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.

O'Donoghue's Opera

"O'Donoghue's Opera" is a unique and hilarious film starring Ronnie Drew and his band of bohemian merrymakers who include 'The Dubliners' and other favourite Irish musicians of the time like the McKenna’s and Johnny Moynihan. Made in 1965, Ireland's first musical was never completed due to financial difficulties and remained unseen until veteran filmmaker Tom Hayes brought the out-takes to Sé Merry Doyle who painstakingly restored the gem and launched it at the 1998 Dublin Film Festival. Based on the ballad 'The Night That Larry Was Stretched', sung by a young Johnny Moynihan, Ronnie Drew finds himself caught in a hangman's noose as a reward for his dubious career as "the best burglar in all Ireland". The film which is tongue-in-cheek (all the way) has the flavour of an Irish Spaghetti Western and captures the spirit of Dublin camaraderie like no other work before or since. The Guinness, the music, the wit and the grit, its all there in abundance. It says it all, when we see Ronnie fully decked-out in his stripy burglar outfit, trying to evade the law by disguising himself with a pioneer pin.


Ronnie Drew

O'Donoghue's Opera is an Irish film starring Ronnie Drew and his bandmates in The Dubliners. The film is a mock opera, based on the ballad "The Night Before Larry Was Stretched". It was shot in 1965, but was left uncompleted after the film's production ran into financial difficulties. In 1996 filmmaker Sé Merry Doyle oversaw its restoration, and it was first shown at the Dublin Film Festival in the late 1990s. - Wikipedia



The movie “O'Donoghue's Opera” on Google video; approx 37 minutes

“The Night Before Larry Was Stretched” is an Irish execution ballad written in the Newgate cant. The ballad is estimated to have been written around 1816. Will (Hurlfoot) Maher, a shoemaker from Waterford, wrote the song, though Dr. Robert Burrowes, the Dean of St. Finbar’s Cork, to whom it has been so often attributed, certainly did not. The Newgate cant in which the song was penned was a short-lived colloquial slang of 19th century Dublin. "This is only one of a group of execution songs written in Newgate Cant or slang style somewhere around 1780s, others being 'The Kilmainham Minuet', 'Luke Caffrey's Ghost' and 'Larry's Ghost' which, as promised in the seventh verse, comes in a sheet to sweet Molly."


Kimainham Gaol, Dublin

A French translation of the song called ' La mort de Socrate' was written by Francis Sylvester Mahony, better known as “Father Prout” for Froser’s Magazine and is also collected in 'Musa Pedestris, Three Centuries of Canting Songs and Slang Rhymes [1536―1896]', collected and annotated by John S. Farmer. In 'Ballads from the Pubs of Ireland', p. 29, James N. Healy attributes the song to a William Maher, (Hurlfoot Bill), but doesn't note when Maher lived. However, the song is attributed to a 'Curren' in 'The Universal Songster', 1828, possibly being J. Philpot Curran or J. W. Curren.

The song provides the narrative basis for the film 'O’Donoghue’s Opera' which was filmed in 1965 with members of The Dubliners with 'The Night Before Larry was Stretched' performed by Johnny Moynihan. Elvis Costello recorded the song on 1996's 'Common Ground — Voices Of Modern Irish Music'. The film and ballad is based on the strange but true premise that in Dublin jails the tradition grew up of the family and friends being allowed to wake the deceased when he was still alive (!) the night before the hanging as they would not receive the body afterwards as condemned prisoners were buried in quicklime pits in the prison grounds. This may seem strange today and it was a courtesy only extended to “Common Criminals” (Not murderers or political prisoners) at a time in the Georgian era when over 200 crimes, mainly against property, attracted the death penalty. Similarly families were allowed to bring food into prisons otherwise the prisoner would starve. Finally the hangman would be paid to get the prisoner drunk so he wouldn’t show fear on the scaffold.


