, nomatter how the O'Cahan appellation became established, it must be repeated that research shows that any actual connection between Rory O'Cahan and the music of the Londonderry Air is entirely spurious: and any actual connection between Rory O'Cahan and the musical source/s of the Londonderry Air is entirely speculative.
The Genesis of the Air. In a forgotten article, in a 1918 issue of the Musical Times, I discovered that Honoria Galwey (1829-1925), a contemporary of Ross's and also a collector of music living in the north west of Ireland, was reported to have said that the Londonderry Air was originally known as Oh shrive me father. She said that the song belonged as much to county Donegal as to county Derry. In the same article another authority, Annie Patterson (1869-1934), a university lecturer, was reported to have said that the song was common over the whole north west of Ireland. Neither of these people could remember the words nor was there any apparent printed evidence of a pairing of the words and music. My research confirms Galwey's title for the air and illustrates the air's development. The tune, with words, was discovered in a rare book published in Dublin in 1814 called Irish Minstrelsy: A Selection of Original Melodies of Erin with Characteristic Words by Edward Fitzsimons, Esq. and Symphonies and Accompaniments by Mr.J.Smith. [This is the first book of a two volume set; the second volume appeared in 1816.] One of the songs in this collection is The Confession of Devorgilla. The music to this song, in spite of the title of Fitzsimons's book, is not original but a well known tune of the time which accompanied a well known song called Castle Hyde. Fitzsimons identifies the tune by this title. The first words of The Confession of Devorgilla are Oh shrive me father and these words were popularly adopted as the song's title. As has been already stated the music of Castle Hyde is a variant of The Young Man's Dream which has also been shown to be a close preceding variant of the Londonderry Air. Evidence shows that the air, almost certainly, evolved from the singing and playing of Oh shrive me father as it became subjected to the dynamic of tradition which reworks music and songs as they pass through the hands and voices of numerous musicians. It is noticeable that the version of The Young Man's Dream, which was collected from the old harper, Denis O'Hampsey in 1795-6, is closer to the Londonderry Air than the music of Castle Hyde in Fitzsimons' book of 1814. This may be explained by (a) many musicians were aware of the relatedness of the two named tunes, indeed both titles have been found attached to a single variant; and (b) musicians freely attached their favoured versions, old or newly invented, of tunes to a song. It seems that, at some point, someone introduced the song to a version of the music which was similar to that played by Hampsey, from which evolved the Londonderry Air.
The Air's Pitch Range. Arguably the most significant thing which made Hugh Shields, and others, suspicious of the air, and led to the suspicion that Ross may have tampered with its composition, is the tune's latter section which reaches to a height that is atypical in the vernacular song tradition. In comparing The Young Man's Dream and the Londonderry Air Shields said,
....what is chiefly missing [from The Young Man's Dream]... in order to make the parallel complete is that melodic development of the fourth phrase which makes the Londonderry Air almost unsingable in traditional style while endearing it to virtuosos eager for effects of vocal expression. This development no doubt arose in a context to which it was just as apt: in the keyboard divigations of a middle-class lady who like her sister played the piano and lived in a small country town, not ten miles from the harper Hempson's former dwelling'. He continues, saying that Ross "....made intuitively judicious 'improvements' in her traditional source."
Evidence in the Bunting manuscripts proves that the high section of the air did not originate with Ross or her contemporaries. It was Bunting's practice when notating from the playing of the harpers to quickly indicate only the pitches of notes - not their durations - and later, when writing out a full version of tunes, to trust his memory to get the durations correct. Attached to Bunting's attempted full notation of The Young Man's Dream is a refrain which is scored out, presumably because Bunting couldn't quite get it right. In fact, there appears to be two attempts at it! A refrain doesn't appear with his printed version of the tune. This refrain parallels refrains which I found in two other variants of The Young Man's Dream - Castle Hyde and The Groves of Blarney, and is a close match for the Londonderry Air's high section. It seems that this refrain was incorporated as, or otherwise influenced, the fourth phrase during the air's development. [The discussion of this crucial element of the tune is considerably expanded in the JRMA article].
Gilchrist's Suggestion that Ross attributed an Incorrect Time Signature to the Air. Gilchrist argues the possibility of Ross having heard the tune played with excessive rubato by her musician and consequently causing her to interpret the tune as having a 4/4 signature when in the mind of the musician it was really 3/4. The purely musical part of Gilchrist's argument is impressive, and did indeed point the way to The Young Man's Dream, however her admitted 'assumption' about Ross's role carries less credibility. Adaptation by individual musicians is an irrepressible part of the dynamic of traditional music practice and the traditional music canon contains many examples of tunes which have variants in different time signatures. I argue, with examples, in the JRMA article that this dynamic seems a more likely explanation for the change of time signature from 3/4 in The Young Man's Dream and Oh Shrive Me Father to 4/4 in the Londonderry Air than a deliberate or accidental rendering by Jane Ross. It seems unlikely that a rubato rendition (in this case, probably several renditions) of a 3/4 tune with the structure and flow of the Londonderry Air could fool the ear of a listening musician to believing it to be in 4/4 while still being played in the mind of the player as a 3/4 tune. One would have to apply rubato to too many bars for ambiguity to be created and, depending on the sensitivity of the player, the resulting rendition would either be far from beautiful or begging description as a 4/4 variant. When one tries to revert the air to a 3/4 signature one finds that the notes sit with obvious discomfort in this new metre. Regarding the possibility that Ross may have deliberately constructed the air as a variant of heard or learned music, one is drawn to ask the question, would she have attempted such a deception on Petrie, claiming the tune to be an old one, knowing that he would publish it and that no one else would ever have heard it? In claiming that the tune was old, nomatter how wrong her assessment, she was inviting comment.
The First Words. It is practically certain that the words which were first accompanied by the Londonderry Air, as we now know it, are those of The Confession of Devorgilla, otherwise known as Oh shrive me father. Here are the words as they appear in Fitzsimons's book.
