County Down geographical names

Subject: County Down geographical names
From: GUEST
Date: 28 Jan 04 - 11:28 AM

Subject: RE: County Down geographical names
From: Big Mick
Date: 28 Jan 04 - 11:32 AM

Yes???

Subject: RE: County Down geographical names
From: IanC
Date: 28 Jan 04 - 11:37 AM

Northern Ireland Place-Name Project

Subject: RE: County Down geographical names
From: GUEST,ClaireBear
Date: 28 Jan 04 - 11:47 AM

At a guess, I'd say "Guest" is trying to figure out how to take my advice about renaming this thread requesting information on two County Down mountains referred to in a song. Hope that's it, anyway!

Claire

Subject: RE: County Down geographical names
From: GUEST
Date: 28 Jan 04 - 05:40 PM

Somehow the message got sent when it existed in name only. Then I got disconnected and couldn't get back on line. So let's try this again.

Well, I don't know what happened, but the initial message got posted before it existed except in name. So here it is.

On Claire Bear's suggestion, I'm trying this query under another subject heading. It has to do with Angelo Dornan's distinctive version of 'The Green Mountain' (the American form of 'Come All You Little Streamers'). This is in all probability traditional in the Dornan family; a stanza has been added at the beginning (replacing the usual first stanza of the song) and another at the end, not found in any other version and consisting of phrases familiar from other songs, to adapt 'The Green Mountain' to the situation of an immigrant from County Down to New Brunswick, Canada. The last stanza begins: 'If I were over Newry water I would think myself home,/ For it's there I have a sweetheart but here I have none'.

The usual form of the second stanza of 'The Green Mountain' is exemplified by a Boston broadside: 'On the top of this mountain is verdure of green, / The finest of places that ever was seen / For fishing, for fowling, and walking also, / And the finest of roses on this mountain doth grow.'

Angelo Dornan's version: 'O sleep valiant mountain, it bears a great name, / And beyond Lunar mountain it is fair to be seen, / With hunting and fowling and grazing also, / And the finest of blueberries on this mountain do grow'.

The first two lines of the above stanza appear to be pretty nonsensical. I seems to me that localization to County Down (or less likely to New Brunswick) may have occurred here, and that the existing text may contain garbled forms of Irish place names; song lyrics are notoriously vulnerable to corruption through misunderstanding, and toponyms familiar to a first-generation immigrant might well have been meaningless to his descendents several generations later, and have been replaced by similar sounding English words which made little sense in that context. Could 'sleep', for example, originally have been _sliabh_? After all, the high hills in County Down are called 'Slieve' this and that down to the present. Are 'valiant' and 'lunar' perhaps distorted forms of Irish names for such prominences around Newry? Or perhaps translations of Irish names?

Here I need help from someone familiar with County Down topography; the available gazeteers and atlases are no help. Any suggestions?

Stephen R. (still looking for the window to sign in as a member, but still a guest in the computer's estimation)

Subject: RE: County Down geographical names
From: MartinRyan
Date: 28 Jan 04 - 05:49 PM

Slieve Gullion.... Slieve Gallen.... as in "Slieve Gallen Braes" is a distinct possibility. Lunar puzzles me for now.

Regards

Subject: RE: County Down geographical names
From: Stephen R.
Date: 29 Jan 04 - 09:32 PM

Thanks, Martin Ryan! Yes, this sounds plausible. Anyone with an idea about Lunar, please let us know about that too.

My coookie has now been rebaked, or whatever it needed, so now I will not have to be identified as 'guest' or 'non-member', at least until it goes stale again.

Stephen

Subject: RE: County Down geographical names
From: Stephen R.
Date: 29 Jan 04 - 10:29 PM

Better and better: 'Oh sleep valiant mountain, it bears a great name'--Slieve Gullion is Sliabh gCulainn, the mountain of Culann the smith, which is certainly a great enough name to make sense of the line. Perhaps it was "Oh Slieve Gullion, mountain that bears a great name" or something of the sort. Now if we could pin down Lunar Mountain as satisfactorily . . . .

Stephen

Subject: RE: County Down geographical names
From: Stephen R.
Date: 30 Jan 04 - 02:43 PM

If 'beyond' means not physically 'on the other side of' but 'more than', Lunar Mountain could be in New Brunswick. The immigrant who produced this variant could here be expressing his nostalgia by asserting that Slieve Gullion (on the hypothesis we are here developing) is fairer than a mountain of his current home in Canada.

Stephen

Subject: RE: County Down geographical names
From: greg stephens
Date: 30 Jan 04 - 02:52 PM

English versions of this song are also noted for incomprehensible words, which have generated much enjoyable speculation as to whether they are about tin-mining, the Virgin Mary, or portions of the male and female anatomy. Whatever the song may have originally been about, it has certainly given rise to some very odd variants. I imagine there must be other threads about the "Streams of Lovely Nancy" or the "Streams of Nantsian". I always find the ivory tower rising out of the black sand a little...I suppose "suggestive" is the word.

Subject: RE: County Down geographical names
From: greg stephens
Date: 30 Jan 04 - 02:55 PM

By the way, the mysterious "Lunar mountain", though it may well be a corruption of an Irish name, could equally well be a mishearing of "yonder mountain", which is what is sung in two or three versions I have heard. But Lunar mountain is certainly moere fun. There is no denying this is a very odd song.

Subject: RE: County Down geographical names
From: Stephen R.
Date: 30 Jan 04 - 03:06 PM

And possibly Slieve Gullion was suggested to the singer by the reference to hunting in the third line of the stanza; the tale of 'The Hunt of Slieve Gullion', in which Finn chases a fawn up to the lake atop the mountain, finds a beautiful young woman there, and is sent to the bottom of the lake to retrieve her lost ring. The swim, however, turned him old, grey, and feeble. When he fails to return, the Fianna search until they find him, still sitting by the lake in deep depression. By digging up the sidhe they induce the gentry to send out a draught that restores Finn to youthful vigor but leaves his hair grey. The young woman was the sister of the one Finn had chosen for his sweetheart, and the spell that robbed him of his youth was her revenge for being rejected in favour of her sister. The plot in general seems to have little to do with Angelo Dornan's song, but original singer of this version may have made a mental connection of the hunt with which it begins with the line about 'hunting and fowling and grazing also'.

Stephen

Subject: RE: County Down geographical names
From: Stephen R.
Date: 30 Jan 04 - 03:18 PM

Dear Greg Stephens,

Yes, other versions of the 'Green Mountain' type of this song usually beging with 'On yonder high mountain there a castle doth stand' or the like. Regrettably, Helen Creighton did not ask Angelo Dornan about the meaning of the song, or at least if she did she did not include the information in _Maritime Folk Songs_. I'll chase around after 'Lunar Mountain' a bit longer, but I don't expect to be able to establish beyond doubt what is going on in this stanza, just to offer a reasonable hypothesis.

Stephen