The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #24481 Message #2598624
Posted By: GUEST,leeneia
27-Mar-09 - 11:53 AM
Thread Name: Derivation of 'Kisses Sweeter than Wine'
Subject: RE: Derivation of 'Kisses Sweeter than Wine'
I remember the pop song 'Kisses Sweeter than Wine,' (KSTW) and I thought it would be interesting to hear the old air on which it is based. Lotsa luck!
According to the quotation from Pete Seeger upthread, "...Huddie Ledbetter was living in New York in the 1940's. Once singing at a Greenwich Village party he heard an Irish artist, Sam Kennedy, singing a lonesome old Irish song, "Drimmin Down."
People equate that song, Drimmin Down, with a slow air about a cow. That song is in O'Neill's Music of Ireland, (The Dear Black Cow,#130) and there are many versions of it on the Net. All that I've listened to are about the same, and they are nothing like 'Kisses Sweeter than Wine.' There is no way that KSTW derives from it.
(By the way, the title of it is 'Druim-fionn dub dileas.' Apparently people have muddled Sam Kennedy's song 'Drimmin Down'with it simply because the first words (Drimmin and Druim) are similar. This is very sloppy.
The Irish dictionary I found online says:
Druim - no such word Druim-fionn - no such word fionn - blonde dub - black dileas - dear)
To get back to Pete Seeger, the original is a song called Drimmin Down. Drimmin is a place name. There's a place in Scotland called Drimmin, and there's a place in Ireland that starts with Drimmin. There's also a Drimmin Cottage. (Found these by Googling.)
A down is part of the landscape. It can be a dune or it can be an upland where animals graze. So the name Drimmin Down makes sense - it's the pasture or the dune near Drimmin.
If anybody finds a song called Drimmin Down that sounds anything like KSTW, I would be interested in hearing how it goes.