The Confession of Devorgilla AIR - Castle-Hyde.
'Oh! shrive me, father - haste, haste, and shrive me, 'Ere sets yon dread and flaring sun; 'Its beams of peace, - nay, of sense, deprive me, 'Since yet the holy work's undone.' The sage, the wand'rer's anguish balming, Soothed her heart to rest once more; And pardon's promise torture calming, The Pilgrim told her sorrows o'er.
The charms that caus'd in life's young morning, The woes the sad one had deplor'd, Were now, alas! no more adorning, The lips that pardon sweet implor'd:- But oh! those eyes, so mildly beaming, Once seen, not Saints could e'er forget! - And soon the Father's tears were streaming, When Devorgilla's gaze he met!
Gone, gone, was all the pride of beauty, That scorn'd and broke the bridal vow, And gave to passion all the duty So bold a heart would e'er allow; Yet all so humbly, all so mildly, The weeping fair her fault confess'd, Tho' youth had viewed her wand'ring wildly, That age could ne'er deny her rest.
The tale of woe full sadly ended, The word of peace the Father said, While balmy tear-drops fast descended, And droop'd the suppliant sinner's head. The rose in gloom long drear and mourning, Not welcomes more the sun's mild ray, Than Breffni's Princess hail'd returning The gleam of rest that shriving-day.
While it is highly probable that the first words to be attached to the Londonderry Air are those of Oh shrive me father one must add the following rider.
The history of musical tradition shows that music was often borrowed to accompany more than one song, particularly if the music was popular. In the course of an evolving tune - and one which changed considerably like the Londonderry Air, moving as it did from an original time signature of three beats in a bar to four beats in a bar, the point at which it becomes, definitively, the tune we know is virtually impossible to detect. If this is unknown and the tune was used to accompany other songs it could just be that a song, other than that with which it has become generally associated, was the first to be sung to the tune, even if only briefly. The long period of association though, between the song Oh shrive me father and the source and standard music of the Londonderry Air weighs heavily in favour of these words being those which accompanied the first rendering of the Londonderry Air, as defined in Petrie's publication. In fact there is no evidence of the tune accompanying any other song prior to Petrie's publication but in the interest of historical accuracy it is important to note this possibility in the light of our knowledge of the dynamic of tradition. In any case, it was this pairing which unified the artefact into a musical landmark and which, therefore, confers unique importance to these words.
Ross's reaction to Petrie's published arrangement of the air. As stated earlier, Petrie's arrangement was made by one of his daughters. The arrangement was, seemingly, not to Ross's liking. The Manning document states
The only directions for its rendering she felt safe at the moment in giving were, for the first few bars 'with melancholy'. This was the atmosphere surrounding its inception, and its reception by herself, and she hoped that the playing of the first part of it in this manner would in itself engender a natural and appropriate reaction for the last part and by this means promote in some degree its proper rendering and spirit. Dr Petrie did not respond in the manner she expected as he published it as a piano piece with the complementary harmonies filled in - technically correct no doubt, but far short of the real thing.
The tune, in Petrie, does not carry the marking 'with melancholy' but rather 'andante', meaning to be played moderately slowly, with a pendulum indication of 24 inches. It is arguable that the Petrie arrangement is not totally insensitive, at least in its harmony. A judgement of it, and Ross's dissatisfaction, needs to be tempered by the consideration that (a) the tune was translated from a legato instrument (the violin) to a percussive one (the piano), and (b) Petrie's daughter did not have a lyric to guide her in phrasing and emotional sensitivity nor the benefit of hearing the original rendition, as Ross had done, with its possible rubato. However, the 'andante' 24 inch pendulum length is demonstrably too quick to convey the tune's inherent melancholy.
Attention needs to be drawn to the inaccuracies and speculation on one particular website, and in a related set of publications since they have been quoted and used by some writers as an 'authoritative' source, carrying, as they do, the imprimatur of The University of Ulster. Readers and researchers seem to have trustingly accepted the unsupported claims and statements contained therein. There is the risk that others may be misdirected on time consuming and fruitless searches. Regretably, the site and booklets, which are the work of Mr Jim Hunter, lack scholarship. Mr Hunter was an enthusiastic amateur local historian from Coleraine and a member of the administrative staff of the Coleraine campus of the University of Ulster. The site is www.theoriginofdannyboy.com and the booklets, written by Mr Hunter, are
The Blind Fiddler from Myroe (1997). O'Hampsey - The Last of the Bards (1998). Rory Dall O'Cahan, Chieftain and Harper (1999). Jane Ross and the Londonderry Air (2000).
The following mistakes and unsupported claims are made by Mr Hunter in his booklets and reiterated on his website, from which these quotes are taken.
1. It was George Petrie who gave the Londonderry Air its title in his compendium of Irish Music, the Ancient Music of Ireland, which was published in 1855.
As previously stated, the tune is not listed in Petrie as Londonderry Air. It is simply called 'song' in a category headed 'Anonymous Airs'.
2. Jane Ross (1810-1879) stated that she had taken down the tune in Limavady in 1851 when she heard it played by an itinerant fiddler.
No first hand reports of Ross stating that she took down the tune in Limavady, or that she collected it in 1851, or from whom she noted it, have come to light. (The same criticism applies to Michael Robinson's statement on his website www.standingstones.com, where he asserts that "Miss Jane Ross.... claimed to have taken it down from the playing of an itinerant piper." Robinson's further claim that "She continued to maintain the truth of her original account" has no evidence to support it.)
3. Jane Ross would supply him [Petrie] a few years later in 1851, with a tune that would become world famous.
There is no evidence to support the assuredness of this '1851' assertion.
4. Sam Henry, states in "Songs of the People" a regular weekly feature in the Northern Constitution (1923-1939), that blind Jimmy McCurry (1830-1910) was the fiddler referred to by Jane Ross.
