Lyr ADD/Origins: The Bard of Armagh

Subject: RE: ADD/Origins: The Bard of Armagh
From: GUEST,JTT
Date: 15 Jul 09 - 07:07 PM

Priosún Cluain Meala is sung to the same tune, and is on a similar theme, though there the youth awaiting execution is remembering his days on the hurling field and feats in hunting, as far as I recall the words. Here's a midi on a site with a bit about it: http://www.irishpage.com/songs/clonmel.htm

Subject: RE: ADD/Origins: The Bard of Armagh
From: GUEST,JTT
Date: 15 Jul 09 - 07:09 PM

Incidentally, that translation is distinctly freehand - no tormenting of cattle in the version in Irish.

Subject: RE: ADD/Origins: The Bard of Armagh
From: MartinRyan
Date: 16 Jul 09 - 02:25 AM

Hoagland's 1000 Years of Irish Poetry referenced in the Traditional Ballad Index earlier, adds no detail other than calling it a traditional street ballad and defining the term "pattern".

Regards
p.s. In my sleepy head at this hour of the morning, Priosún Cluain Meala is not all that similar in tune? It's an interesting thought, though.

Subject: RE: ADD/Origins: The Bard of Armagh
From: Fiolar
Date: 16 Jul 09 - 08:06 AM

Funny enough regarding similar tunes but different words than "The Bard", I believe that "The Streets of Laredo" has the same air.

Subject: RE: ADD/Origins: The Bard of Armagh
From: GUEST,JTT
Date: 16 Jul 09 - 11:06 AM

Maybe not - here's
John McCormack singing The Bard of Armagh , and Luke Kelly singing an English version of Priosún Cluain Meala

Subject: RE: ADD/Origins: The Bard of Armagh
From: An Buachaill Caol Dubh
Date: 16 Jul 09 - 12:28 PM

In addition to "The Streets of Laredo", there are to my ear anyway some similarities with the familiar "Road and the miles to Dundee" (and compare "Sweet Carnlough Bay"). Having read GUESTJTT's suggestion about "The Jail of Clonmel"/"Priosun Cluain Meala", I can now recognise some similarities, too, but not that strong.

Subject: RE: ADD/Origins: The Bard of Armagh
From: MartinRyan
Date: 16 Jul 09 - 12:30 PM

Fiolar
Yeah - that connection, through The Unfortunate Rake (Lock Hospital and lots of other names)is well known. I don't think there's any evidence of The Bard turning up in America.

Regards

Subject: RE: ADD/Origins: The Bard of Armagh
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 16 Jul 09 - 01:15 PM

Song sheet producers on both sides of the Atlantic shipped copies across; sheets produced in England turn up in American collections and v. v. A few transplants became popular, many didn't.
"The Bard ..." is not known in America, although Irish nostalgia and complaints were the subject of many song sheets produced in America.
It seems "The Bard..." never entered the 'folk' realm.

The connections of "Laredo," "Unfortunate," etc., pointed out by MartinRyan, have been more than amply covered in other threads.

Subject: RE: ADD/Origins: The Bard of Armagh
From: MartinRyan
Date: 16 Jul 09 - 02:00 PM

So, in summary so far, we have:
- a story said to relate the song to 17/18th. C. real life characters. We don't have an idea of how long that story is around.
- 19 C. ballad sheets
- Herbert Hughes arrangement at the beginning of the 20th. C. Haven't yet seen his comments, if any. May well be the main source of modern singing of the song - particularly as a parlour song.
- Padraigín's indirect report of Mrs. Humphrey's claim of a version in Gaelic. It would be nice to have more detail on this. Such claims are often made by English speakers without direct knowledge of the language and its song repertoire. This does not appear to be the case here.

Regards

Subject: RE: ADD/Origins: The Bard of Armagh
From: MartinRyan
Date: 16 Jul 09 - 02:41 PM

ABCD

Have you details of the Scottish version you mentioned, back in August 2006?

