Song from film The Dead (James Joyce book)

Subject: RE: Song from film The Dead
From: GUEST,JoeK
Date: 16 Feb 07 - 08:17 AM

We ought not get too carried away by the Joyce cult and his 'dislike' of Ireland. He was a great writer but also a vain little peacock of a man who couldn't wait to be lionised as a great writer should, and found Ireland's preoccupation with political matters rather than with himself, too much to bear. As for Ireland's forgiveness of him, even today relatively few Irish people actually read Joyce for relaxation but everyone knows he's good for 'cultural tourism'.

As all authors who write in English must eventually do, Joyce sought acclaim from the very centre of English literature, ie Britain herself. Ireland was never going to be enough to satisfy him, being a relative backwater of the then British dominated Anglo-Saxon world. He chose 'exile' in France rather than England probably because he had the common feeling of inferiority towards the English that many Irish and colonials had and may have feared its debilitating effect on him as a writer should he go to live there.

Ireland in English language literature is always the strange, unusual or fey place, the place where 'normal ' doesn't apply, because that is the view that the wider Anglo world finds most agreeable about Ireland. It makes allowances for uncomfortable and contradictory truths like the eternal struggle to pull away from Britain while yet trapped in the web of the powerful English language and its world view. From a British or perhaps an American viewpoint this is legitimate, so, give it to them and you are rewarded accordingly, always provided you really can write of course.

That is how the Anglo literary world sees Irishness and that is the view it has always demanded. Anglo-Irish writers like Yeats found this kind of 'contrary' Irishness to their liking but 'natives' like O'Connor and O'Faoilean tried to reconcile it with an older, deeper Irishness. Joyce declared his independence from Ireland by scourging it in all its manifestations.

JoeK

Subject: RE: Song from film The Dead
From: GUEST,JTT
Date: 15 Feb 07 - 06:53 PM

Getting back to the tonality, Nora Ní Ghriallais has a version of Lord Gregory in a different tune than the one that's usually sung - and I presume that it is an alternative, also sung in Connmara.

Incidentally, Pádraic Colum, in his and Molly Colum's book Our Friend James Joyce (or possibly Molly in her memoirs) has a story of Joyce singing Oh the Brown and the Yellow Ale in a most affecting way, and of this being a song that he sung often.

Subject: RE: The Dead, James Joyce.
From: Peace
Date: 15 Feb 07 - 12:31 AM

"O, THE RAIN FALLS ON...BABE LIES COLD
She is singing "The Lass of Aughrim," a version from western Ireland which Nora (Aughrim is near Galway, Nora's origin) sang to Joyce. (One of the original versions of this song is "The Lass of Lochroyan," #76 in F.J.Child, English and Scottish Popular Ballads, 1882-98). The lyrics tell the story of a young peasant girl who has a child by a Lord Gregory, who seduced and then left her. She comes to his castle to beg for his help, but is turned away by his mother who, behind the closed front door, imitates her sons voice. She puts out to sea in a small boat to drown herself and the child, but is not saved, even though the lord discovers his mother's ruse and races to find her. The ballad ends with the lord mourning for his lost love and bringing down a curse on his mother. There are many versions of the song, which perhaps explains Bartell D'Arcy's confusion. The version that Nora sang to Joyce can be found in Richard Ellmann's James Joyce (revised edition, p. 286). The three quoted lines are from the section below where the girl talks with Lord Gregory, who is behind the closed door:


If you'll be the lass of Aughrim
As I am taking you mean to be
Tell me the first token
That passed between you and me.

O don't you remember
That night on yon lean hill
When we both met together
Which I am sorry now to tell.

The rain falls on my yellow locks
And the dew it wets my skin;
My babe lies cold within my arms;
Lord Gregory, let me in."

from

here.

Subject: RE: The Dead, James Joyce.
From: Peace
Date: 14 Feb 07 - 09:43 PM

You might wish to read this essay.

Subject: The Dead, James Joyce.
From: GUEST,guest
Date: 14 Feb 07 - 09:35 PM

Hi, I'm just wondering if by chance, out of those who have read the dead, if you happened to remember the song in it. the lass of aughrim. and i was just wondering what that song might have meant in the context of the story. i have been trying to figure it out for quite some time and have come up with nothing. thanks to all!

Subject: RE: Song from film The Dead
From: Bonnie Shaljean
Date: 01 Feb 07 - 08:31 AM

Guest 2:07, I meant about the Tree Grows In Brooklyn query.