There is no such statement by Henry.
5.........blind Jimmy McCurry (1830-19 10) was the fiddler..........There is strong oral evidence in the Roe Valley to support this......
Mr Hunter does not say what criteria he uses to justify his use of the words 'strong oral evidence'. Apart from the oral evidence of McCurry's descendents he offers nothing to suggest that his 'evidence' is anything other than relatively recent supposition. In the course of talking to local historians and academics during a thirty year period I have found nothing in the area that would justify Hunter's use of the phrase 'strong oral evidence'. It, also, did not present itself to Henry and Shields.
6. I have recounted the following story of the transmission of the air, in The Blind Fiddler from Myroe (1997), related to me in 1996 by Wallace McCurry, a descendant of the blind fiddler: "One day Jane Ross heard Jimmy playing a beautiful melody outside the Burns & Laird Shipping Office, which she had never heard before. She came over to Jimmy and asked him to play the tune over and over again until she had taken down every note. Jane thanked him and gave him a coin for his moving rendition of the tune. When she departed Jimmy rubbed it against his lips, as was his method of determining the denomination of coins, and discovered it was a florin instead of the customary penny. He set off in pursuit of Jane and when he caught up with her he told her that she had made a mistake. Jane refused to take it back and asked him to keep it as a token of her appreciation of his music."
This passage indicates a cavalier use of Hunter's sources in the direction of myth making. It is actually a construct of three pieces of information from two different informants which he published two years earlier. In 1995 Hunter wrote an article for the Northern Constitution (June 24) which, essentially, is his booklet of 1997, and also called The Blind Fiddler From Myroe, in which the following three unlinked pieces of evidence are offered.
(a). The Limavady market was a favourite destination for Jimmy", recounted John Fleming. "All the farmers used to bring their horses and carts into Main Street. After they had unyoked their horses they left their carts with shafts on the ground all lined up along the street. Jimmy took up position between the shafts with his fiddle at his favourite spot outside Burns and Lairds Shipping Line Office." Interestingly, this office was just opposite the home of Jane Ross who annotated the music of the Londonderry Air from an itinerant fiddler in 1851.
Note that the information above comes from one John Fleming and that he does not mention the Londonderry Air.
(b). Ross was familiar with Jimmy's music. According to Wallace McCurry, a direct descendant of the fiddler, she would often slip him a penny as he fiddled in the Main Street. Wallace tells a story related to him by his grandfather Samuel McCurry who knew the blind Jimmy. "One day as Jimmy was walking along Main Street playing his fiddle, Jane Ross came out of her home and gave him a penny. Jimmy thanked her and when she departed he rubbed it against his lips as was his custom, and discovered it was a florin. He set off in pursuit and when he caught up with her he told her that she had made a mistake. Jane refused to take it back and asked him to keep it as a token for her appreciation of his music".
Note that, (1) the above comes from Wallace McCurry; (2) he tells this story as one separate from that about the occassion of the air's collection. Hunter's text continues contiguously
(c). Wallace provided further evidence that Jimmy was the musician who played the tune for Jane Ross. "One day Jane heard Jimmy playing a beautiful melody and she came across and asked him to play it again. She noted down the tune which later became known as The Derry Air'."
This is the first mention of the Londonderry Air from an informant. From these three statements by two people Hunter amalgamates the elements of the cart shafts, the florin and collection of the air and in his 1997 booklet (and website) puts the story into the mouth of one informant, Wallace McCurry. Evidence has yet to be produced which shows that the office of a shipping company was positioned opposite Jane Ross's house. The nature of John Fleming's information source is not offered.
7. The confiscation of the O'Cahan lands was to enrage the blind harper Rory DalI O'Cahan (c1550-166O), a chieftain of the clan, for he and his people had a deep attachment to the land, where the O'Cahans had lived for generations. In Rory Dall O'Cahan, Chieftain and Harper (1999) I have claimed that this inspired Rory Dall O'Cahan to compose a tune of such pain and passion that it would eventually touch the hearts of people worldwide. The tune became known as O'Cahan's Lament
All this is speculation and probably stems from Henry's admitted speculation.
8. At an early age he [Denis O'Hampsey] decided to adopt music as a career and he commenced his studies under Bridget O'Cahan, who was related to Rory Dall O'Cahan. In O'Hampsey -The Last of the Bards (1998) I have described how Denis inherited a considerable repertoire from Bridget including O'Cahan's Lament. Denis was to introduce this air throughout Ireland and Scotland as a result of his extensive travels in both countries.
Beyond the coincidence of the names, there is no evidence that Bridget O'Cahan was related to Rory Dall O'Cahan. There is also no record of Bridget O'Cahan having passed any version, or preceding variant, of the Londonderry Air to Hampsey. There is no record of a tune called O'Cahan's Lament in his repertoire. While Hampsey did travel through Scotland and Ireland, there is no evidence that he 'introduced' any tune to either country.
It was this derivative [of The Young Man's Dream] that she [Jane Ross] entrusted to her friend, Dr George Petrie.
There is no evidence that Petrie was a 'friend' of Jane Ross.
9. Petrie would have met Jane Ross when he visited Limavady on a number of occasions between 1833-35 to research and write accounts of the parishes of the Roe Valley as part of the Ordnance Survey Memoirs of Ireland.
There is one record, in Manning's document, of one visit by Petrie to Jane Ross for the purpose of discussing her music collecting. The year of the visit is not recorded. The document says that she did not give Petrie the Londonderry Air on that occasion.
10. As soon as the air was published by Petrie the great lyricists of the day vied with each other to find suitable words but for some reason no one could find lyrics to bring to life the most enchanting of all Irish melodies.
The air was published in 1855. The first words, known to be written after the air's publication, were not written until the 1870's.
Regretably, there are numerous other mistakes and misleading claims in the booklets.
Appendix 2.
