The Lilting Irish Music!
Excerpt from my new book, "Color Me Green: Ways the Irish Influenced America."
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It is a delight to hear music played in a pub in Ireland by “amateur impromptu” musicians. The impromptu voices are raised belting out songs like “Whiskey in the Jar” and “The Wild Rover.” And don’t think you’ll be sitting there just enjoying the music. It is an insult if you don’t join in.
Musical Instruments
The players use traditional instruments. The fiddle especially sets feet to flying in Irish set dances and jigs. It is obvious where the merry fiddle that is played for square dances in the mountainous Southeast of the USA came from.
One instrument that has never changed is the bodhrán, a flat, shallow drum played with a short stick flicked between the fingers. The bodhrán was a battle drum in early Ireland.
Also flowing over the gentle hills is the familiar, mystic sound of the tin whistle. The mind can see the soft green lea and Blue Mountains as the nostalgic notes wander over meadow and stream.
The bagpipes are often played to the delight of some of the listeners. Fact: you either love the glorious wheezing and groaning or you hate it. I love it!
No wonder the Scots used to sound the bagpipes when they went into battle. Enemy warriors hearing that noise coming over the side of a mountain were terrified!
The pipes used by the Irish are not exactly like the Scottish instruments. The Irish were obliged to use pipes resting on their laps, the Uilleann pipes. They were modified because the English claimed that bagpipes encouraged marching and marching encouraged the fighting spirit in the Celtic people.
Singing Groups
Modern singing groups have become favorites worldwide. Many bands such as the Wolf Tones and The Elders originated Irish and Irish-American performers and are popular in Ireland, the Americas, and many other countries around the globe.
In 1962, Paddy Moloney put together an Irish band called The Chieftains to play traditional Celtic music. Before long they were composing and singing original pieces as well as the old charmers and traveling all over the world, often in the U.S. Politician, “Tip” O’Neill, invited them to perform in the Capital Building in Washington D.C., and they have also appeared in New York’s Carnegie Hall and a memorial service in New York City to honor those who suffered in the September 11, 2001 attack.
The Chieftains are one of the best known Irish bands in the world.
The Harp
The Harp is the beloved symbol of Ireland. It makes beautiful, melodic, exquisite music. Its history goes back to early Éireann. Lyres and harps were carved on the walls of ancient stone structures. Surely, they were played by traveling bards while Celtic chiefs sat around the fires in their round wooden crannog forts.
By the 1700s, travelling harpists carried them from mansion to mansion in Ireland. Blind Turlough O’Carolan wrote many songs for his harp and some of the melodies are still being used today, for instance the United States National Anthem, "The Star-Spangled Banner."
The harp has become the emblem for all things legal and patriotic in Ireland. A golden harp on a field of green has been Ireland’s flag for two hundred years. All Irish legal papers and governmental materials display the harp.
Musical Favorites
“Danny Boy” is probably the most famous and recognized song attributed to Ireland. Probably, listeners generally hear it as a love song, Danny being caught up to leave his sweetheart and go to war.
Actually the words were written by Frederic Weatherly (1848-1929) in 1910 in England. He borrowed the melody of the Londonderry Air which was written in 1855 and gave it words of extreme sorrow of a father sending his boy off to answer to the pipers call to soldiering.
Oh, Danny Boy, the pipes, the pipes are calling
From glen to glen and down the mountainside
The summer’s gone and all the leaves are fallin’
It’s you, it’s you, must go and I must ’bide.
But come ye back when summer’s in the meadow,
And when the fields are hush and white with snow,
And I’ll be here in sunshine or in shadow.
O, Danny Boy, O Danny Boy I love ye so.
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To read more stories like this one about the Irish influence to America, order my new book, "Color Me Green: Ways the Irish Influenced America" by Helen Walsh Folsom.
Over the next several weeks, I will be publishing, with the aid of my daughter, Bettse Folsom, a series of answer & questions & snippets about Ireland that many people have asked me during events where I have attended. If you have a question, please contact me by email and I will be happy to address it.
Thank you for reading my blog!
