‘I am a
rambling Irish man...’. Len Graham first heard a fragment of this song over
fifty years ago, in 1963, from Joe Holmes. Joe introduced himself to Len at an
Antrim and Derry Fiddlers’ Association gathering, and gave him one verse and
the chorus of the Rambling Irishman. Len later got three more verses from Joe’s
daughter in Belfast. Len gave it to Cathal McConnell, and it was on the first
Boys of the Lough album. Dolores Keane heard it from Len and it was on the
first Dé Danann album also. Further verses have come to light in America and were
brought to Len’s attention when he visited Boston College, a couple of years
ago, showing the song dates back, possibly, to the end of the 18th
century, as the Eliza, referred to in
one of the verses, left Co. Fermanagh in 1790.
‘Twas
on a Sunday morning, as Phoebus was adawning,
‘Twas on the day we
sailed away, on the brig they call Eliza;
When four or five of
our best men by fever were compounded,
Aye, and seven more
jumped overboard, were wilfully drowndèd.
Len Graham,
from Co. Antrim, visited Boyle for the first time in 1966, for the All Ireland
Fleadh Cheoil. In July 2014, he was the guest of the Boyle Traditional Singers’
Circle, for a special singing night, organised by the Traditional Singers’
Circle and sponsored by Boyle Arts Festival,
bringing his extensive store of song-knowledge to the singing workshop and the
evening singing session which followed.
The
Rambling Irishman was the first song of the workshop. The second song was a
song Len’s neighbour sings and Len’s been searching for over 50 years to find
it elsewhere and hasn’t yet been successful.
One morning in May, as I carelessly did stray
For to view yon gay meadows and the lambs sport and play
In the clear morning dew, as I lay down to muse
A fair maiden of honour appeared in my view.
Len also had
the singers singing Mary Ann Carolan’s version of the Bonny Light Horseman.
Mrs. Carolan (1929-1993) from Drogheda, Co. Louth, has left a strong legacy of
songs and singing. The family’s singing tradition is being kept alive by her
son, Pat and grandson, Stewart.
The story to the next song again stretched
back to the 1960s: Clones – 50th anniversary of the 1964 All Ireland
Fleadh Cheoil. Amongst the eminent musicians revisiting Clones for the
anniversary was Tommy MacDermott, from Rosslea, Co. Fermanagh. Tommy, now nearly 90 years of age,
launched Matt Hyland, at the Clones Fleadh Cheoil in 1964. The song has now
gone into the folk tradition.
There was a lord,
lived in this town, who had a handsome, comely, daughter,
She was courted by a
fair young man, who was a servant to her father.
Once the
workshop was over, the singing session itself got underway. There were several
local singers first and then it was back to Len. He dedicated his first song to
Pauline Sweeney Hanley, originally from Donegal, a wonderful singer, sadly
recently deceased. It was a song of Sarah Anne O’Neill’s, Dobbin’s Flowery
Vale:
As I roved out one evening fair, in the
pleasant month of June.
Len’s
selection of songs was interspersed with anecdotes, one about an ancestor of
his own, Wally Graham, who was hanged, drawn and quartered. His head
was paraded around the town, but the crier, instead of saying, as he was
supposed to: ‘Behold the head of the traitor Graham’ garbled the message and
cried: ‘Behold the head of the craythur Graham’. In 1955, Len’s father brought
him to see the beech tree where Wally was hanged, but it had blown down in the
big wind of 1947 and was there no more.
Oh William McKeever,
Oh you are much to blame ...
The room at the back of Dodd’s was bursting with singers, so just to
mention a few: from the floor, Róisín Ní Ghallóglaigh, who was singing in King House the following
day, (where she was accompanied by Alan Reid from Leitrim), sang the Lowlands
of Holland. Jackie Boyce, from the Drumkieran Leitrim singers sang
The Nightingale
Oh woeful
was the day when I was pressed to sail afar
And leave behind the girl I loved in the town of Ballinagard.
The shady groves were my delight till I was forced to sail.
You all may guess at my distress lying in the Nightingale.
And Clare McGuirk (Boyle) sang the Maid of Coolmore
If I had the
power, the storm to rise
I would blow the wind higher for to darken the skies
I would blow the wind higher to make the salt seas to roar
On the day that my love sailed away from Coolmore.
Len Graham is to be a guest of Jackie Boyce and Jim Bainbridge’s
Drumkieran singers early in November. We hope they have as good a session as we
had in Boyle and we hope to see them back in Boyle with us, November 15th,
when our guest will be the Donegal singer, Grace Toland.
