songs on emigration

Subject: songs on emigration
From: GUEST,songester
Date: 02 Oct 07 - 09:18 AM

I am looking for songs on emigration, CD's, LP's, books anything . .
can anyone point me in the right direction. I have a few but would like some more, traditional or modern.
         songester

Subject: RE: songs on emigration
From: The Sandman
Date: 02 Oct 07 - 09:40 AM

Rambling irishman,Paddys green shamrock shore,van diemans land,englands motorways,cricklewood.

Subject: RE: songs on emigration
From: Fred McCormick
Date: 02 Oct 07 - 09:44 AM

A lot of Lps and CDs of traditional Irish singing in English have one or two among emigration songs the track listings. However, I'd recommend Topic's exile/emigration disc in the series Voice of the People; FAREWELL, MY OWN DEAR NATIVE LAND. Songs of Exile & Emigration. Topic TSCD 654

Subject: RE: songs on emigration
From: GUEST,songster
Date: 02 Oct 07 - 09:56 AM

Thanks Fred, a great help, I will have a look at that and buy it if possible.
         songester

Subject: RE: songs on emigration
From: GUEST,Henryp
Date: 02 Oct 07 - 10:14 AM

Have you any particular origins or destinations in mind?

Subject: RE: songs on emigration
From: Mark H.
Date: 02 Oct 07 - 10:43 AM

Robin Williamson, Songs of Love and Parting:
"Return No More".

Subject: RE: songs on emigration
From: Ian
Date: 02 Oct 07 - 12:07 PM

Green Fields of Canada to recruit

or enforced as in Transported
such as Jim Jones, Botany Bay,

or Slavery
The Flying Cloud

Subject: RE: songs on emigration
From: GUEST,im Carroll
Date: 02 Oct 07 - 02:52 PM

There's a large, not very well produced book called 'Songs of Irish Emigration' by an American (? White?).
Don't have it but saw it on Amazon once - pricey
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: songs on emigration
From: GUEST,Jim Carroll
Date: 03 Oct 07 - 05:35 AM

Sorry - Wright - it's a published thesis.
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: songs on emigration
From: GUEST,Chris
Date: 03 Oct 07 - 03:01 PM

Ian Tupling from LocTup Together wrote a beautiful song called "Leaving the Green". It's on the album "Further down the Road"

Subject: RE: songs on emigration
From: GUEST,Huw
Date: 03 Oct 07 - 03:22 PM

I have a song,written with Chris Hastings, called The Famine Ship about emigration from Ireland during the 1848 famine.
Huw Pudner

Subject: RE: songs on emigration
From: bobad
Date: 03 Oct 07 - 03:48 PM

Buffy Sainte Marie wrote a song "Welcome, Welcome Emigrante" which is on The Best Of Broadside compilation released in 2000. I couldn't find the lyrics on line but I have the recording and can transcribe the lyrics if you would like them.

Subject: RE: songs on emigration
From: GeoffLawes
Date: 03 Oct 07 - 05:38 PM

Peta Webb's 1973 TOPIC LP, I HAVE WANDERED IN EXILE , includes The Moorlough Shore and The Lovely Banks Of Lea, as well as I Have Wandered In Exile, all of which are Irish emigrant songs full of the longing for home. This is a great LP by a great singer with a great voice who sings with total sympathy for the songs - certainly one of my desert island discs. The LP has been re-issued by a Japanese company as a CD under the series title of British Folk Paper Sleeve Collection and is distributed by Vivid Sound Corporation, VSCD-831, perhaps Camsco can get it?
More readily available is Kate McGarrigle's song Jaques et Gilles about Canadian migration but also touching on Irish emigration.

Subject: RE: songs on emigration
From: GUEST,Chicken Charlie
Date: 03 Oct 07 - 09:00 PM

An old one called "Across the Western Ocean" was discovered & recorded by (an American 'song catcher' named) Arthur Smith.

Times are hard and the wages are low;
Amelia, where you bound for?   [This is always 2nd line.]
The Rocky Mountains are my home,
Across the Western Ocean. [Always fourth line]

Beware the packet ships they say; Amelia ...
They'll steal your clothes and stores away, Across...

There's Liverpool Pat and his tarpaulin hat, Amelia ...
And Yankee Jack, the packet rat, Across...

Father and mother, don't you cry, Amelia ...
Sister and brother, say good-bye, Across ....

[Tag] Across the Western Ocean.