Regards

Subject: RE: ADD/Origins: The Bard of Armagh
From: An Buachaill Caol Dubh
Date: 17 Jul 09 - 11:44 AM

It's not a Scottish version, except that the name of the author (or, at least person to whom it is ascribed) is "A Ritchie"; in looking through the book in a second-hand bookshop, I found this song (words only) among others, and being familiar with the three-verse Herbert Hughes arrangement and also a longer set of words published in "The Capuchin Annual" of 1974, I remember being struck by the differences I found. In particular, the very last lines about laying him down by the side of his young wife stay in my mind, since in McCormack's 1920 version (I can't access the clip from GUESTJTT above, so I don't know which it is) he does make a significant pause in the final words, "Then... forget Phelim Brady, the Bard of Armagh" and so I was certain that the version in the antiquarian book did indeed differ, and was, in my view, inferior to that with which I was familiar. Now, would anyone really prefer "She loved Phelim Brady, the Bard of Armagh" to "Then forget Phelim Brady, the Bard of Armagh"? This leads me to the deduction that A Ritchie was the maker of the original version, which others have refined and polished. But, who knows? The book was quite dear, and I didn't buy it.

Subject: Lyr Add: THE BARD OF ARMAGH (A A Ritchie)
From: Jim Dixon
Date: 20 Dec 09 - 11:56 PM

From Whistle-Binkie: or, the Piper of the Party, Volume 2 edited by John Donald Carrick, Alexander Rodger, David Robertson (Glasgow: David Robertson & Co., 1878), page 285:


THE BARD OF ARMAGH.
Alex. A. Ritchie
Air—" The Exile of Erin."

Oh! list to the lay of a poor Irish Harper,
Though wayward and fitful his old withered hand;
Remember his touch once was bolder and sharper,
When raising the strains of his dear native land.
Long before the shamrock, our isle's lovely emblem,
Was crush'd in its bloom 'neath the Saxon lion's paw,
I was called by the coleens around me assembling,
Their bold Phelim Brady, the bard of Armagh!

Oh! how I love to muse on the days of my boyhood,
Tho' fourscore and three years have flitted since then!
Still it gives sweet reflection, as ev'ry first joy should,
For free-hearted boys make the best of ould men.
At the fair or the wake I could twirl my shillelah,
Or trip through the jig in my brogues bound wi' straw;
Faith, all the pretty girls in the village and the valley
Loved bould Phelim Brady, the Bard of Armagh!

Now tho' I have wander'd this wide world over,
Still Ireland's my home and a parent to me;
Then O! let the turf that my bosom shall cover,
Be cut from the ground that is trod by the free!
And when in his cold arms Death shall embrace me,
Och! lull me asleep wid sweet Erin go Bragh!
By the side of my Kathlin, my first love, O! place me;
She loved Phelim Brady, the Bard of Armagh.

Subject: RE: ADD/Origins: The Bard of Armagh
From: Jack Campin
Date: 26 Nov 10 - 06:39 PM

The song is printed in Campbell's collected poems (which are all in a similar bombastic style - even though I could once have bought a copy for 3 quid, I passed). It's easy enough to date when he wrote it - he was in Germany at the time. He had never been to Ireland at that point (not sure if he ever did) - born in the west of Scotland and educated in Edinburgh.

Thomas Campbell on Wikipedia

The tune is "The Banks of the Devon", a mega-hit of the time thanks to Burns's words for it. Burns got it on his one and only visit to the Highlands (I think it's the only tune he collected there) and he found it used for a Gaelic Jacobite song on the '45, which unusually for such songs was written fairly near the time of the events it describes. So the tune is Scottish and must have been around in the middle of the 18th century.

"Banks of the Devon" was used for a lot of broadsides. One much better than "The Bard of Armagh", though very little known, is a song that sympathizes with the French prisoners of the Napoleonic War interned near Edinburgh. I think John Leyden wrote it, but the author stayed anonymous.

Esk Mill

Subject: RE: ADD/Origins: The Bard of Armagh
From: GUEST
Date: 11 Jul 11 - 02:32 PM

I didn't know this song very well until I went to the shops and found a John McCormac CD and found that the tune is the same as 'The Cowboy's Lament', otherwise known as 'Streets of Laredo', a song I prefer to sing. In the story of the Irish song some folks say that 'The Bard of Armagh' was a Gallic song which the words were mabye sung but not to this tune. This tune has about 19 or 20 difrent songs sung by different singers from the 1900s to just now in folk music. In the first two decades of the 20th century about 19 singers were singing one morning in May and 'The Bard of Armagh' and 'The Unfortunate Rake'. This is enough for a CD to be made but it would be quite hard to do. This recording of all different singers singing the same tune but the words, well, might be be 'Marty Robbins' or 'Hank Snow' singing the 'Streets of Laredo' and also John McCormack singing 'The Bard of Armagh'. Such a CD would help me decide on my favourite, or the best. Other songs like 'Battle Hymn of the Republic', 'Londonderry Air' (better remembered as 'Danny Boy', many others should do the same thing. When i first heard this song from Ireland I was quite angry about that arguments of what came first on Jon Kavanah's review of 'The Unfortunate Rake' on Songlines!