Jim - Thanks you for your kind offer, yes, I would be very grateful if you could post a copy out to me (or tell me where I could buy a copy of the journal). You can send it to the Cork School of Music, Cork city and mark it for my attention. Many many thanks -

Subject: RE: Song from film The Dead
From: GUEST
Date: 01 Feb 07 - 02:55 AM

Bonny,
Sorry - missed your question earlier re. Hugh Sheilds article. I think it was in one of the Irish journals. We have it here somewhere; I'll look it out and if you want it I'll be happy to post it to you if it's unavailable.
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: Song from film The Dead
From: Bonnie Shaljean
Date: 31 Jan 07 - 05:59 AM

That sounds like it's worth starting another thread for, Guest - not everyone will see your question if it's stuck at the end of this one.
And - why not introduce yourself, or even join? You seem like you'd make a good Mudcatter!

Subject: RE: Song from film The Dead
From: GUEST
Date: 30 Jan 07 - 10:42 PM

I asked about The Dead and its claim to being "the greatest," and I thank you all for your responses.

I first read it at the end of Dubliners and did indeed think of it as part of a whole. Then later I read it 3 or 4 times as a separate piece, and although it was still great, it didn't have the impact it did the first time.

There are lists of greatest films, record albums, novels, and so on, and The Dead is usually listed at the top of "the greatest" short stories. The lists I've seen, at least. And if a piece is so universally acclaimed, you tend to wonder why. All I know is I've never come across a better story. Some I've enjoyed more, and some that are vital to the point of bursting even in translation, but none as good as The Dead.

On a related note, this thread made me wonder about a song from a film called A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (1945). Actor James Dunn sat down at a piano and sang a slow ballad. I can't recall the name of the song, and brief research on the internet didn't turn up the information, so I posted a question at the IMDB (Internet Movie Database). The only response suggested the song might be "Annie Laurie." The poster left a link with words and a melody:

http://ingeb.org/songs/annielau.html

Been so long since I've seen the movie I really can't remember. This might be the song. If it is, perhaps the character had a particular reason for singing it. Irish-Americans in Brooklyn, New York, around 1900.

And speaking of greatness, I thought at the time I saw this film that it was perfect. When it was finished I thought back over every scene, and there was not one that could have been cut, not one that needed to be added. Perfect performances, perfect technically. A really special movie (but sad), if you've never seen it.

Subject: RE: Song from film The Dead
From: Bonnie Shaljean
Date: 30 Jan 07 - 12:01 PM

As did Twain, Thackeray, Dickens, Sinclair Lewis, Zola, etc etc etc...
If the writers & other creative artists don't tell it like it is, who will?

Subject: RE: Song from film The Dead
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 30 Jan 07 - 10:11 AM

Well yes, but without being mischievous either - he didn't call his book Great Injustices that Happen Everywhere - he called it Dubliners.

I live just down the road from road from Eastwood. I married a local girl. When I first came to this area nearly forty years ago, I couldn't believe how reviled DH Lawrence was still, amongst the common people. My wife's Great Aunt Polly who was 98 and claimed to have known DH and his family, called him a randy bugger. Whilst my future father in law confided that he had a bit of a reputation locally as an arsehole bandit. My mother in law assured me this was just rough miners talk about anybody with an education.

Theres a Lawrence snackery nowadays and they have preserved his birthplace, but theres still the underlying feeling that he was someone who thought himself above his fellow citizens.

I just think the Irish have been nicer and more forgiving to James Joyce - whom I think harboured just as many uncharitable thoughts.

Subject: RE: Song from film The Dead
From: Captain Ginger
Date: 30 Jan 07 - 09:42 AM

Certainly Dubliners is a warts-and-all portrait of the city, but I think his characters were also archetypes - which is one reasons why we still find them so compelling today. The piety, roguery and vanity were and are just as strong in Trieste, Paris and Zurich, let alone Edwardian Dublin.

And, withough wishing to be mischievous, isn't there an unsaid darkness about Under Milk Wood? The faintest hints of violence, drunkenness, pederasty and fear lie just outside the firelight, I think.

Subject: RE: Song from film The Dead
From: Bonnie Shaljean
Date: 30 Jan 07 - 09:19 AM

Thanks for posting that passage, Captain G - I couldn't agree with you more in your assessment of it. The few light taps the snow makes on the windowpane, which echo the gravel Michael Furey threw against Gretta's window all those years ago, the journey westward - it's writing at its best.