Subject: RE: songs on emigration
From: GUEST,Chicken Charlie
Date: 03 Oct 07 - 09:15 PM

Sorry about shooting a blank; I keep hitting enter when tab is appropriate. Hm@#ph!?xxx

Now then:

Can't remember who recorded this. Try title search "Fille-me-o-re-ae" or a reasonable facsimile thereof. Sometimes sounds like filly-rye-oh, etc.

In eighteen hundred 'n' farty-two
I left the home me faither knew;
Bad cess to the luck that brought me through
To workin' on the railway.

Filly rye oh, rye oh, ay a [three times]
[Then repeat fourth line of verse].

In eighteen hundred 'n' farty-three,
'Tis this I met sweet Biddy McGee,
An elegant wife she made for me,
For workin' on the railway.

In ... farty-six,
They pelted me with stones & bricks;
I was in an awful fix
For ....

In ... farty-seven,
Sweet Biddy McGee, she went ta hiven;
She left one child, she left eliven,
Workin' on the railway.

In ... farty-eight,
I larned to drink me w'iskey straight;
An elegant drink it seemed to make
For workin' on the railway.

Also don't forget that "Wild Colonial Boy" is about a born Irishman who goes Down Under and becomes a bush ranger. Gets killed of course; otherwise why have a song? Oh, and it used to be illegal to sing it in Australia, but that was a long time gone.

Stan Rogers [Rodgers? can't recall] of Canada wrote "The House of Orange," about an Irishman who moves to Canada. Then the local IRA rep calls to get a donation, and the fellow has had it with "The Struggle" & doesn't want any part of it anymore.

"I took back my hand, and I showed him the door;
No dollar of mine would I part with this day
For fuelin' the engines of bloody cruel war,
In my forefather's home far away." Etc., etc. and etc. Long but moving.

If you can't find any of these gems on record or CD or edison cylinder or whatever, I could send you a tape or CD of it/them.

Yours

Chicken Charlie
[e-mail]

Subject: RE: songs on emigration
From: GUEST,songster
Date: 04 Oct 07 - 09:07 AM

I have all of Stan Rodgers albums and most of all of the above ballads you have suggested (not all, though I wish I had) You have been very helpful, I have been asked to sing at a session and the idea is we all pick a theme, I was thinking of Emigration but wanted something slightly different (not the usual popular ballads) old, more modern, orange, green anything that would be 'different'
You have all been very helpful, thanks. If anyone has any more ballads that spring to mind please post them. The session isn't for another six weeks yet.
    Songester

Subject: Lyr Add: SONS AND DAUGHTERS (Harvey Andrews)
From: GUEST,harvey andrews
Date: 04 Oct 07 - 10:45 AM

SONS AND DAUGHTERS

Sons and daughters leaving
Going far away
See them sadly waving
Wishing they could stay
All they see about them
Darkness and decay
Sons and daughters leaving
Going far away

Job in South Australia
Out along a bay
House with half an acre
Mortgage they can pay
Sandy beach and blue sky
Safe for children's play
Job in South Australia
Out along a bay

Letting go the children
Telling them goodbye
See you in the summer
Yes I know you'll try
A better life for certain
Break the bonds that tie
Letting go the children
Telling them goodbye

Should have gone in '80
Things were different then
Now you're so much older
Couldn't start again
Smile and say it's all right
That was way back when
Should have gone in '80
Things were different then

So you're on your own now
That's the way life goes
Home's too big and empty
Bid for bungalows
Learn to send an e mail
Leaving out life's woes
So you're on your own now
That's the way life goes
                     
With sons and daughters leaving
Going far away
See them sadly waving
Wishing they could stay
All they see about them
Darkness and decay
Sons and daughters leaving
Going far away
Sons and daughters leaving
For a better day

cd "Somewhere in the stars"

Subject: RE: songs on emigration
From: GUEST
Date: 04 Oct 07 - 10:59 AM

She left the fair shores of her own native Ireland;
She left them at noon on a sunshiny day.
She bade fond farewell to her friends and relations
And she set sail for America so far far away.

It was little she thought as she stepped on the liner
That bore her away from the Foyle's sunny shore
It was little she thought as she stepped on the liner
That her own beloved Derry she'd never see more.

She landed one morning in New York's big city
Amidst all the hustle and bustle and care
And she gazed in surprise at the New York skyscrapers
And wished she was back home in her Derry so fare.

For years there she worked in a big mill in Boston;
The room it was dark and no sun did shine there.
And the roses soon left the cheeks of young Ethna,
And she pined like a caged bird for Derry so fair.