Subject: RE: ADD/Origins: The Bard of Armagh
From: Jack Campin
Date: 11 Jul 11 - 05:26 PM

You're shooting from the hip.

There has been a lot written here about all those songs. Look back through this thread and the related ones.

Subject: RE: ADD/Origins: The Bard of Armagh
From: Big Ballad Singer
Date: 11 Jul 11 - 08:06 PM

Beautiful song, lovely lyrics, I think.

No offense, Big Tim, but Tommy Makem did not take "to calling himself the 'Bard of Armagh'". He was nicknamed that for his stellar and absolutely critical work in maintaining, preserving and performing songs, poetry and stories from Ireland's historic past. Without the work of Tommy Makem, the modern world of folk and popular music would be much poorer today, as Mr. Makem was successful on the popular music scene on a level which a lot of other folk performers have never reached. His career as a veritable catalog of Irish music and fable have been critical to the spread of Irish culture around the world.

I believe he, if no one else in the modern era, deserves rightly to be called the Bard of Armagh.

Subject: RE: ADD/Origins: The Bard of Armagh
From: Thompson
Date: 06 Mar 17 - 06:39 AM

The idea that a priest wouldn't hump a harp around is predicated on the harp being the modern concert harp - that would be unlikely all right - rather than the small metal-stringed harp used by earlier Irish musicians. Like Carolan, Bishop Donnelly is said to have been an itinerant musician; the harp was a good disguise for a priest, since only two bishops were left alive in Ireland at the time by the raging anti-'Papist' English who were determined to wipe out both Catholicism and Irishness.
The tune is typically Irish - typically northern, even; the words are typically 19th-century, but also, I think, typical of the softening and simplifying of more complex and intellectual verse of the previous century in Irish.
The fact that the story comes to us from béaloideas rather than being written down by scholars does not make it untrue; how many stories of today's South Sudan massacres will be lost if only the ones typed up by journalists or in UN reports are later believed?

Subject: RE: ADD/Origins: The Bard of Armagh
From: Jack Campin
Date: 06 Mar 17 - 08:40 AM

Have you actually seen an early Irish harp, like the one in Trinity College Dublin or those in the National Museum of Scotland? They are nothing like a revival-era folk harp, and weigh several times as much - the frame is a great big lump of oak, you would not take it anywhere without a horse or cart.

We know a lot about the tune, back to around 1700; there is nothing "typically Irish" about it since it was commonly used in England and Scotland before there is any record it in Ireland. It's obvious where Campbell got it - Burns made it hugely popular and it had been reprinted and circulated many times all over the British Isles. Broadside publishers didn't need to print the tune: they'd just name it, as "Banks of the Devon" - any literate singer from Cork to Lerwick would know what was intended. (Burns was first published in Ireland in 1787).

A harp would be no sort of disguise at all. There were very few harpists at any time and anybody who knew anything could name every one they were likely to encounter. And if any priest actually managed to learn the harp well enough to pass as a pro, we'd know about it.

I have an early edition of Campbell's poems where the editor says who Campbell actually had in mind - an Irish exile from the 1798 rising who he knew in Germany. No 17th century bishops involved.

There can't be many songs with such a well documented origin which so many ideologues are determined to ignore.

Subject: RE: ADD/Origins: The Bard of Armagh
From: Jack Campin
Date: 15 Nov 17 - 12:05 PM

To add to that: I haven't seen Hughes's collection (which, via John McCormack, seems to be the origin of all currently sung versions) - what does he say about the tune? Had he personally collected it from tradition, or from some earlier printed source? We seem to have a gap of about 100 years between when Campbell wrote it and when Hughes classed it as a "country song".

