October 2011

Eugene, MC for the night, started in great style with


‘Oh it was one pleasant evening, all in the month of May

Down by a shady arbour as I carelessly did stray...’

About false young Johnny, cruising the main ocean for honour and for gain, and then wrecked off the coast of Spain or was he? Nah, he wasn’t: ‘Betsy I’m your man’, and they met up on the “Banks of Claudy” again.

Tony followed with “The lambs on the green hills”, with less luck,’ I would be your man, although you are wed to another’. Joe, visiting from Scotland, gave us another unlucky love story, ‘Our young lady a hunting’s gane' ... 'so’s she’s rowled him in her apron’.


Joe’s family passed the parcel (or bundle) on to George, who gave us a great version of “Dear Old Skibbereen”,

‘How well I do remember that bleak December day,

When the landlord and the sheriff came to drive us all away;

They set the roof on fire with their yellow demon spleen,

And when it fell, the crash was heard all over Skibbereen.’


There were songs from Helen (‘Along the wild plains of Mayo’), Paddy (rousing version of ‘Keep your hands off Red Haired Mary’), Frank (“Deartháirín Óg mo chroí”: ‘Now I’m alone like the desolate bird of the night), John (“Nancy Spain”), Frances (“A maiden who is forty”), Breege (“Annan Waters”), John (“The road and the miles to Dundee”), Clíona (“Reynardine”), Noreen (“Heave away”).

Clare by special request sang Liam Weldon’s “My love is a well” beautifully.

‘My love is a well, a deep-seated well,

As deep as the bottomless sea

Immersed am I in the well of my love,

Immersed in ecstasy.’


Murt Collins had

‘A young mother stood on Queenstown Dock

With a handkerchief up to her eye’.

And ‘no one to welcome you home’.



Eugene’s guager out of Dublin was looking for a private still (‘Here’s fifty pounds if you can show me where there’s a private still’):

‘We’re coming near to it now, says I, at a barracks close at hand’...

‘Says I, me brother Bill,

They wouldn’t make him a corporal, so he’s a ... Private, still!’

started off the second part of the evening. Tony followed up with another Liam Weldon song, “Blue tar road”, ‘I am a true born Irishman, a traveller am I’.

Joe (“Anne McPherson”, sailing out from Scotland bound for Montreal), Mary said the “Fiddler of Dooney”, Murt (“My dear old home in the Kerry hills” and his native Brosna town), George (‘Some folks say I’m a dreamer’ from the Isle of Inisfree).

Helen (On Easter Day, you passed my way), Paddy (Willie MacBride), Frank (‘A man in the fields with his horses and plough’). After a couple more recitations from Sean and Frances, Breege sang “The home I left behind”).

When it came around to John again, he sang of ”Beautiful Meath”, Clíona (Tráthnóinín aoibhinn), Noreen (Mountains of Mourne) and Clare, at her turn, sang of Wicklow and Dunlavin Green (‘In the year 1798...’).

The free-for-all go another song from most people before we headed for home, including the Twangman from Eugene, and Frank’s “Happy are we, all together”, "When I first said I loved only you Nora" (Clare).

Thanks to all who came and sang and listened. Hope to see you all at another singing session soon.

September 2011

This session spy was away scouting for singing sessions in Europe so the Boyle singers' session details went unrecorded, though we're told, we missed the BEST session yet... as you do.