Joyce's criticisms of Ireland are well known here, and they certainly earned him no friends at the time, at least in certain circles. But great art transcends the artist who created it, and I think people can distinguish between the two. And those sorts of injustices occurred everywhere, not just Dublin. Read Dickens on the underbelly of London, for instance. It's never Under Milk Wood -

Subject: RE: Song from film The Dead
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 30 Jan 07 - 08:51 AM

I wasn't really thinking about the his reaction to Irish politics and factionalism. there probably more factions in the English folk clubs.

I was thinking rather of Dubliners itself. The drunk who beats his children, the two children who set out looking for adventure and encounter a pervert, the ferrets cage intensity between entrants backstage in a music competition, the heartless lothario who cheats a poor servant girl out of her wages. And in Portrait of the Artist - a priest who beats a child for being short sighted.

Well its not exactly Under Milk Wood , is it?

Subject: RE: Song from film The Dead
From: Captain Ginger
Date: 30 Jan 07 - 08:20 AM

I like to think of Joyce as being well above such things and rather contemptuous of narrow nationalism. In his early embrace of Ibsen and his later wanderings across Europe, he seems to embody Tom Paine's maxim, 'My country is the world and my religion is to do good.'

The parochialism and schismatic nature of so much of Irish life does seem to have depressed him; in Portrait there is almost a mocking of the cult of Parnell, in Ulysses you have the Cyclops episode, and even in The Dead there is the frisson of hostility when the insult 'West Briton!' is hissed.

Cosmopolitanism fills his work, from Daedalus ending Portrait to 'forge in the smithy of my soul the uncreated conscience of my race\ (as in human rather than Irish), to the mittel-European background of Leopold Bloom and Molly's dreams of Gibraltar in Ullysses, to that great celebration of the oneness of humankind - the great 'Here Comes Everybody' in Finnegans Wake.

To return to The Dead and it's standing; each story in Dubliners is a gem, but The Dead is the jewel in the crown, and the last three paragraphs are to me probably the finest and most moving writing ever in the English Language (and handled with surprising sensitivity in Huston's film):

The air of the room chilled his shoulders. He stretched himself cautiously along under the sheets and lay down beside his wife. One by one, they were all becoming shades. Better pass boldly into that other world, in the full glory of some passion, than fade and wither dismally with age. He thought of how she who lay beside him had locked in her heart for so many years that image of her lover's eyes when he had told her that he did not wish to live.

Generous tears filled Gabriel's eyes. He had never felt like that himself towards any woman, but he knew that such a feeling must be love. The tears gathered more thickly in his eyes and in the partial darkness he imagined he saw the form of a young man standing under a dripping tree. Other forms were near. His soul had approached that region where dwell the vast hosts of the dead. He was conscious of, but could not apprehend, their wayward and flickering existence. His own identity was fading out into a grey impalpable world: the solid world itself, which these dead had one time reared and lived in, was dissolving and dwindling.

A few light taps upon the pane made him turn to the window. It had begun to snow again. He watched sleepily the flakes, silver and dark, falling obliquely against the lamplight. The time had come for him to set out on his journey westward. Yes, the newspapers were right: snow was general all over Ireland. It was falling on every part of the dark central plain, on the treeless hills, falling softly upon the Bog of Allen and, farther westward, softly falling into the dark mutinous Shannon waves. It was falling, too, upon every part of the lonely churchyard on the hill where Michael Furey lay buried. It lay thickly drifted on the crooked crosses and headstones, on the spears of the little gate, on the barren thorns. His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead.

Subject: RE: Song from film The Dead
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 30 Jan 07 - 07:49 AM

In Portrait of the Artist of course Joyce speaks of an epiphany, as a moment of spiritual or aesthetic revelation. And this sense that reality is in fact the sum of other parallel realities is surely the whole moving spirit behind Ulysses.

So the choice of date is probably significant.

Joyce paid Ireland the ultimate compliment by dedicating his life to writing of it as some sort of portal to all realities. However there always seems to me a lot that is uncomplimentary about Ireland in his writing, and it always amazes me the Irish have taken him so much to their hearts.

Some of his stuff makes Angela's Ashes look like the product of the Irish tourist board. A few of the Irish nationalists, not all of the from Ireland, that we encounter on Mudcat - surely the spiritual ancestors of Cyclops - I don't think they would like Joyce if they actually read him.