Fred Weatherly, the writer of the song Danny Boy, contributed to the newspaper correspondence which took place in 1928. Part of his letter in the Sunday Times reads
Ellen Terry's farewell words to her friends seemed to find expression in the second verse of Danny Boy, and the pathetic music, recalling the words, seemed a fitting requiem for that great actress and sweet woman. If you have space may I quote the second verse? -
But when ye come and all the flowers are dying, If I am dead, as dead I may well be, Ye'll come and find the place where I am lying, And kneel and say an Ave there for me! And I shall hear, though soft you tread above me, And all my grave will warmer, sweeter be, For you will bend and tell me that you love me, And I shall sleep in peace, until you come to me!
The following explains this reference to Ellen Terry. Weatherly, who was an aquaintence of Terry's, was writing in August 1928. A few weeks previously Ellen Terry died and, it seems, the Londonderry Air was played at her funeral. Terry had written a verse inside a book, The Imitation of Christ by Thomas a Kempis, followed by a note indicating - "I should wish my children, relatives and friends to observe this when I die." The verse reads
No funeral gloom, my dears, when I am gone, Corpse-gazing, tears, black raiment, graveyard grimness. Think of me withdrawn into the dimness, Yours still, you mine. Remember all the best of our past moments and forget the rest. And so to where I wait, come gently on.
This verse was pinned to the gate of Terry's house as she lay waiting to be cremated. Her wishes were carried out; no blinds were drawn and no one wore black.
Errata to JRMA article.
The following emendations were too late to be incorporated in the original article.
1. Page 205. note 1. "......'anonymous song air'."
The quote marks are inappropriate. To be precise - Petrie lists the air as a 'Song' in a category headed, 'Anonymous Airs'.
2. Page 206. note 4. "This latter year is confirmed by a note in Bunting's handwriting at the beginning of a manuscript containing the arranged music of his first volume (Belfast, Queens University Library, Bunting Collection, MS 33[5]), which reads 'published in 1797'."
This should read -
"This latter year is confirmed by a note in Bunting's handwriting which reads 'tunes published in 1797' at the beginning of an intended list containing the arranged music of his first volume, (Belfast, Queens University Library, Bunting Collection, MS 33[5])".
The named manuscript does not contain the arrangements of Bunting's first volume. No set of such arrangements exists within the Bunting Collection. Bunting's note is at the top of a blank page on which he intended to compile a list of tunes published in his first volume as an aid to deciding on material for his projected third book.
3. Page 209. line 3: "......the creation of the Republic in 1922."
This should read -
"....the creation of the Free State in 1922 and the change of status and name to 'Republic' in 1949."
Acknowledgements: (as printed with the JRMA article). I am indebted to the Special Collections department of Queen's University Library, for the helpful assistance given to me in working with the Bunting Collection and for permission to reproduce the photograph of the page from the Bunting manuscripts. Special thanks are due to the members of the Trelawney-Ross family who received me warmly and allowed me access to their archives. I am also particularly grateful to the following people; Marjorie Geary of the Irish Library, Coleraine, for her cheerful assistance over the years since this research began in 1993; Colette O'Flaherty of the Irish Department of the National Library of Ireland; Sandra Tuppen of the British Library, and Johanne Trew of University College, Limerick. I have also enjoyed the excellent co-operation of the staffs of the Royal Irish Academy; the music department of the Central Library, Belfast; the National Library of Scotland; the library of Trinity College Dublin, the Irish Traditional Music Archive, Dublin, and the Vaughan Williams Memorial Library, London. Thanks are also due to Irish scholar, Tony McCombe, and to John Moulden and Olive Craig for access to papers in the Sam Henry Collection. I also wish to express my appreciation of the foundations laid by previous researchers Donal O'Sullivan, Anne Gilchrist and Hugh Shields.
1940 recording by Glenn Miller and His Orchestra on RCA Bluebird, B-10612-B
Initially written to a tune other than "Londonderry Air", the words to "Danny Boy" were penned by English lawyer and lyricist Frederic Weatherly in Bath, Somerset in 1910. After his Irish-born sister-in-law Margaret (known as Jess) in the United States sent him a copy of "Londonderry Air" in 1913 (an alternative version has her singing the air to him in 1912 with different lyrics), Weatherly modified the lyrics of "Danny Boy" to fit the rhyme and meter of "Londonderry Air".[2][3]
Weatherly gave the song to the vocalist Elsie Griffin, who made it one of the most popular songs in the new century; and, in 1915, Ernestine Schumann-Heink produced the first recording of "Danny Boy".
Jane Ross of Limavady is credited with collecting the melody of "Londonderry Air" in the mid-19th century from a musician she encountered.[4]
Lyrics
Oh, Danny boy, the pipes, the pipes are calling From glen to glen, and down the mountain side. The summer's gone, and all the roses falling, It's you, it's you must go and I must bide.
But come ye back when summer's in the meadow, Or when the valley's hushed and white with snow, It's I'll be here in sunshine or in shadow,— Oh Danny boy, Oh Danny Boy, I love you so!
But if you come, when all the flowers are dying, And I am dead, as dead I well may be, Ye'll come and find the place where I am lying, And kneel and say an "Avé" there for me.
And I shall hear, though soft you tread above me, And all my grave will warmer, sweeter be, For you will bend and tell me that you love me, and I will sleep in peace until you come to me![2]
Meaning
There are various theories as to the true meaning of "Danny Boy".[5] Some have interpreted the song to be a message from a parent to a son going off to war or leaving as part of the Irish diaspora.[5]
The 1918 version of the sheet music included alternative lyrics ("Eily Dear"), with the instructions that "when sung by a man, the words in italic should be used; the song then becomes "Eily Dear", so that "Danny Boy" is only to be sung by a lady". In spite of this, it is unclear whether this was Weatherly's intent.[6] Indeed, the song has been covered by a diverse range of male singers, including Mario Lanza, Bing Crosby, Andy Williams, Johnny Cash, Elvis Presley, Shane MacGowan, Jackie Wilson, Daniel O'Donnell, Harry Belafonte, Tom Jones and Harry Connick Jr amongst many others, all using the original lyrics.