Subject: Lyr Add: THE BARD OF ARMAGH (Ritchie, 1847)
From: Jim Dixon
Date: 25 Nov 17 - 09:38 PM

From The National Songster; a Collection of Scotch, English, and Irish Standard and Popular Songs (Glasgow: Francis Orr and Sons, 1847), page 437:

THE BARD OF ARMAGH
J. L. Ritchie.

O list to the lay of a poor Irish harper,
And scorn not the strings for his old wither'd hand;
Remember his fingers once could move sharper,
To raise the merry strains of his dear native land.
'Twas long before the shamrock, our green isle's lovely emblem,
Was crush'd in its beauty 'neath the Saxon lion's paw,
I was call'd by the coleens, around me assembling,
Their Bould Phelim Brady, the Bard of Armagh!

Ah, how I love to muse on the days of my boyhood,
Tho' fourscore and three years have flitted since then
Still it gives sweet reflection, as every young joy should,
For the merry-hearted boys make the best of old men.
At the fair or the wake I could twirl my shillelah,
Or trip through the jig in my brogs bound with straw;
Sure all the purty maids in the village or the valley
Lov'd Bould Phelim Brady, the Bard of Armagh.

Now tho' I've wandered this wide world over,
It's Ireland is my home and a parent to me;
Then, O! let the turf that my old bones shall cover
Be cut from the ground that is trod by the free.
And when serjeant Death in his cold arms shall embrace me,
Low lull me asleep with "Erin go Bragh,"
By the side of my Kathleen, my young wife, oh place me,
Then forget Phelim Brady, the Bard of Armagh.

Subject: RE: ADD/Origins: The Bard of Armagh
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 26 Nov 17 - 04:28 AM

"it was commonly used in England and Scotland before there is any record it in Ireland."
“The Venerable Bede reported cattlemen passing around a harp and singing 'vain and idle songs'.”
[R J Page Life in Anglo-Saxon England}
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: ADD/Origins: The Bard of Armagh
From: Lighter
Date: 26 Nov 17 - 09:45 AM

Jack, "The Bard of Armagh" is the first song in Hughes's second volume, and is "copyright 1914."

He says nothing about it other than associating it with County Tyrone.

Subject: RE: Lyr ADD/Origins: The Bard of Armagh
From: Lighter
Date: 21 Jul 19 - 12:07 PM

refresh

Subject: RE: Lyr ADD/Origins: The Bard of Armagh
From: Jim Dixon
Date: 27 Jul 19 - 04:13 PM

Here is the page Lighter was referring to:

Irish Country Songs edited by Herbert Hughes (New York, Toronto & London: Boosey & Co., 1909), vol. 2 page 1. It includes notation for voice and piano with an abbreviated version of the lyrics, comprising only half the lines given above.

Subject: RE: Lyr ADD/Origins: The Bard of Armagh
From: Lighter
Date: 27 Jul 19 - 07:42 PM

The title page of the hefty, anonymously compiled 1847 songster Jim discovered describes its contents as "Original and Select."

Ritchie's lyrics (no tune is indicated) are marked as "Original."

Since this seems to be the earliest discovered printing, there seems little reason not to attribute the words to J. L. Ritchie.

I've found no further information about him.

Subject: RE: Lyr ADD/Origins: The Bard of Armagh
From: GUEST,Randy
Date: 28 Jan 22 - 08:14 PM

His tombstone at Desertcreat says Phelim Brady. Go to youtube and in the search bar type: The Bard of Armagh Desertcreat Church.

Subject: RE: Lyr ADD/Origins: The Bard of Armagh
From: RandyL
Date: 31 Jan 22 - 12:42 AM

In 1847 the original "The Bard Of Armagh" was published on pages 437/438 of the National Songster. the first line states he's laid to rest in the fashion of an Irish passing "O list the lay or a poor Irish harper" that means a horizontal position.

Subject: RE: Lyr ADD/Origins: The Bard of Armagh
From: Thompson
Date: 31 Jan 22 - 01:34 AM

List to the lay of a poor Irish harper.
Lay: A narrative poem.

Subject: RE: Lyr ADD/Origins: The Bard of Armagh
From: RandyL
Date: 31 Jan 22 - 01:19 PM

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

Subject: RE: Lyr ADD/Origins: The Bard of Armagh
From: RandyL
Date: 31 Jan 22 - 05:46 PM

lay: not ordained into or belonging to the clergy (a lay preacher)

Subject: RE: Lyr ADD/Origins: The Bard of Armagh
From: Reinhard
Date: 31 Jan 22 - 06:27 PM

RandyL, lay as in lay preacher is an adjective, not a noun, and thus doesn't fit here where it is "the lay of", not "the lay harper".