Subject: RE: Song from film The Dead
From: Bonnie Shaljean
Date: 30 Jan 07 - 06:07 AM

Can you tell us where we might find that, Jim? Is it published in a book?

Subject: RE: Song from film The Dead
From: GUEST
Date: 30 Jan 07 - 02:19 AM

Well worth getting hold of Hugh Shields' study of the ballad.
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: Song from film The Dead
From: Bonnie Shaljean
Date: 29 Jan 07 - 09:31 PM

> Why is The Dead considered the greatest short story ever written?

"Greatest" is a definition that people can debate and argue about endlessly (though personally I do rate The Dead as one of the greatest stories in the English language – I don't think there is a single "THE" greatest). I don't know if critical analysis is going to give you the answer you're looking for, Guest, because I'm not sure that's where its greatness resides. It resonates on many levels, and (like the five blind men trying to describe the elephant) it depends upon what the reader responds to. One of its prevailing themes, as the title suggests, is the overwhelming presence of the past and its ghosts – the towering dead, as Dylan Thomas puts it – and the soon-to-be dead, and the influence that lost worlds continue to exercise over the present one. Loss and paralysis figure greatly in this story, and the evocation of Ireland in the final paragraphs is one of the magnificent passages in literature. The story comes at the end of a book-length collection of tales, titled "Dubliners", and though each one stands independently of the rest, all are linked together by underlying meanings so that the volume equals more than the sum of its parts. Time and place (Dublin 1904, January 6th, the Feast of Epiphany) have great impact, and you probably need to be tuned in to Ireland and its sensibilities to get the most out of Joyce. It's very difficult to describe what I mean in a short paragraph, but then I suppose that's the point of fine literature: it's hard to pin down. One can paraphrase or summarise, but only the original really says it.

Ruminating about the story's theme and the music has sparked a further thought: When this song appears in the story, D'Arcy is upstairs singing or practicing, as he believes, to himself. He is annoyed to find that anyone has overheard him when he is not sounding his best. (Joyce himself was a prize-winning singer, second in some opinions only to John McCormack, so he would have been familiar with the small vanities and tempers of star tenors.) But, I wonder, what if D'Arcy had been singing downstairs in the parlour to the assembled company, rather than in private? Would he have even chosen the old-tonality Lass of Aughrim? Very likely he'd have gone for more popular drawing room fare, which was not in the "old tonality" at all. Thus, the song itself becomes one more relic of the dead, the past, the ghosthood they are all moving inexorably towards. (It's also relevant for the image of the doomed lover standing out in the rain, seeking admittance which is not going to be granted.)

Incidentally, the house in Dublin where this story is said to be set, 15 Usher's Island (which isn't an island but a quay) still stands, and they give re-enactment dinners of the one in this story, recreating its atmosphere and setting. More info at www.jamesjoycehouse.com (click on the link "Dead Dinners") (I'm not kidding).

If you Google "Joyce The+Dead" you will find a whole host of critical commentary. One thing of interest I came across was this:

"The Lass of Aughrim," a version from western Ireland which Nora (Aughrim is near Galway, Nora's origin) sang to Joyce. (One of the original versions of this song is "The Lass of Lochroyan," #76 in F.J. Child, English and Scottish Popular Ballads, 1882-98). The lyrics tell the story of a young peasant girl who has a child by a Lord Gregory, who seduced and then left her. She comes to his castle to beg for his help, but is turned away by his mother who, behind the closed front door, imitates her son's voice. She puts out to sea in a small boat to drown herself and the child, but is not saved, even though the lord discovers his mother's ruse and races to find her. The ballad ends with the lord mourning for his lost love and bringing down a curse on his mother.
There are many versions of the song, which perhaps explains Bartell D'Arcy's confusion. The version that Nora sang to Joyce can be found in Richard Ellmann's James Joyce (revised edition, p. 286). The three quoted lines are from the section below where the girl talks with Lord Gregory, who is behind the closed door:

If you'll be the lass of Aughrim
As I am taking you mean to be
Tell me the first token
That passed between you and me.

O don't you remember
That night on yon lean hill
When we both met together
Which I am sorry now to tell.

The rain falls on my yellow locks
And the dew it wets my skin;
My babe lies cold within my arms;
Lord Gregory, let me in.