The song is popular for funerals; but, as it is not liturgical, its suitability as a funeral song is sometimes contested.[8] In 1928, Weatherly himself suggested that the second verse would provide a fitting requiem for the actress Ellen Terry.
Characters on 30 Rock occasionally sing or play the song, typically in jokes about Irish American culture or drinking.
In the Courage the Cowardly Dog episode "The Magic Tree of Nowhere", Courage creates an eel monster that sings lyrics from "Danny Boy".
On November 25, 2014, the Vancouver Canucks used the song in honour of the recently deceased Pat Quinn, who played and worked in many executive capacities for the team.
대니 보이(Danny Boy)는 1913년에 나온 잉글랜드의 포크송이다. 그러나 가락이 북아일랜드 전통 가락이기 때문에 아일랜드 포크송으로 분류하기도 한다. 대한민국에서는 아, 목동아라는 제목으로 알려져 있다. 잉글랜드의 변호사이며 시인인 프레드릭 웨덜리(Frederic Weatherly, 1848~1929)가 작사하였고, 가락은 북아일랜드의 전통 가락인 런던데리 에어(Londonderry Air)이다.
흔히 아일랜드를 대표하는 고전 포크송으로 오해를 받고 있지만, 가락만 아일랜드, 그것도 북아일랜드 런던데리 곡이고 가사는 100% 잉글랜드 가사이다. 그러나 아일랜드계 미국인들과 캐나다인들 사이에서 널리 불리는 관계로 미국, 일본, 대한민국에서는 마치 아일랜드를 대표하는 고전 포크송인 것처럼 알려져 있다. 실제로 엘비스 프레슬리, 존 바에즈, 에릭 클랩튼 등등이 이 곡을 불렀고, 심지어 대한민국의 아이돌 가수인 아이유[1] 와 소녀시대[2] 까지도 이 곡을 불렀다.
그러나 이 곡은 아일랜드를 대표하는 고전 포크송은커녕, 아일랜드와는 잘 어울리지조차 않는 곡이다. 아일랜드와의 연관성은 딱 두 개, 가락이 북아일랜드 가락이라는 것과, 아일랜드계 미국인들 사이에서 널리 불린다는 것뿐이다.
그 이유는 첫째로, 이 곡을 지은 사람은 잉글랜드인이다. 잉글랜드는 800년간 아일랜드를 지배해 왔다. 한국으로 따지자면 대니 보이는 아리랑에 일본인이 가사를 붙인 곡인 셈이다. 따라서 아일랜드의 포크 가수들은 이 대니 보이를 잘 부르지 않는다. 1960년대 포크 리바이벌 시기에는 완전히 외면받았고, 1980년대에 들어와서야 어느 정도 경력을 갖춘 아일랜드 포크 가수들이 이따금씩 불렀다. 더 클랜시 브라더스, 더 더블리너스 등등 대표적인 아일랜드 포크 가수들의 앨범에는 대니 보이는커녕 원곡인 런던데리 에어조차 한 번도 등장하지 않는다. 물론 라이언스 팬시(Ryan's Fancy), 더 울프 톤스(The Wolfe Tones), 더 발리콘(The Barleycorn)의 앨범에 한 번씩 등장하긴 하며, 더 더블리너스 멤버 출신인 짐 매캔과 패디 레일리도 물론 불렀다. 그러나 대부분은 최근에 와서야 부른 곡들이며, 해당 가수들의 주요 곡도 아니다. 설사 아일랜드 가수들이 불렀다 하더라도 장르가 포크가 아니라 록이나 팝 음악인 경우가 많다. 따라서 이 곡의 아일랜드 포크 음악계에서의 인기도는 높지 않다.[3] 대체로 아일랜드 포크 음악은 아일랜드의 민족주의 사상에 기반을 두고 있다는 점을 감안하면 아일랜드 가수들 사이에서 이 곡이 인기가 있을 리가 만무한 것이다.
둘째로 아일랜드인들의 국민성은 사실 매우 쾌활하고 낙천적이다. 아일랜드를 대표하는 고전 포크송인 아이리시 로버, 홀리 그라운드, 피네건스 웨이크, 라이징 어브 더 문, 브레넌 온 더 모어, 와일드 콜로니얼 보이 등등은 굉장히 빠른 박자와 쾌활한 가락에 맞추어 부르는 곡이다. 그러나 대니 보이의 원곡인 런던데리 에어(Londonderry Air)는 이러한 아일랜드인들의 국민성과는 달리 매우 차분하고 슬픈 느낌을 주는 노래이다. 그러므로 이 런던데리 에어의 한 패러디에 지나지 않는(여러 패러디가 존재하고, 그 가운데 하나는 북아일랜드 국가로 쓰이기도 한다.) 대니 보이는 아일랜드인들의 정서에는 전혀 맞지 않는 것이다. 또한 대니 보이의 경우는 가락뿐만 아니라 가사까지도 굉장히 애상적, 감상적이며, 하강 이미지가 많이 사용되고 있다. 이는 잉글랜드 고전 포크송에 많이 드러나는 정서이지, 아일랜드 고전 포크송 가운데 이러한 정서를 가진 곡은 캐릭퍼거스(Carrickfergus) 정도로 흔하지는 않다.
더 클랜시 브라더스의 전 멤버였고 현재 더 클랜시 레거시 소속인 포크 음악가 로비 오코늘이 작사, 작곡한 <유 아 낫 아이리시>(You're not Irish)라는 곡에 보면 다음과 같은 내용이 나온다.
