Ride On (from Christy Moore)

Subject: RE: Ride On/Christy Moore
From: GUEST,Jon
Date: 18 Jul 04 - 09:57 PM

Not to me in this instance Gloria. My feeling is it's not as general as Jimmy MacCarthy say's in

"...purely and simply, it is a song of parting. The parting of lovers, the parting of emigrants from their homeland and friends, the parting when illness or accident takes the life of a loved one ... Life is hard. Ride On."

I'd bet it does refer to an incident in his own life.

I tend to see a woman of higher status to him, probably married... but everyone of us is likely to come up with different interpretations.

Subject: RE: Ride On/Christy Moore
From: GUEST,JTT
Date: 19 Jul 04 - 03:59 PM

It never occurred to me that this song could be a man speaking to a woman; I always saw it as addressed to a man - it never struck me that Christy Moore would be an unlikely man-lover. Hmmm.

I don't see how it could be political. A lot of songs are, but this one? Surely not!

Subject: RE: Ride On/Christy Moore
From: GUEST,MMario
Date: 19 Jul 04 - 04:02 PM

hmmmm - odd that, I have ALWAYS imaged it as a man speaking to a woman...

Subject: RE: Ride On/Christy Moore
From: GUEST,Fionnghaile
Date: 19 Jul 04 - 04:20 PM

You people take yurselves way to seriously you know go and learn some gaelic if youse are that interested

Subject: RE: Ride On/Christy Moore
From:
Date: 23 Jul 04 - 08:19 PM

Gaelic has nothing to do with this song. What a very peculiar comment.

Songs mean different things to different people and so therefore does 'Ride On'. I simply think it's worth considering the composer/author's point of view. After that, the song is yours.

Subject: RE: Help: Ride On (Christy Moore)
From: GUEST,SCShamrock
Date: 02 Jul 06 - 03:32 PM

I found this thread while searching for the lyrics. I was a bit unsure about the first word whether it was intended to be "true" or "through." Either works well for me. I do want to say that I am a bit dismayed at the apparant need for some people to have songs make plain, perfect sense. Where is the appreciation for the abstract? This is one of many songs I love that I feel has to be interpreted by the individual because it is so abstract. You feel stupid singing it? Then don't sing it. I sing it at my favorite pub (using the word "true" that I wasn't sure about) and sure enough, the first time someone asked me what it meant. So my reply was "what did it mean to you?" The response? He said "nothing, but I sure liked it!" So, either use the song in your line-up, or don't. I think it adds something special to my show, as now the response has been that the pub quiets down, except for the sound of those singing along and the shuffle of feet on the dancefloore.

Subject: RE: Help: Ride On (Christy Moore)
From: michaelr
Date: 03 Jul 06 - 12:42 AM

Good comments, SCS. A good song should never be explained. It means what it means to the singer, and to the listener, at the time.

Let the mystery be.

Cheers,
Michael

Subject: RE: Help: Ride On (Christy Moore)
From: GUEST,Vin
Date: 03 Jul 06 - 07:05 AM

People have the same problem with Chicken On a Raft & Fathom the Bowl. Who cares, they're great songse. May they continue to be sung!

Subject: RE: Ride On (from Christy Moore)
From: GUEST,sheehy
Date: 04 Jul 08 - 03:35 PM

The remonstrance above to learn Gaelic to find the key to the lyrics probably refers to the gaelic name for the fairy folk, "Sidhe," which is pronounced "shee." In the old folktales, people became infatuated with the sidhe and were carried off and never seen again.

Subject: RE: Ride On (from Christy Moore)
From: GUEST,Topman
Date: 21 Dec 09 - 04:41 PM

Hi all,
Have just started to play this on the guitar. Easy chords and transitions.
Christie Moore has a voice of his own, a rough rugged sound that expresses the heart of the lovely land of Ireland. I am English but have always enjoyed the Irish sounds.
I am glad that the explaination of the song is now known to me, the version of the love between two cannot continue due to the differences in wealth etc.
Thanks to everyone for there discussions,

Subject: RE: Ride On (from Christy Moore)
From: JHW
Date: 21 Dec 09 - 05:53 PM

I cannot stand the song, substantially because it features so often in the sort of session that I define by its inevitable inclusion.
I have heard it sung so, so many times that there are obviously countless singers out there who do know what it means and we at Mudcat are the poor relation who are in the dark. I certainly don't know what it means but have given up caring; my concern goes more toward the vain hope that I never hear it again.

