To answer Ciarili's question first -- yes indeed, Máire Bean Uí Chéide (previously Máire Ní Cheallaigh) is surely the person you heard. She lives in Boston, and was one of four (!) Corn Uí Riada winners who sang at the UWM sean-nós weekend I referred to earlier -- the other three being Meataí Joe Shéamais Ó Fátharta, Lillis Ó Laoire, and Áine Bean Uí Mhuineacháin -- in addition to seven Americans. That was SOME weekend!

As regards the order of the stanzas in Máire's version, I feel sure that the sixth stanza -- the one that begins "Thug mé liom isteach s ngáirdín í" -- is in the wrong place (either that or the murderer is also a necrophiliac -- eeew!). If I had to hazard a guess, I would say it probably belongs just before the stanza that begins "thug mé liom ar chúl an teampaill í" -- in other words, first of all he makes love to her, and then he slits her throat.

Those of us who are partial to the "true crime" genre of literature know that unfortunately some murderers prefer to do things the other way about, but given that this guy finds his victim's subsequent kiss -- the one she gives him when she visits him as a ghost -- "colder than death" (duh!) suggests that he is not one of your typical power-murderers.

I don't know the answer to the question of why more Child Ballads haven't broken through into Irish. The notion of the conversational format is interesting, indeed. Other songs -- not ballads -- come to mind, such as "Amhrán an Tae" and "Peigín is Peadar" (both humorous songs) that are also cast as conversations, not to mention the whole tradition of agallamh beirte (also generally funny or satirical). The presence of such songs in the repertoire may have opened the door for songs like the one here. In fact, however, there are so few ballads in Irish that it would be hard to make a compelling generalization based on so little evidence.

I do think that some singers get so involved in their songs that they make comments -- often, I think, as a way of distancing themselves from the emotional reality they are trying to convey. The couplet that Sorcha's father was in the habit of reciting may fall into this category. My husband has told me that he heard Joe Heaney sing "The Ship Mill Ross" in Ennis one time -- this is a song about the assassination of the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland in the Phoenix Park in Dublin. When Joe came to the part where the assassin takes out a pistol and fires, apparently he stopped singing and said, "I didn't do it, it wasn't me."

Another bit of evidence for this may be the odd use of indirect locutions in preference to direct ones. It's almost as if the singer were trying to distance himself from the immediacy of the emotions portrayed in the song by treating the song (which may be case as a first-person narrative) as if it were a story relating to some person other than himself. The use of an indirect locution implies the presence of "deir sé" or some other attribution, and thereby further implies that the singer is only quoting the story as he heard it, rather than describing emotions notionally his own. And in support of this idea, some singers (including an elderly man I knew quite well) actually interpolate "deir sé". Here's an example, from a song printed in the Connacht collection "Ceol na nOileáin". Look at the beginning of the fourth line:

A ógánaigh an chúil cheangailte le raibh mé seal in éineacht,
chuaidh tú aréir an bealach seo is ní tháinic tú dom fhéachaint.
Shíl mé nach ndéanfaí dochar duit dá dtagthá agus mé d'iarraidh,
is gurb í do phóigín a thabharfadh sólás dom dá mbeinn i lá an fhiabhrais.

Jeez, look at the clock. time for bed!

Virginia