When first I came to the USA with my guitar in hand I was told that I could get a job singing songs from Ireland So I headed up to Boston, I was sure it would be alright But the very first night I got on the stage, I was in for a big surprise They said: You're not Irish, you can't be Irish, you don't know "Danny Boy" Or "Toora Loora Loora" or even "Irish Eyes" You've got a hell of a nerve to say you came from Ireland So cut out all the nonsense and sing "McNamara's Band" ⓒ Robbie O'Connell
가사에 나와 있듯이 화자는(로비 오코늘 본인으로 볼 수도 있음) 미국에 와서 아일랜드 고전 포크송을 부르게 되었는데, 첫 번째 공연에서 세 가지 곡을 모른다는 이유로 아일랜드인이 아니라는 오해를 받는다. 그 가운데 한 곡이 대니 보이이다. 그 정도로 미국인들은 대니 보이가 마치 아일랜드를 대표하는 곡인 것처럼 오해하고 있지만, 정작 아일랜드인들에게 대니 보이는 인기가 없다.
가사
가수들마다 조금씩 가사가 다르다. 작가가 1929년에 죽었기 때문에 퍼블릭 도메인이다.
Oh Danny boy, the pipes, the pipes are calling From glen to glen, and down the mountain side The summer's gone, and all the roses falling It's you, it's you must go and I must bide. But come here back when summer's in the meadow Or when the valley's hushed and white with snow Yes I'll be here in sunshine or in shadow Oh Danny boy, oh Danny boy, I love you so.
And if you come, when all the flowers are dying And I am dead, as dead I well may be You'll come and find the place where I am lying And kneel and say an "Ave" there for me.
And I shall hear, tho' soft you tread above me And all my grave will warmer, sweeter be For you will bend and tell me that you love me And I shall sleep in peace until you come to me.
I'll simply sleep in peace until you come to me.
And I shall rest in peace until you come to me. Oh, Danny Boy, Oh, Danny Boy, I love you so.
The tune was possibly composed by Rory Dall O'Cahan According to The Fireside Book of Folk Songs these were the first words set to the music. A more recent incarnation is, of course, Danny Boy. Thomas Moore also wrote lyrics to the tune. They can be found at My Gentle Harp.
Would God I were the tender apple blossom That floats and falls from off the twisted bough To lie and faint within your silken bosom Within your silken bosom as that does now. Or would I were a little burnish'd apple For you to pluck me, gliding by so cold While sun and shade you robe of lawn will dapple Your robe of lawn, and you hair's spun gold.
Yea, would to God I were among the roses That lean to kiss you as you float between While on the lowest branch a bud uncloses A bud uncloses, to touch you, queen. Nay, since you will not love, would I were growing A happy daisy, in the garden path That so your silver foot might press me going Might press me going even unto death.
According to some legends, the tune was possibly composed by Rory Dall O'Cahan in the 1600's. These words were written by Frederick Edward Weatherly in 1913. According to The Fireside Book of American Folk Songs the first words set to the music were those of Londonderry Air. Thomas Moore (1770-1852) also wrote a set of lyrics to the tune (My Gentle Harp).
Oh Danny boy, the pipes, the pipes are calling From glen to glen, and down the mountain side The summer's gone, and all the flowers are dying 'Tis you, 'tis you must go and I must bide. But come ye back when summer's in the meadow Or when the valley's hushed and white with snow 'Tis I'll be here in sunshine or in shadow Oh Danny boy, oh Danny boy, I love you so.
And if you come, when all the flowers are dying And I am dead, as dead I well may be You'll come and find the place where I am lying And kneel and say an "Ave" there for me. And I shall hear, tho' soft you tread above me And all my dreams will warm and sweeter be If you'll not fail to tell me that you love me I'll simply sleep in peace until you come to me. I'll simply sleep in peace until you come to me.
Oh Danny Boy, the pipes, the pipes are calling. Anyone who plays Irish music must be ready to field countless requests for this song, particularly around St. Patrick's Day. There is no doubt about its popularity with those who know little about traditional Irish music, and even with the older generation of Irish-Americans. But newly arrived immigrants from Ireland have frequently never heard of Danny Boy! Where did the song come from? Is it Irish at all? Those who subscribe to the Internet Irish music list IRTRAD-L may have seen a discussion of these points by folk music experts John Moulden and Philippe Varlet. Interestingly, the answer can be found in the collection of traditional Irish harp music made by Edward Bunting a little more than 200 years ago!
I would also like to extend my thanks to Jochen Lueg of Limavady, Northern Ireland, a place that will play a large role in my story. He puts out a very lively newsletter of local happenings, The Roe Valley News Browser, and he is also a good photographer. He has generously allowed me to reproduce some of his photos on this site.
To begin with, Danny Boy is one of over 100 songs composed to the same tune. The author was an English lawyer, Frederic Edward Weatherly (1848-1929), who was also a songwriter and radio entertainer. In 1910 he wrote the words and music for an unsuccessful song he called Danny Boy. In 1912 his sister-in-law in America sent him a tune called the Londonderry Air (or possibly something else, as discussed in Section 3), which he had never heard before. He immediately noticed that the melody was perfectly fitted to his Danny Boy lyrics, and published a revised version of the song in 1913. As far as is known, Weatherly never set foot in Ireland. If you would like to see Fred Weatherly's lyrics, look at this site. (If you have any questions on this topic, please read all three sections of this article to see if the answer is there before contacting me.)
The publisher Boosey accepted the song, and then it came to light that an old friend of Weatherley's, Alfred Perceval Graves, author of "Trottin' to the Fair"…, had already written two lyrics to the melody. Graves took strong except to having the folk-tune 'poached', and it seems that the friendship with Weatherly came to an abrupt end.