Subject: RE: Ride On (from Christy Moore)
From: Acorn4
Date: 21 Dec 09 - 06:03 PM

Drone On,


1.The band they played the finest songs
That you will ever hear,
Songs of love and songs that brought us
Laughter and a tear
But as the evening drew to an end
And we all begged for more
There's no prizes for guessing the song
They chose for their encore..

Chorus:-

Drone on, won't you
Why must I always hear this song
Whenever I'm not wanting to
Drone on, so slowly
Just like a bad dream
I keep coming back and haunting you.

2.So let's drone on into the second verse
As if one were not enough!
Let's have a competition to see who can be
The last one to nod off.
Won't someone shoot that bloody horse!
Put it out of its misery
Instead of leaving it to die a slow death
And we're not even on verse three, so,,,

Drone on…etc

3.Just when you think this song will end
Things go from bad to worse
Because after the next chorus has finished (oh yes)
I've written another verse
And put in an instrumental break
Just to prolong the pain
Which will give me the excuse to go back to verse1
Then sing the chorus all over again (six times) so…

Drone on.. – (sing chorus accompanied by heavy yawning)


4. And so at last we're near the end
Let's have one final yawn,
Sing it to you one more time
As night-time turns to dawn.
It's been like watching wet paint dry
Half the audience are deceased
You think you've been listening to Sir Geoffrey Howe
Reading "War and Peace" so..

Drone on…

(final chorus accompanied by yawning then snoring leading to final fade out)

Actually it is s good song, but done to death unfortunately. It actually only covers a span of four notes so is, in fact, quite ingenious.

Subject: RE: Ride On (from Christy Moore)
From: Smokey.
Date: 21 Dec 09 - 06:07 PM

I always understood the horse to be a somewhat blatant allegory of 'the cause'..

Subject: RE: Ride On (from Christy Moore)
From: Leadfingers
Date: 21 Dec 09 - 07:05 PM

Any song can be killed by NOT singing it with the right level of emotion ! Too fast or too slow , either will murder the best of songs
    And being played too often doesnt help . I Like the Drone ON rewrite though - Who does one credit Acorn ??

Subject: RE: Ride On (from Christy Moore)
From: MMario
Date: 22 Dec 09 - 10:44 AM

I like the drone on re-write as well; though I do NOT hear "Ride on" that frequently. I got to perform this song with a few friends this fall, and it was the first time I'd heard it in a year...and I have to say we didd one INCREDIBLE job with it....

Guitar, flute, harp, and six voices....the audience loved it.

Subject: RE: Ride On (from Christy Moore)
From: Acorn4
Date: 22 Dec 09 - 12:15 PM

Leadfingers, one credits Dave Taylor - if you want to perform it, it works best punctuated with gradually inceasing yawns and snores in the last two verses. If anyone joins in with instruments, you can add " try not to overstimulate people with that fiddle!"

Subject: RE: Ride On (from Christy Moore)
From: GUEST,Róisín McLaren
Date: 22 Jan 12 - 11:12 AM

OH COME ON PEOPLE!

Are you seriously telling me that you all believe that "Ride On" is just a straight forward love song?! Do you believe that there are women wandering around Ireland riding a horse (which by the way at 16 2hds would be a hell of a big horse) that McCarthy can fall in love with?