One night as she lay in her cold attic chamber
She dreamed that her own darling truelove was there.
But it was the angel of Death that so softly came nigh her
And took away Ethna from this sad world of care.

We dug her a grave out at Holy Cross Abbey
Where many the exile a grave has found there;
One small sprig of shamrock we planted above her
And she sleeps her last sleep far far from Derry so fair.

Subject: ADD: Derry So Fair
From: GUEST,Young Buchan
Date: 04 Oct 07 - 11:02 AM

Derry So Fair
Collected by Robin Morton in Ulster in the 60s. Ought to remember the singer, but can't.

She left the fair shores of her own native Ireland;
She left them at noon on a sunshiny day.
She bade fond farewell to her friends and relations
And she set sail for America so far far away.

It was little she thought as she stepped on the liner
That bore her away from the Foyle's sunny shore
It was little she thought as she stepped on the liner
That her own beloved Derry she'd never see more.

She landed one morning in New York's big city
Amidst all the hustle and bustle and care
And she gazed in surprise at the New York skyscrapers
And wished she was back home in her Derry so fare.

For years there she worked in a big mill in Boston;
The room it was dark and no sun did shine there.
And the roses soon left the cheeks of young Ethna,
And she pined like a caged bird for Derry so fair.

One night as she lay in her cold attic chamber
She dreamed that her own darling truelove was there.
But it was the angel of Death that so softly came nigh her
And took away Ethna from this sad world of care.

We dug her a grave out at Holy Cross Abbey
Where many the exile a grave has found there;
One small sprig of shamrock we planted above her
And she sleeps her last sleep far far from Derry so fair.

Subject: RE: songs on emigration
From: Bob the Postman
Date: 04 Oct 07 - 12:49 PM

This recent thread is relevant.

Subject: RE: songs on emigration
From: Ruth Archer
Date: 04 Oct 07 - 01:07 PM

Phil chevron's Thousands Are Sailing, recorded by The Pogues, is a great song juxtaposing the 19th-century mass emigration from Ireland to America with that which happened in the 1980s.

Subject: RE: songs on emigration
From: GUEST,Mr. Norrell
Date: 04 Oct 07 - 01:34 PM

just copied this from my copy of thi, unfortunately out of print, book. You might find a copy in a used book shop near you...

Donald A. Fergusson, general editor. From the Farthest Hebrides (1978). MacMillan, London, UK. ISBN 0333247604. Provides tunes, Gaelic words, metrical English translations, and historical notes for Gaelic songs of the Hebridean and Highland immigrants to Cape Breton, Nova Scotia. Includes about 100 songs of the sea, heroic songs of North Uist, love songs, labor songs, and others.

hope this helps :-)

Subject: RE: songs on emigration
From: Fliss
Date: 04 Oct 07 - 01:58 PM

singer Sean Keane

http://www.seankeane.com/sounds.html#The_man_thatiam
Isle of Hope, Isle of Tears - about Ellis Island

Subject: RE: songs on emigration
From: Big Mick
Date: 04 Oct 07 - 02:06 PM

May I strongly suggest a CD by a Dublin man who lives in Florida and performs in the States. His name is Brendan Nolan. He did a CD titled "Across the Great Divide" which has a number of original and trad songs of immigration. Included on this CD is a song which I consider one of the finest stories of the coffin ships ever written. It is called "Far From Their Homes". For those that go to Getaway, this is the song I did years ago at my first Getaway that inspired Edd Trickett to pass an original song on to me which I then recorded, titled "Along the Famine Road".

Get Brendan's CD. You won't regret it.

All the best,

Mick

Subject: RE: songs on emigration
From: GUEST,Mr. Norrell
Date: 04 Oct 07 - 03:25 PM

Striking For Another Land - The Albion Band (1989 line up) from their record Give Me a Saddle, I'll Trade You a Car.

Subject: RE: songs on emigration
From: Bill Hahn//\\
Date: 04 Oct 07 - 03:39 PM

Try some material by Si Kahn---talks of European and Jewish immigration to the U S.   ONe particularly good piece--He Lies In The American Land.

Have played it many a time on both my programs on WFDU--Sunday Simcha and Traditions

Bill Hahn

Subject: RE: songs on emigration
From: PeadarOfPortsmouth
Date: 04 Oct 07 - 04:27 PM

A CD you might consider is a compliation called "Thousands are Sailing", which has many of the songs already listed.

