Help: Shule Aroon: sell my rock, rod, reel

Subject: RE: Help: Shule Aroon: sell my rock, rod, reel
From: masato sakurai
Date: 19 Nov 02 - 12:43 AM

"The White Cockade" (2nd stanza) by Robert Burns is:

I'll sell my rock, my reel, my tow,
My gude gray mare and hawkit cow;
To buy mysel a tartan plaid,
To follow the boy wi' the White Cockade.

~Masato

Subject: RE: Help: Shule Aroon: sell my rock, rod, reel
From: Art Thieme
Date: 21 Nov 02 - 01:57 AM

On my second LP for the Patons at Folk Legacy --- called ON THE WILDERNESS ROAD (still available as a custom cassette from them) I included a version of this song based on the one done by Chubby Parker who was a regular on the WLS Barn Dance radio show out of Chicago. I left out the racist verses and put in a couple from "Butternut Hill". Mine was called "Bibble-Ala-Doo". Scott Alarik has been singing it in recent shows---complete with some of my old jokes.

-------------------------------------------------------

Come and listen to my song,
It's awful pretty and it won't take long,
I sung it all the way from here to Hong Kong,
Come-a-bibble-ala-doo-shi-do ree.

I'm gonna buy me an old gray hoss,
The Alleghenies I will cross,
Gonna find the true love that I lost,
Come-a-bibble...

CHORUS)
Shoo-ri, shoo-ri, shoo-ri roo,
Sugar racka, sugar racka, shoo-ri-roo,
When I saw my little bobolink,
Come-a-bibble-ala-doo-shi do-ree.

I was down on a South Sea isle,
Folks all greet you with a smile,
I wrote back home, well, I think I'll stay a while,
Come-a-bibble...

Dad went out in a Ford machine,
He dropped a match in the gasoline,
He went so high that he's never been seen,
Come-a-bibble...

Man came from monkey Darwin said,
Where women came from I never have read,
But I know where some are goin' when they're dead,
Come-a-bibble...

Here I sit on Buttermilk Hill,
Here I sit and cry my fill,
Every tear would turn a mill,
Come-a-bibble...

My true love has gone to France,
There her fortune to advance,
When she gets home we're gonna have a little dance,
Come-a-bibble-ala-doo-shi-do-ree.

(Art Thieme)

Subject: RE: Help: Shule Aroon: sell my rock, rod, reel
From: Art Thieme
Date: 21 Nov 02 - 02:11 AM

Whoooops, forgot a verse:

I've sailed the seas and I've trod the shore,
Where Englishmen never went before,
And I'll never shun wild women any more,
Come-a-bibble-ala-doo-shi-do-ree.

(Art)

Subject: RE: Help: Shule Aroon: sell my rock, rod, reel
From: Art Thieme
Date: 24 Nov 02 - 01:26 AM

and I sure did like the version of the song as done by JANET SMITH on a West Coast copilation LP of songs by people hanmging out in Berkeley, CA in the 1960s. She was or is an extremely tasteful guitarist and song arranger.

Art Thieme

Subject: RE: Help: Shule Aroon: sell my rock, rod, reel
From: Big Tim
Date: 04 Jun 04 - 05:09 AM

According to Padraigin Ni Uallachain, singer, writer, folklorist, historian, wife of Len Graham, and native Irish speaker;

"The dyeing of petticoats indicated that the woman indicated herself as betrothed: it was a sign of loyalty to her absent lover".

She also says that the song is a Jacobite one, so "Johnny's Gone for a Soldier" - that is, the Wild Geese, is not too far off the mark.

She also explains all the parts of the spinning wheel, and Kim C above certainly on the right track. Padraigin's book is "A Hidden Ulster: people, songs and traditions of Oriel [south Ulster/north Leinster]". The book was published last year by Four Courts Press, Dublin, and it's a 500 page treasure-trove, worth the money for the photographs alone.

Subject: RE: Help: Shule Aroon: sell my rock, rod, reel
From: Willa
Date: 04 Jun 04 - 04:17 PM

Thanks, Big Tim. This continues to be a fascinating thread.

Subject: "SUIL A GRA"
From: GUEST,MALCOLM XERXES™
Date: 29 Oct 04 - 10:04 PM

FRI. OCT. 29/2004/22:03 E.S.T.

    My own first exposure to "SUIL A GRA" was in a videoclip performed by ANITA BEST & PAMELA MORGAN, so my own bias is toward their version of the lyrics, which I came to this site to seek after.

    Does anyone have their version of the lyrics, please? I would buy it @ the record shop if I could find it, but nobody in Toronto seems to know what I am talking about....

"…Be seeing you!"
MALCOLM XERXES
Stuntman/Actor FINNEGAN'S SQUAD™ http://www.malcolmxerxes.com

Subject: RE: Help: Shule Aroon: sell my rock, rod, reel
From: GUEST,MsBubbely
Date: 11 Aug 05 - 10:48 PM

LOL. I just started checking dates to see what order these posts belong in and found that the latest ones are 10 months old! Is anyone still here?