This song is not just a love song it is one the the best Republican songs ever written! In the tradition of Irish nationalism its written in the form seemingly ambiguous love song. It describes the writer's feelings of bitterness and loss as the cause of Irish Independence "rides" away. Its about disillusionment, about feeling as if its all for nothing. The horse and rider is symbolic of Ireland, the horse is described as having eyes: "wild and **green**" a reference Republicanism. As the horse and rider go the writer is left feeling empty - as the struggle for independence seems even more unattainable the Republican is left feeling bereft. The writer "looks for the spark that lights the night" - i.e. looks for hope. Yet he has to admit that he can "never go with you no matter how I wanted to" - that he can't make Ireland into the place he envisaged.      

Its a great song but please don't sing it unless you understand it and unless your really mean it.

Subject: RE: Ride On (from Christy Moore)
From: GUEST,Folknob
Date: 22 Jan 12 - 12:07 PM

What a load of tosh - MacCarthy explained on Radio Eireann in February 2010 that this song's lyrics hark back to his days as an apprentice jockey. When they first began training for races the younger horses would gallop behind the older horses. But as the younger horses developed, they needed the horses in front to go faster, so the jockeys would shout out "Ride On."

Subject: RE: Ride On (from Christy Moore)
From: GUEST,Cudhonail
Date: 26 Mar 16 - 08:14 PM

One possible interpretation of the song, perhaps not intended by the songwriter, is that it reflects the relationship between W B Yeats, the great Irish poet, and his mistress and muse, Maud Gone. Yeats' words have long since become part of the Irish psyche. In a poem about 1916 he wrote, "A terrible beauty is born". Gonne was an ardent Nationalist and a catholic. Yeats was an Irish Protestant. Gone repeatedly refused his entreaties to marry, partly, she said, because he didn't feel like her about Irish nationalism, partly because he would not become a catholic, but mainly because she felt that Yeats needed his sorrow and unrequited love to inspire his writing
Certainly much of his work, both poetry and plays, was inspired by, and addressed either directly or indirectly to, Maud Gonne. A good example is the poem, "Aedh Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven". It contains the lines, " I have spread my dreams under your feet/Tread softly for you tread on my dreams.".
In 1916 he wrote in the poem, "No Second Troy", "Why should I blame her that she filled my days/With misery, or that she would of late/Have taught to ignorant men most violent ways/Or hurled the little streets upon the great.".
And the connection with the Christy Moore song? A Yeats poem, "Under Ben Bulben", ends with the words, "Cast a cold eye/On life, on death/Horseman, pass by!".
Yeats won the Nobel Prize for Literature and died in 1939. His simple gravestone near Ben Bulben in County Sligo carries only his name and dates and the words
Cast a cold eye
On life, on death
Horseman, pass by!

Subject: RE: Ride On (from Christy Moore)
From: Gallus
Date: 27 Mar 16 - 06:59 AM

I must admit I love this song in spite of it being played to death.

One thing that has always interested me about it: although it's a song of parting it seems to have three protagonists in it: The Rider, the Horse and the Narrator.

In the section where the Narrator says, "Run your claw along my gut. One last time" I get the impression that he is casting himself in the rôle of another Horse not another Rider.

It's an unusual gambit and, for me, raises the stakes psychologically turning this into more than a simple song of parting.

I'm sure there are many who will say I'm reading too much into this, especially given the author's own comments quoted above and I will happily acquiesce to the enduring mystery of it as it simply adds to the beauty of it all for me.

But pause for a moment maybe to consider MacCarthy's own (more recent) rewriting of this section of the lyric which I find neatly removes this little mystery. Here's the alt.

"When you ride into the night without a trace behind,
The silver spur, the stirrup foot where the road doesn't part and wind"
(link below)

For me it evokes ancient mythology, like the shape-shifting Pwca/ Púca/ Pwc/ Puck- bound over by their nature to be alone but drawn to humanity and love all the same.

A little too Pagan for Easter Sunday? Perhaps.

A beautiful song by any standards; full of depth and mystery and a lifelong friend.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kOY7FIB4Sx8

Subject: RE: Ride On (from Christy Moore)
From: GUEST
Date: 31 Mar 16 - 09:58 AM

Having heard this yesterday I'm none the wiser reading its lines but recalling how it was sung I'd say it's a love song. And then we all had to leave!