Hello, Martin!

Thanks for your reply. I was thinking more along the lines of books that give detailed information about the histories, along with the music. I currently have 2 such books of collections -- 1 is simply called "Irish Ballads" and goes into great detail about approximately 20 traditional Irish songs. The other is a Soodlum's "Irish Ballad Book", which gives much shorter backgrounds on about 100 songs.

The reason behind all this is that we are Celtic musicians who want very much to be able to share the "histories" of the music we perform with our audience. Plus, we are all truly into our Celtic heritages.

Hope this clarifies the request. Please let me know if I can do any research for you as well. A couple of songs we're curious about are "The Ramblin' Rover", "Nancy Whiskey" and "Red Is The Rose/Loch Lomond".

I'm one of those people who lives & breathes Celtic music, so I'm sure I can think of some others later. There is a song on "The Best of the Bothy Band" whose English translation of the title is "The Twisted Rope" that I would LOVE to find the English translation for. Or even the actual Irish Gaelic lyrics, for that matter, as I could either translate them myself or ask one of the native Gaelic speakers that we know.

Thanks, Martin!

Val