Execution of Robert Emmet

See; The Years of the French

http://daithaic.blogspot.com/2008/03/years-of-french.html


Lyrics; “The night before Larry was stretched"

I
The night before Larry was stretched,
The boys they all paid him a visit
A bit in their sacks too they fetched
They sweated their duds till they riz it
For Larry was always the lad,
When a friend was condemn’d to the squeezer,
He’d sweat all the togs that he had
Just to help the poor boy to a sneezer
- And moisten his gob ’fore he died.

II
The boys they came crowding in fast;
They drew their stools close round about him,
Six glims round his trap-case were placed
For he couldn’t be well waked without ’em,
When ax’d if he was fit to die,
Without having duly repented?
Says Larry, ‘That’s all in my eye,
And all by the clargy invented,
- To make a fat bit for themselves.

III
‘’I'm sorry dear Larry’, says I,
‘For to see you here in such trouble,
And your life’s cheerful noggin run dry,
And yourself going off like its bubble!’
‘Hauld your tongue in that matter,’ says he;
‘For the neckcloth I don’t care a button,
And by this time tomorrow you’ll see
Your Larry will be dead as mutton:
- And all 'cos his courage was good’


The Dubliners


IV
"And then I'll be cut up like a pie,
And me nob from me body be parted."
"You're in the wrong box, then", says I,
"For blast me if they're so hard-hearted.
A chalk on the back of your neck
Is all that Jack Ketch dares to give you;
So mind not such trifles a feck,
Sure why should the likes of them grieve you?
- And now boys, come tip us the deck."

V
Then the cards being called for, they play’d,
Till Larry found one of them cheated;
A dart at his napper he made
The lad being easily heated,
‘So ye chates me bekase I’m in grief!
O! is that, by the Hokey, the rason?
Soon I’ll give you to know you d—d thief!
That you’re cracking your jokes out of sason,
- And scuttle your nob with my fist’.

VI
Then the clergy came in with his book
He spoke him so smooth and so civil;
Larry tipp’d him a Kilmainham look,
And pitch’d his big wig to the divil.
Then raising a little his head,
To get a sweet drop of the bottle,
And pitiful sighing he said,
‘O! the hemp will be soon round my throttle,
- And choke my poor windpipe to death!’

VII
So mournful these last words he spoke,
We all vented our tears in a shower;
For my part, I thought my heart broke
To see him cut down like a flower!
On his travels we watch’d him next day,
O, the throttler I thought I could kill him!
But Larry not one word did say,
Nor chang’d till he came to King William;
- Then, musha, his colour turned white.

VIII
When he came to the nubbing-cheat,
He was tack’d up so neat and so pretty;
The rambler jugg’d off from his feet,
And he died with his face to the city.
He kick’d too, but that was all pride,
For soon you might see ’twas all over;
And as soon as the noose was untied,
Then at darkey we waked him in clover,
- And sent him to take a ground-sweat.

This is a moving and sentimental ballad in 9/8 time about a lad who is about to be hung. They really did put your coffin (trap case) in your cell and let your friends in to wake you on the night before the hanging in Dublin around 1816. Glims are candles.

"Jack Ketch" was the generic name for the hangman, as "Chips" was for a ship's carpenter and so on; the original Jack Ketch was "the common executioner 1663(?)-1686. He became notorious on account of his barbarity at the executions of William Lord Russell and others." A "Kilmainham look" may be something like a Ringsend tango or a Ringsend uppercut (a kick in the groin) - or perhaps not. Kilmainham was the county jail in former times, and later was the scene of the execution of the leaders of the 1916 Rising. Larry may have been confined in Kilmainham or in the Green Street prison, the "new" Newgate which replaced the old Newgate in the 1770s. Kilmainham is remembered in another prison ballad called "The Kilmainham Minit", i.e., "minuet", the dance of the hanged man.

“He came to King William;” - This was an equestrian statue of King William of Orange, erected in 1701 at College Green in Dublin. Always controversial, it was repeatedly daubed, defaced and blown up; in 1929 it was blown up for the last time, and later broken up for smelting. Presumably the bold Larry was important enough to be hanged in the large public space of College Green rather than at the prison itself (Maurice Craig's book on Dublin - whence the information in this paragraph - included an old photo of Newgate, showing the hanging-apparatus over the main door, "as in most Irish gaols")