Two songs that I particularly enjoy that I didn't see mentioned:

"Kilkenny" -- Robbie O'Connell and Mick Moloney had a nice version on an album of the same name
"Leaving Nancy" -- written by Eric Bogle about leaving his mother in Scotland

Good luck.

Peter

Subject: RE: songs on emigration
From: Bill Hahn//\\
Date: 04 Oct 07 - 06:19 PM

This may be a reach--the song Anatevka from Fiddler on the Roof. This is sung by the daughter who will be leaving with her Christian husband and will, hopefully, go to the New World--well, across the big pond.


Bill Hahn

Subject: RE: songs on emigration
From: GUEST,Mr Norrell
Date: 05 Oct 07 - 11:13 AM

I'll really stretch the point here.....
The Immigrant Song - Led Zeppelin *LOL*

Subject: RE: songs on emigration
From: GUEST,Jane Birch.
Date: 05 Oct 07 - 06:49 PM

The Reason I left Mullingar, fairly recent but a good one.

Subject: RE: songs on emigration
From: Bainbo
Date: 05 Oct 07 - 07:46 PM

Letter From America by Craig and Charlie Reid, The Proclaimers.

Subject: RE: songs on emigration
From: GUEST,mg
Date: 05 Oct 07 - 08:42 PM

when I first came to this land...in Dutch.
Oleana..in Norwegian..English words are too awful..mg

Subject: RE: songs on emigration
From: GUEST,Bardan
Date: 05 Oct 07 - 08:52 PM

Well a lot of these haven't been mentioned yet so I thought I'd give you a list of ones I like on the subject. Lots of them have been played and replayed by everyone under the sun but good songs none the less.

Spancill Hill
City of Chicago
Missing you
Paddy's lament (Sinead O'Connor did a very good version of this in her sean nos nua album)
Skibereen
Kilkelly Ireland
Far away in Australia
The Leaving of Liverpool
Carrickfergus
Paddy Reilly
The deportee (possibly)
Nothing but the same old story

There are two or three great ones about being sent to australia as well, my favourites being 'I wish I was back home in Derry' and 'let the rope soap and calico take me'. I hesitate to add it as this one really has been overplayed to nausea inducing lengths but the fields of Athenry is a good one as well.

Subject: RE: songs on emigration
From: The Walrus
Date: 05 Oct 07 - 09:16 PM

No one has mentioned the 'Hit' song of the Crimean War "CHEER BOYS, CHEER" - From the line "The star of Emipre gltters in the West", I assume that it's emigration to Canada.

W

Subject: RE: songs on emigration
From: open mike
Date: 06 Oct 07 - 12:32 AM

there is a swedish / english c.d. from CAPRICE records which chronicles
the emigration of nearly 1.3 million swedes to the u.s. between 1840 and 1930. The title is "From Sweden to America" Swedish Emigrant Songs
Amerikavisor.
It contains songs recorded from 1914 to 1980. It is on Caprice Records
and is their catalog number 21552.http://www.caprice.rikskonserter.se/

Subject: ADD: Mary Clare Malloy (Tom Russell)
From: GUEST,AnneMC
Date: 06 Oct 07 - 12:55 AM

My favourite emigration song is is called "Mary Clare Malloy", written by Tom Russell, and sung by Dolores Keane on Tom Russell's CD titled "The Man From God Knows Where" .

Mary Clare Malloy
(Tom Russell)
(With Intro tune first of "Staten Island' on the fiddle)

1.        My name is Mary Clare Malloy, I was born in County Cork
        At 18 years of age I sailed for the shores of olde New York
        With seven hundred picture brides, all torn 'tween hope and fear
        At last we spied Manhattan and the famous Isle of Tears

2.        My first taste of the New World turned to ashes very fast
        The ones who entered freely were from first and second class
        We steerage folk remained on board as if we were exiles,
        The captain turned the ship around and sailed to Ellis Isle

3.        We disembarked and stood in line with chalks marks on our coats
         "X" for mental illness, if "E" back on the boat
        They asked us what our breeding was and could we read or write
        Oh, the sound of women weeping swept the dormitories at night

4.        My best friend was deported back to a poor Killea home
        Another sent to Swinbourne Isle died of cholera alone
        The rest of us were shipped to trains, bound for Midwest States
        To wild and stormy prairie lands, and our prospective mates

        He's an American Primitive man
        In an American Primitive Land
        Irish eyes and calloused hands
        American Primitive man