Finally, an interesting side-note regarding the Feast of Epiphany which may be relevant (considering Joyce's attitude towards religion): "The Feast of the Epiphany on January 6 exemplifies religious diversification as well as the pagan elements present in some of these celebrations." [Encyclopedia Britannica]

Subject: RE: Song from film The Dead
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 29 Jan 07 - 08:20 PM

I think probably Joyce's view of 'old Irish tonality' would probably be along the lines of Frank Patterson rather than John Reilly. he was a big fan of that sort of tenor, being one himself and he promoted their concerts.

As I remember Molly Bloom was quite keen on Blazes O'Boylan, who was (I think) a tenor.

Subject: RE: Song from film The Dead
From: GUEST,Art Thieme
Date: 28 Jan 07 - 11:34 PM

I love the film---Huston's last.

Art

Subject: RE: Song from film The Dead
From: Malcolm Douglas
Date: 28 Jan 07 - 11:03 PM

The earlier discussion Martin was thinking of was probably Lass of Acron?? (Lass of Aughrim). That mostly concerns the Joyce text, though in that case as it appeared in the film Nora.

It may be that the song is that film was sung to a different tune from the one used in The Dead; Murray on Saltspring identified the former as the 'Lass of Lochryan' tune from the (Scottish) Blaikie MS. Whether or not anybody really knows what tune Joyce knew for it is hard to tell.

Subject: RE: Song from film The Dead
From: GUEST
Date: 28 Jan 07 - 09:30 PM

As I was saying, I don't understand why it's considered superior to all other English-language short stories. Is it because of the details, like the music? Does anyone know of a good analysis, in book or article form, that would help me understand the details of the story? I find the entry about the music above (not the entry by that nitwit with keyboard problems, but the one above that), I find that fascinating. I'd like to understand once and for all why the story is considered to be the greatest ever written. Thank you.

Subject: RE: Song from film The Dead
From: GUEST
Date: 28 Jan 07 - 09:25 PM

I'm from the U.S. and have a question. Why is The Dead considered the greatest short story ever written? It's at the top of many "best" lists, but why? I've read it several times and recognize it as quite an achievement, but I don't understand why it's the SUPREME

Subject: RE: Song from film The Dead
From: Bonnie Shaljean
Date: 27 Jan 07 - 08:35 AM

I agree that the Patterson version which appeared in the film is lovely. But I have always wondered if that's the melody Joyce had in mind when he has d'Arcy sing in the original story? Joyce refers to it as being "in the old Irish tonality" which Patterson's isn't particularly - his air is much closer to Moore's melodies than to the ancient Gael, and is softened by a certain sentimentality. I have always thought that the original would have sounded more like the air I know to Lord Gregory, which ends with what sounds like a flattened seventh (but actually isn't because it ends on the dominant). That sort of cadence is a common feature in old Irish song and seems closer to the sort of tonality Joyce is referring to. It has a harder, more unforgiving sound which matches the theme of The Dead - to my ear anyway.

Bonnie (who lives near Capoquin)

Subject: RE: Song from film The Dead
From: pazbhan
Date: 27 Jan 07 - 07:56 AM

The song"The Lass Of Aughrim" was sung by Frank Patterson in the film I think. Susan Mckeown has recently released a lovely version of it on her latest cd.

Subject: RE: Song from film The Dead
From: Fred McCormick
Date: 26 Jan 07 - 02:17 PM

The Lass of Aughrim is a fragment of a ballad called among other things, Lord Gregory, or the Lass of Rough Royal, or Fair Annie of Lochroyan. Child 76.

The Dead is actually a short story by James Joyce, which John Houston adapted into a film. The Lass of Aughrim appears in both. I won't spoil your enjoyment but the song is one of several motifs which appear in the story as part of Joyce's critique of Irish (Gaelic) nationalism.

Subject: RE: Song from film The Dead
From: Mrs.Duck
Date: 26 Jan 07 - 12:45 PM

16 mins! This place is brilliant, thanks Martin.

Subject: RE: Song from film The Dead
From: MartinRyan
Date: 26 Jan 07 - 12:25 PM

Off the top of my head, it's a version of The Lass of Aughrim and there's a discussion of it around here somewhere!

Regards

Subject: Song from film The Dead
From: Mrs.Duck
Date: 26 Jan 07 - 12:09 PM

A coleague today was talking about a song used in the film The Dead based on James Joyces novel. Apparently it is sung at the end of the film but as I haven't seen it and she couldn't recall the song I was wondering if anyone out there knows the film and could tell me what song it is? Long shot but Mudcat usually comes up trumps.