She Moved Through the Fair

Replica Famine Ship "Jennie Johnston"

The most haunting songs and poems are on the subject of unrequited love. A sense of loss appears to be the sense which resides deepest in our memory, be it for a love lost, a country from which we are exiled or a person who has passed on. Think of Pablo Neruda’s “Tonight I can write the saddest lines (Puedo escribir los versos más tristes esta noche.);

“She loved me sometimes, and I loved her too.
How could one not have loved her great still eyes.
Tonight I can write the saddest lines.
To think that I do not have her. To feel that I have lost her.”

The Irish folk genre has an abundance of such laments which reflects the doleful history of the country, the recurrence of exile and emigration and the longing for what has been lost. Indeed the tradition when a person was emigrating to America on the notorious coffin ships was to throw a “wake” for the person leaving as you would at a funeral for his family were never to see him again.

http://daithaic.blogspot.com/2010/07/gorta-mor-irelands-great-hunger.html


Famine Memorial - Marquette by Eamonn O'Doherty

The Gaelic language and place names are littered to references to “mBrón” – sadness and names such as the Poulnabrone Dolmen - Poll na mBrón in Irish meaning "hole of sorrows." The Battle of Kinsale in 1601 saw the defeat of Hugh O'Neill, despite his alliance with the Spanish, and the ultimate victory of the Elizabethan conquest of Ireland came with his surrender to crown authority in 1603. The bardic tradition of Gaelic poetry after that event universally lamented what had been lost and pined for that Ireland to be regained as in the early 19th century poem Caoine Cill Chais (The Lament for Kilcash);

“Cad a dhéanfaimid feasta gan adhmad,
tá deireadh na gcoillte ar lár;
níl trácht ar Chill Chais ná a teaghlach,
is ní bainfear a cling go bráth;
an áit úd ina gcónaíodh an deighbhean
a fuair gradam is meidhir thar mná,
bhíodh iarlaí ag tarraing thar toinn ann,
is an tAifreann binn á rá.

What shall we do from now on without timber?
The last of the woods is gone.
No more of Kilcash and its household
And its bells will not ring again.
The place where that great lady lived
Who received esteem and love above all others
Earls came from overseas to visit there
And Mass was sweetly read.”

The same sense of loss and longing is found throughout Irish literature and song in Danny Boy, The Rose of Tralee, Mo Ghile Mear and the prose poem “On Raglan Road” by the poet Patrick Kavanagh.



http://daithaic.blogspot.com/2010/07/on-raglan-roag.html

It is found in the rich interplay and conflict between Irish and English literature and has informed both genres as epitomised by the writings of James Joyce who only ever wrote about a Dublin he had left behind as an exile, an Edwardian Dublin under British rule. His greatest work “Ulysses” is set in one day in that city, 16th June 1904. And, on that one day an exile, James Joyce, observes Dublin through the eyes of an outsider, a Jew of Hungarian descent, Leopold Bloom. It could be called “OCD and loss, a novel.”

http://daithaic.blogspot.com/2009/06/james-joyce-and-me.html

In this pantheon of pathos, of doleful and dolorous tracts the song “She Moved Through the Fair” more than holds its own for its lyricism and haunting melody, based on the mixolydian mode. The ancient Greek Mixolydian mode was invented by Sappho, the 7th century B.C. poet and musician and in modern forms appears in Yiddish Klezmer music and the Star Trek theme.



It gives a particular haunting quality to “She Moved Through the Fair,” a tragic piece about lost love. This song was written in 1909 although the original pre-dates this. A song collector and publisher named Herbert Hughes heard the melody while in County Donegal and approached the poet Padraic Colum with the last two lines of the song and asked him to write a version. It was published by Boosey & Hawkes in London in a work entitled Irish Country Songs in 1909. The lyrics were also published in Colum's 1922 book Wild earth: and other poems (though the book doesn't mention their traditional origin). Colum may have altered the traditional words significantly, perhaps cutting a number of verses; the variant of the song called Our Wedding Day has ten verses, to Colum's four. The song is often shortened further by omitting the third verse.

In the last verse we hear the line; I dreamed last night my young love came in. The original line is, I dreamed last night that my dead love came in (implying she haunts him for what he done).



Fairport Convention recorded the song in 1968, adopting the style of the song from the influential travelling singer Margaret Barry, though she herself had learned it from a vinyl recording made by Count John McCormack at Abbey Road in 1941. Also of note are the recordings of the song by Alan Stivell in 1973. The song has been used in several movies including Brave Heart and Sinead O’Connor’s version was used for the soundtrack of “Michael Collins.”



John McCormack recorded this with Gerald Moore on 25 June 1941, after his official retirement. The arrangement is by Herbert Hughes. Even though he would be dead in 4 yrs, and his breath was starting to go it says a lot about the artist that this was actually McCormack when his voice had coarsened a bit. The soaring and sweet tenor notes in the high register, so breathtaking in his operatic and early concert performances, were no longer in evidence. John McCormack at its worst so to speak, was so much better than most singers at their best. Teddy Schneider accompanied superbly on piano.




The usual modern version of the song (including the third verse) has these lyrics;

My young love said to me,
My mother won't mind
And my father won't slight you
For your lack of kind.
And she laid her hand on me
And this she did say:
It will not be long, love,
Till our wedding day.

As she stepped away from me
And she moved through the fair
And fondly I watched her
Move here and move there.
And then she turned homeward,
With one star awake,
Like the swan in the evening
Moves over the lake.



The people were saying,
No two e'er were wed
But one had a sorrow
That never was said.
And I smiled as she passed
With her goods and her gear,
And that was the last
That I saw of my dear.

Last night she came to me,
My dead love came in.
So softly she came
That her feet made no din.
As she laid her hand on me,
And this she did say:
It will not be long, love,
'Til our wedding day.