Subject: ADD: The Setting (Ralph McTell)
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 06 Oct 07 - 05:49 AM

As a dumb guitarist I think I would pick Ralph Mctell's The Setting as my favourite

THE SETTING
(Ralph McTell)

I will never forget oh the walk to the station
Me with your suitcase being brotherly strong
And just trying to make light of this whole situation
In light conversation we moved through the throng

And above all the roar of the town was the blue sky
I could hear the birds singing for the joy of the day
There was no support for the city forthcoming
No sympathy numbing you going away
And its so hard to say goodbye

There was you with your bright eyes and best dress for travelling
Me in my work clothes unshaven and so plain
Oh I fully intended to put in the half day
But my good intention went with you / on the train

So I never looked back as the train left the station
Crossed over the road and walked into the park
It was there in the bar some old man was singing
And I sat there drinking until it got dark

Outside the trees they grew starlings like apples
Their hustle and chatter not dampened by the rain
That washed down the pavement into the gutter
Soaked through my clothes as I set out again
So hard to say goodbye

And above me the stars were all hidden by rain clouds
The songs of the old man still locked in my brain
Oh of emigration the curse of our nation
The setting now fitting his sad sweet refrain
So hard to say goodbye

Subject: RE: songs on emigration
From: GUEST,Young Buchan
Date: 06 Oct 07 - 06:32 AM

Re. Bardan

Leaving of Liverpool is surely a sailor embarking on a long sea voyage - hardly emigration.

Subject: RE: songs on emigration
From: Mick Tems
Date: 06 Oct 07 - 07:32 AM

I wrote a song called A Tale Of Two Rivers, about many Welsh miners crossing the Atlantic to work in the American mines, from Scranton, Pennsylvania, down south to Virginia and as far west as Arizona and California. It was the theme song of a show called A Tale Of Two Rivers, again written by me, sponsored by the former Taff-Ely council (Taff and Ely - two rivers - Geddit?) A bevy of Welsh dancers, storytellers and me and Pat as Calennig took on tour around the South Wales and to America, where the gigantic Festival Of Wales in Harrisburg offered to pay for it.

Unfortunately my massive stroke impeded that. We were planning to record it on a CD, but I sat and watched the others jet off to Harrisburg. The CD was put on hold and Calennig broke up. Now, Pat Smith and Ned Clamp have recorded The Tale Of Two Rivers, so it won't disappear altogether.

Other songs of emigration: The wonderful ballad-poet Harri Webb wrote The Stars Of Mexico, and the beautiful Patagonia (about the Welsh-speaking Christian emigrants who set sail for a land far away.

Subject: RE: songs on emigration
From: Mick Tems
Date: 06 Oct 07 - 07:58 AM

...Which reminds me: On our many American tours, Calennig played a show at the University of Nanticoke, Pennsylvania, put on by Jack and Sandy Pritchard of the Welsh Society. The mark left by those emigrant Welsh miners was starkly obvious - we looked out at Nanticoke, and it was just like the Rhondda Valley, only much grander! Pennsylvania is peppered with Welsh names, and Nanticoke seemed a Welshier name than most - but we were wrong. It seemed that Nanticoke was an American Native chief, who sold the land to the settlers!

Mick Tems

Subject: RE: songs on emigration
From: Simon G
Date: 06 Oct 07 - 08:19 AM

Tim O'Brien's CD The Crossing. My favourite is A Mountaineer Is Always Free. Lost Little Children is great, but I'm never sure I want to imagine what happened to them after the song.

A Mountaineer Is Always Free
©1998 Pierce Pettis and Tim O’Brien

I'’m one of the few, proud to be standing
I walked up the pier from the coffin ships landing
My clothes were just rags, no use in this weather
But my back was strong, my hands tough as leather

I climbed up these hills till I came to the spot where I stand
I cleared these fields and I pulled up the stumps with my hands
No more a wanderer, no more a refugee
A mountaineer is always free

Took a Cherokee bride, she gave me five babies
I sang at the wakes, I cried at the weddings
I taught all my children the songs of my youth
To dance to the fiddle and practice the truth

I carried them up on my shoulders to where they could see
The whole world before them just so they would know what it means
No more a wanderer, no more a refugee
A mountaineer is always free

No kings and no landlords to treat us like beggars and thieves
There’s no one but God here to fear or to look down on me
No more a wanderer, no more a refugee
A mountaineer is always free

Subject: RE: songs on emigration
From: open mike
Date: 06 Oct 07 - 02:11 PM

the entire album "The Man From God Knows Where" concerns itself with immigration and emigration. Tom Russell explores his roots in this epic
work. it is recorded on Hightone records in 1998

Subject: RE: songs on emigration
From: GUEST,Bardan
Date: 09 Oct 07 - 03:07 PM

Young Buchan, you're probably right. I think it must just be because dad always sang it after 'far away in Australia' so my young mind assumed the themes were similar. Does he say he's coming back in one of the verses? Only he doesn't in the chorus, so maybe it's still an interpretation that works logically if not in the context of the place time other songs etc...