The Traditional Ballad Index entry for this song, as posted above by Joe in 2004, quotes in the description: "List to the tale of a poor Irish harper".

Subject: RE: Lyr ADD/Origins: The Bard of Armagh
From: RandyL
Date: 31 Jan 22 - 08:45 PM

THE BARD OF ARMAGH
                         (original)
O LIST to the lay of a poor Irish harper,
And scorn not the strings for his old wither'd hand;
Remember his fingers once could move sharper,
To raise the merry strains of his dear land.
Twas long before the shamrock, our green isle's love-
ly emblem,
Was crush'd in its beauty neath the Saxon lion's
paw,
I was call'd by the *colleens, around me assembling
Their Bould Phelim Brady, the Bard of Armagh !

Ah,how I love to muse on the days of my boyhood,
Tho' fourscore and three years have flitted since
   then
Still it gives sweet reflection,as every young joy
should,
For the merry-hearted boys make the best of old
men.
At the fair or the wake I could twirl my shillelah,
Or trip through the jig in my brogs bound with
straw;
Sure all the purty maids in the village or the valley
Lov'd Bould Phelim Brady, the Bard of Armagh.
Now tho' I've wandered this wide world over,
It's Ireland is my home and a parent to me;
Then, O!let the turf that my old bones shall cover
Be cut from the ground that is trod by the free.
And when serjeant Death in his cold arms shall em-
brace me,
Low lull me asleepwith " Erin go Bragh,"
By the side of my Kathleen, my young wife,oh place
me,
Then forget Phelim Brady


* the colleens were Scotch-Irish: Scottish settlers continued to come to Ireland to immigrate to the American colonies.

Subject: RE: Lyr ADD/Origins: The Bard of Armagh
From: RandyL
Date: 01 Feb 22 - 01:07 AM

https://youtu.be/W07SXadlFyU

Subject: RE: Lyr ADD/Origins: The Bard of Armagh
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 01 Feb 22 - 06:40 AM

Thompson is perfectly correct about "lay." Let's lay that one to rest...

Subject: RE: Lyr ADD/Origins: The Bard of Armagh
From: GUEST
Date: 09 May 24 - 04:26 AM

I had a with my group Bravehearts about what song to sing. I was determined i would sing Streets of Laredo and my friend martin heard half barifs from another song Road and the Miles to Dundee like what others have said on the Bard of Armargh the recording I had of that song was by John Macormac recorded in 1933. After spliting up my band every where i sing i always preform streets of Laredo cos thats my favourite song and most folks know it, from Joe.

Subject: RE: Lyr ADD/Origins: The Bard of Armagh
From: GUEST,Steve Shaw
Date: 09 May 24 - 06:18 AM

The John McCormack 1933 version is the one I know too. It's lovely.

Subject: RE: Lyr ADD/Origins: The Bard of Armagh
From: Lighter
Date: 09 May 24 - 09:35 AM

In '09 Jim Dixon posted the text from "Whistle-Binkie" (1878).

That book was published earlier in Glasgow in 1853. It is a very substantial literary anthology of over 900 pages, with extensive biographies of many of the contributors. Unfortunately, Ritchie - the author of "The Bard of Armagh" indicated in the 1847 "National Songster," isn't one of them.

However, "Whistle-Binkie" credits it to a different Ritchie. Maddeningly, the book presents his (or her) name not in print but as a facsimile of his signature! The first name is hard to read, but it looks to me like "Alexander A."

/mudcat.org/thread.cfm?threadid=11606&messages=86&page=1&desc=yes

A brief biography of this Ritchie appears in Charles Rogers' "The Modern Scottish Minstrel," Vol. IV, 1857. Born in Edinburgh in 1816 Alexander A. Ritchie became a successful painter, recognized by the Scottish Academy, of Romantic and local Edinburgh scenes.

He also penned a ballad-influenced song, "The Wells o' Wearie," to the tune of "The Bonnie House of Airlie."

Ritchie died in 1850 at the age of thirty-four.