The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #869   Message #276451
Posted By: Malcolm Douglas
12-Aug-00 - 05:31 PM
Thread Name: Origins: She Moves through the Fair
Subject: RE: She Moves Through the Fair
I must try to listen to that...  The version Catrin posted above seems to be mainly Paddy Tunney's (verses 1-4), with a verse 5 that may have come from the version in Kennedy (or one like it) and a final verse that could be from the Barney MacGarvey version I mentioned, and which Paddy recorded on The Wild Bees' Nest.

Having said that, there are some important differences, since, as I said, none of them mention death.  Paddy's 4th. verse ran:

According to promise, at midnight he rose
But all that he found was the downfolded clothes.
The sheets they lay empty 'twas plain for to see
And out of the window with another went she.

Verse 5 looks like a conflation of two of the verses from Kennedy, with "soul" substituted for "welfare".  In MacGarvey's version, it's "true love", not "dead love".  Unless somebody can find a traditional source for it, I'd put money on it's being a recent re-write, though certainly an interesting twist to the story.  Oh, "grease-hawk" is given by Tunney as "greesagh", which I believe is Gaelic "griosach": "burning embers".

Malcolm