Subject: RE: songs on emigration
From: GUEST,Cookieless Eddie1
Date: 09 Oct 07 - 03:16 PM

Marnie - written I believe by Jean Ritchie though I first heard it from Jean Redpath - is about the Scots who emigrated to Virginia to find all the best land taken and left there for Newfoundland.

Eddie

Subject: RE: songs on emigration
From: Stewart
Date: 09 Oct 07 - 03:40 PM

The Emigrant
by Joseph Campbell,
Irishry 1913
from The Oxford Book of Ireland

The cart is yoked before the door,
And time will let us dance no more.
Come, fiddler, now, and play for me
'Farewell to barn and stack and tree.'

To-day the fields looked wet and cold,
The mearings gapped, the cattle old.
Things are not what they used to be -
'Farewell to barn and stack and tree.'

I go, without the heart to go,
To kindred that I hardly know.
Drink, neighbour, drink a health with me -
'Farewell to barn and stack and tree.'

Five hours will see me stowed aboard,
The gang-plank up, the ship unmoored.
Christ grant no tempest shakes the sea -
'Farewell to barn and stack and tree.'

I recite this poem before singing
A STOR MO CHROI
(Treasure of my Heart)
Words by Brian O'Higgins (1882-1949)

A Stor Mo Chroi, when you're far away
From the home that you'll soon be leaving,
Sure it's many a time by night and by day
That your heart will be sorely grieving.
For the stranger's land may be bright and fair,
And rich in all treasures golden.
You'll pine, I know, for the long, long ago
And the heart that is never olden.

A Stor Mo Chroi, in the stranger's land
There's plenty of wealth and wailing.
Though gems adorn the rich and grand
There are faces with hunger paling.
The road may be weary, and hard to tread
And the lights of the city blind you.
Oh turn, A Stor, to old Erin's shore
And the ones you have left behind you.

A Stor Mo Chroi, when the evening's mist
O'er mountain and meadow is falling,
Oh turn, A Stor, from the throng and list
And maybe you'll hear me calling.
For the sound of a voice that you seldom hear
For somebody's speedy return.
Aroon, aroon, Won't you come back soon
To the one who really loves you.

Cheers, S. in Seattle

Subject: RE: songs on emigration
From: GUEST,Rich (bodhránaí gan ciall)
Date: 09 Oct 07 - 05:11 PM

The Shamrock Shore as sung by Paul Brady on the Molloy Brady Peoples album, while being directed towards people still in Ireland form the the point of view of one still in Ireland, does lament the fate of those forced to leave.

Rich

Subject: RE: songs on emigration
From: GUEST,songster
Date: 10 Oct 07 - 07:04 AM

I have been spoiled by the wide choice of songs you have noted. If I can't get something out of all of these something is wrong.
Thanks to you all
         Songster

Subject: RE: songs on emigration
From: GUEST,Young Buchan
Date: 10 Oct 07 - 07:24 AM

The concentration seems heavily on Irish emigration. To redress the balance slightly what about A Miner's Dream of Home and The Song of the Thrush?

Subject: RE: songs on emigration
From: GUEST,HughM
Date: 10 Oct 07 - 08:06 AM

Goodbye, Muirsheen Durkin, sure I'm sick and tired of working....

Subject: RE: songs on emigration
From: GUEST,Alan Ross
Date: 10 Oct 07 - 08:51 AM

A nice emigration song is the Stewart Ross version of 'Dark Island' - a clip of Calum Kennedy's 1967 recording using my father's lyrics with a bit of video can currently be found on UK's 'You Tube'. He sang one wrong word 'In the years long ago', should have been 'In the years long gone by'...

There are better folk arrangements of this lyrical version song - and the English studio orchestration by PYE records is a bit twee by today's standards.

Amazingly, this song was supposed to be banned for copyright reasons - tell that to the BBC, You Tube and all the record companies who have been re-issuing it!