Michael R. Turner and Antony Miall The Edwardian Song-Book: Drawing-Room Ballads 1900-1914 Methuen, London, 1982 p. 113
The most prolific poet of the Edwardian—and for that matter Victorian and Georgian—ballad, the genial and indefatiguable Fred E. (Frederick Edward) Weatherly (1848-1929) was virtually a one-man song factory. Seven of his lyrics appear in this book, but he wrote thousands, of which at least fifteen hundred were published, with music by dozens of composers who vied to get their hands on his verses. …The law was as much a love as poetry, and he studied and was called to the Bar at the age of thirty-nine, thereafter enjoying a comfortable career on the Western Circuit, often appearing in criminal cases, almost invariably for the defence. According to his own account, in court he was remarkably keen-witted and effective. Songs poured from him, he translated opera (including Cav. and Pag.) and he published quantities of verse and children's books. He revelled in his considerable celebrity. A little man physically, he had, as a friend put it, 'a blithe and tender soul'. He may have been self-satisfied but he was much loved and was certainly no fool, cheerfully dismissing his facility as a lyricist as no safe ticket to Parnassus. His most commercially successful ballad was 'Roses of Picardy' which became one of the great popular songs of the Great War, and it made its writer a small fortune.
Michael R. Turner and Antony Miall
The Edwardian Song-Book: Drawing-Room Ballads 1900-1914 Methuen, London, 1982 pp. 113-114
(The other Weatherly songs found in the above book are Up from Somerset, Nirvana, Roses, Thora, Stonecracker John, Beyond the Dawn, Friend o' Mine.)
The Danny Boy lyrics proved particularly popular in the United States, where they were recorded by a number of popular singers including Bing Crosby. (Note: These lyrics, plus some parody versions, can be found on the Digital Tradition website.)
Another name for this tune is the Londonderry Air. This title has a certain political bias, since the name "Londonderry" is used to emphasize the ties between Northern Ireland and Britain (referring to the colonization of the area by English settlers in the early 17th century). Irish nationalists usually prefer to use "Derry", the original name of the Northern city and county. It appears that the title Air from County Derry was also used. I take this subject up further in section 3 of this article where the connection to Percy Grainger is discussed.
The first appearance of the tune in print occurred in 1855, in Ancient Music of Ireland, published by the early collector George Petrie (1789-1866). The untitled melody, was supplied to Petrie by Miss Jane Ross of Limavady, County Londonderry, who claimed to have taken it down from the playing of an itinerant piper. This is the origin of the Londonderry Air name. Petrie states:
Name unknown For the following beautiful air I have to express my very grateful acknowledgement to Miss J. Ross, of N.-T.-Limavady, in the county of Londonderry—a lady who has made a large collection of the popular unpublished melodies of that county, which she has very kindly placed at my disposal, and which has added very considerably to the stock of tunes which I had previously acquired from that still very Irish county. I say still very Irish; for though it has been planted for more than two centuries by English and Scottish settlers, the old Irish race still forms the great majority of its peasant inhabitants; and there are few, if any, counties in which, with less foreign admixture, the ancient melodies of the country have been so extensively preserved. The name of the tune unfortunately was not ascertained by Miss Ross, who sent it to me with the simple remark that it was "very old," in the correctness of which statement I have no hesitation in expressing my perfect concurrence.
A great collector of the 1930s, Sam Henry, speculated that Miss Ross had collected the tune from a fiddler, Blind Jimmy McCurry, who was known to have been active in Limavady at the time. Jimmy's descendants have embraced this theory enthusiastically, as seen on the PBS show Danny Boy: In Sunshine or in Shadow. However, I'm going to postpone that discussion to section 3 of this article.
Here's a photo of Jane Ross's house, by Jochen Lueg.
The blue plaque reads:
Jane ROSS 1810 - 1879 who recorded the folk tune "THE LONDONDERRY AIR" LIVED HERE
As the tune grew in popularity, and at the same time traditional Irish music came to be more thoroughly researched, considerable doubt emerged about Miss Ross's story. No additional versions of the melody were encountered by other collectors. The structure of the tune is unlike any other traditional Irish tune, and it is not suited for words in any of the known Irish song meters. Miss Ross was unable to provide any supporting evidence (the name of the piper, for example), and the suspicion grew that she had composed it herself and was attempting to pass it off as a genuine Irish tune (although by doing so she would be missing out on considerable royalty payments!). She continued to maintain the truth of her original account.
I have encountered one claim for an earlier appearance of the tune. The history of the tin whistle found on the website of the Clarke Company claims that the founder of the company, Robert Clarke, frequently played the tune while walking from Suffolk to Manchester in 1843. If true, this would be before Petrie's publication date of 1855. Perhaps somebody at the company can clarify this.
My friend Jerome Colburn points out that the tune appears (twice) in the collection of Francis O'Neill, made among the Irish-American community in Chicago around the end of the 19th century:
It's still worth mentioning that the tune had a life of its own in the tradition between Jane Ross's time and Frederic Weatherly's, as shown by Drimoleague Fair and Londonderry Love Song in O'Neill's. Both are settings of the same tune Miss Ross notated, complete with duple meter, half-cadence in the first part, high note in the second, etc., etc. If they got into circulation from musicians who read Londonderry Air in Petrie, they have undergone some alterations—more strikingly in Londonderry Love Song, where the last note of each phrase is changed to put the whole tune into minor mode.
Drimoleague is in the south of County Cork, very close to where O'Neill grew up, and about as far away from Derry as one could get and still be on dry land. Since no other use of the Drimoleague Fair name is known, and O'Neill is known to have use printed sources including Petrie, it's highly likely that Petrie is the source and O'Neill gave it the name. (He often gave his own titles to untitled tunes.)
The next piece of the puzzle appeared in 1934, when Anne Geddes Gilchrist published an article entitled "A New Light Upon the Londonderry Air" in the Journal of the English Folk Dance and Song Society. She theorized that the tune was taken from a performance in which the performer was using extreme rubato, and this "so disguised the natural rhythm that the tune was wrongly noted down in common instead of triple time". If the prolonged notes occurring on the first beat of the bar are shortened "the tune falls at once and easily into a rhythm which instead of being unique in Irish folk-music is paralleled in scores of other Irish folk-tunes".