I started out this afternoon looking for the English translation to an Irish song sung by one of the singers on the PBS special "Celtic Woman." It reminded me of a song I learned in grade school, but may have mixed up the words in my mind with the later recording by Peter, Paul and Mary that a would have heard just a couple of years later. Which is why there are probably so many different versions of the song around.

As to the "nonsense" words, they are probably mostly garbled versions of Irish words unfamiliar to non-Irish speakers. It's like a prolonged game of "telephone."

Subject: RE: Help: Shule Aroon: sell my rock, rod, reel
From: Le Scaramouche
Date: 11 Aug 05 - 10:56 PM

Or nonsense words ment to sound like Irish. That's rather common.

Subject: RE: Help: Shule Aroon: sell my rock, rod, reel
From: GUEST
Date: 12 Aug 05 - 12:04 AM

"there are probably so many versions of the song around."

Amazing, isn't it? Thirty or so years ago I was in the local library looking through an old book of southern African-American folklore. Pretty standard stuff. The author (whose name I can't remember) travelled through the American south in the very early years of the 20th century collecting lore about black cat bones and red-flannel conjure bags. Then he described hearing a young mother way out in the country singing a song to her baby in what the author thought was probably a survival of an old African dialect. He wrote the chorus out phonetically and dammned if it wasn't our old friend Shule Aroon. I can't imagine where the young woman learned it but it probably wasn't in Africa.

Subject: RE: Help: Shule Aroon: sell my rock, rod, reel
From: Le Scaramouche
Date: 12 Aug 05 - 02:51 PM

Could have learnt it anywhere. Pretty popular song in America during the second half of the 1800s.

Subject: RE: Help: Shule Aroon: sell my rock, rod, reel
From: GUEST,Gypsy
Date: 27 Dec 06 - 03:24 PM

Hello! This is my first time at this site and I found this all toooo interesting! I have some info and a question if any one who was wondering b4 is still here.
    I read that the line about dying her peticoat red. Chances are that it is not to keep the Shee Folk at bay because in the poorer parts of Ireland they could not afford to do that so they say chants to keep them at bay.
    More likely it is to show for her loved one or to sell her body.

    Though it is probably to sell her body since the the song referes to her earning her bread; on the other hand selling her body would be unfaithful to her lover.

    I'm at a bit of a loss, can any one enlighten me?

-Gypsy

Subject: RE: Help: Shule Aroon: sell my rock, rod, reel
From: GUEST,Real Imitation
Date: 28 Dec 06 - 02:16 PM

'Johnny's Gone For a Soldier' has always been a favorite of mine;
esp. James Taylor's rendition. I thought it interesting that
Connie Dover's "Shule Aroon" (another favorite) shared some of the
same lyrics. I came to find out later from reading about the 2 songs
on "Contemplator" that the 'Johnny..' is a variation on "Shule".

Subject: RE: Help: Shule Aroon: sell my rock, rod, reel
From: GUEST,Rachel Holmen
Date: 29 Aug 18 - 03:43 PM

A reel is similar to a swift, but not the same. A swift winds a single ball of yarn. A reel is basically a standing rectangle with pegs on its corners to keep thread aligned; you use it to wind many warp threads for a weaving project, all of which should have both the same length and the same tension.

Videos of reels in use here:
https://youtu.be/Ba62vX5Zj1E
and
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PFBSKsOnwzI

I'm pretty sure the "rack" is a spool rack, so that you can easily use different colors of thread in a warp. If you watch
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uzetl5-sqS4
you will see (not very clearly photographed, I admit) a set of threads coming from behind the woman (on the left side of the image) onto her loom; the source of those threads is a spool rack.

A weaver might use a spool rack to feed thread to the reel, or directly to the loom. Reels are also called "mills".

-- Rachel Holmen, Berkeley, CA

Subject: RE: Help: Shule Aroon: sell my rock, rod, reel
From: Thompson
Date: 29 Aug 18 - 03:52 PM

One doesn't generally dye one's skirt red to keep away the Good People; a romantic notion, but notional.
A red petticoat in relatively modern times would be the colour worn by farming people - but since it's "around the world" that our heroine is going to earn her bread, it seems unlikely that she would be followed by hordes of otherworlders from her Irish home.
This article, Spinning and Weaving: their influence on popular language and literature, discusses weaving terminology including 'rock' and 'reel', quoting some Ulster and Scottish folk songs in the notes.

Subject: RE: Help: Shule Aroon: sell my rock, rod, reel
From: leeneia
Date: 01 Sep 18 - 12:44 PM

Wearing a red petticoat when a prostitute doesn't make any sense. True, it might attract customers, but it would also tip off the police. Worse, it would invite thugs who know the prostitute might be carrying cash. Such a woman would make a perfect victim.