Hi!

Based on GUEST's 27/4 10:58 post, I thought I'd do a quick survey which might give some idea of the tradition The Clancys actually drew on. This is based on 100 songs *randomly* selected from the albums in a "Clancys" discography.

The origin of their songs fall out roughly as follows:

21% Irish traditional, including 5 "rebel" and 1 "orange" song
14% Irish modern, including 4 "rebel" and 6 "music hall" songs
16% General UK/Eire traditional songs
14% English traditional
4% English modern including 2 "music hall" songs
6% Scottish traditional
3% Scottish modern
3% Ewan MacColl songs
2% Australian
2% from the USA

The remaining 15%, couldn't be sourced in the time I had available (i.e. Unknown).

This being a quick survey, I had to take "accepted" origins (like "The Nightingale" is English) and neither can I be certain of its accuracy in other ways, but I'd be willing to bet it's not far out. "Irish" music hall songs would, by the way, have been written for the English music hall too, as they were very popular at the time.

For another project, I once did a survey of the direct origin (i.e. what book or person they got songs from and where that song was collected) of all The Dubliners' songs to 1975. The Clancys have, not unexpectedly, a very much higher Irish content. The Dubliners were pretty honest about their sources and so getting the information was easier than you might think (though it still took some days' work). Surprisingly to me at any rate, they had about 20% Irish songs (mainly "rebel songs, and most of these of modern origin), 70% from English sources (including almost all of their traditional songs) and 10% from other sources (including Scotland). One of their best sources, early on, was a book called "This Singing Island".

:-)