Finally, in 1979, an article "New Dates for Old Songs 1766-1803", by Hugh Shields, appeared in Long Room (the journal of the library of Trinity College Dublin). Shields identified a tune in Edward Bunting's 1796 publication A General Collection of the Ancient Irish Music, entitled Aislean an Oigfear (in modern Irish Aisling an Ógfhir, "the young man's dream"), as being very close to the Gilchrist version of the Londonderry Air, except in the fourth phrase which "makes the Londonderry Air almost unsingable in traditional style while endearing it to virtuosos eager for effects of vocal expression". (This phrase does not, however, exceed the range of the pipes, so there is nothing to show it was not present in the original performance.)
Edward Bunting (1773-1843) was the pioneer collector of harp music whose career began in 1792 when he was hired to write down the tunes performed at the Belfast Harp Festival. It is to him (and to people working for him, particularly one Patrick Lynch) that we owe the preservation of much of the traditional Irish harp repertoire. Bunting noted Aislean an Oigfear from Denis Hempson (1697-1807), the very last traditional performer on the Irish wire-strung harp (who luckily lived to the age of 110, allowing Bunting to collect many of his tunes before his death), in Magilligan, County Derry—very near to Miss Jane Ross's home in Limavady.
In his 1840 work, A Collection of the Ancient Music of Ireland, Bunting discusses the characteristics of typical Irish melodies, stating "The Young Man's Dream, and the air of The Green Woods of Truigha, might be suggested as answering more nearly to the Editor's conception of such a standard than any others with which he is acquainted".
So after more than a century, Miss Ross has been vindicated, although her skill as a transcriber is perhaps called into question. (Of course, we cannot be sure that the anonymous piper's performance was of the best standard, either.)
I've now added a MIDI version of Bunting's arrangement, for people who would like to hear the original tune. This includes the bass line published by Bunting, which is not shown in the musical score above, except implicitly by chord names. It is not known whether the bass line was actually played by Hempson, but most authorities think that it was composed by Bunting. Only the melody lines in the Bunting collection were as originally played (we think), although in some cases Bunting has put them into different keys.
I am not aware of any traditional Irish words to Aislean an Oigfear having been preserved. [Note: more recently I have in fact found the Irish lyrics, given in section 2.] Interestingly enough, though, there does exist a set of English words to the tune, composed by Thomas Moore (1779-1852), who found his way to fame and fortune by writing his own words to the traditional tunes collected by Bunting, such as The Harp that Once Through Tara's Halls and The Last Rose of Summer. (Bunting did not receive any royalties from this effort, and had financial difficulties throughout his collecting career.)
In my 1859 edition of Moore's Irish Melodies the following set of words appear in four-part vocal harmony, set to the tune of The Young Man's Dream:
As a Beam O'er the Face of the Waters
As a beam o'er the face of the waters may glow, While the tide runs in darkness and coldness below, So the cheek may be ting'd with a warm sunny smile Though the cold heart to ruin runs darkly the while.
One fatal Remembrance, one sorrow that throws Its bleak shade alike o'er our joys and our woes, To which life nothing darker or brighter can bring, For which Joy has no balm, and Affliction no sting:—
Oh! this thought in the midst of enjoyment will stay, Like a dead leafless branch in the summer's bright ray; The beams of the warm Sun play round it in vain— It may smile in his light, but it blooms not again!
Based on an article published in the Folk Harp Journal. Some additional material has been added to the version originally published.
Since the above article was written, I have discovered much more information about The Young Man's Dream. In fact, its history can be traced back about a century earlier than what has been mentioned so far. I have also located the original words, which are in the Irish language, as well as another "original" set of words in English.
Continue on to Section Two of this article, Danny Boy—The Mystery Returns! , or, The Young Man's Dream.
Skip ahead to Section Three of this article, The Danny Boy Trivia Collection. All the arcane, useless, or questionable information people have sent me is all collected together in one place.
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Rory Dall O'Cahan or Blind Rory, was descended from the ruling O'Cahan clan and lived sometime between 1560 and 1660, was the composer of some of the most beautiful airs which ever sounded on a harp. His works included the enchanting melody to which the lyrics "Danny Boy" were to be added but these were not composed until the 20 th century.
The main source of information on the life of Rory Dall comes from the Memoirs of Arthur O'Neill, one of Irelands leading Harpest. O'Neill makes no statement as to Rory Dall's date of birth, but it must have been in the second half of the 16th century for one of his tunes, Rory Dall's Port, appears in the straloch Manuscript (1627 - 1629).
One Greater than a King of England
James VI of Scotland sent for Rory Dall, and it was said that the king laid his hand on the shoulder of the Harpest. One of the king's courtiers remarked upon the honour conferred on him, but Rory observed that a greater man that King James VI had placed a hand on his shoulder. When the King heard this he was upset and asked O'Cahan to name the person. "the O'Cahan" retorts Rory Dall. Some accounts state "the O'Neill".
Rory Dall travelled extensively in Scotland and William Matheson in 'The Blind Harper' (1970) tells us that he was "well known and caressed by ,the Highland gentry whose houses he frequented". Rory Dall composed numerous airs in honour of the noble families who entertained him. He was particularly celebrated for his purths (Irish, poirt) or harp tunes, which included "Port Atholl", "Port Lennox" and "Rory Dall's Port"
The Death of Rory Dall
According to the writings of Arthur O'Neill, Rory Dall O'Cahan died in a nobleman's house on the island of Skye, where he left his famous harp and tuning key. This source goes on to state that another Harper, Echlin O'Kane, went to scotland around to 1770 to retrieve the items of Rory Dall. The story goes that this O'Kane visited the home of Lord Alexander MacDonald of Sleat, and performances so well that Lord MacDonald presented him with the silver harp-key that had been left by the great O'Cahan Harpest.