Tune Req: Your favorite WAKE tunes and Songs

Subject: RE: Tune Req: Your favorite WAKE tunes and Songs
From: CraigS
Date: 05 Mar 03 - 03:03 PM

A thought for funerals ... the dreaded William Shatner LP ... not to be played, but made up as part of the wreath and cremated with the deceased!

Subject: RE: Tune Req: Your favorite WAKE tunes and Songs
From: Nigel Parsons
Date: 05 Mar 03 - 06:39 AM

Just to clarify, thet's his evening prayer quoted by Jon Freeman in the thread.

Nigel

Subject: RE: Tune Req: Your favorite WAKE tunes and Songs
From: Nigel Parsons
Date: 05 Mar 03 - 06:37 AM

Eli Jenkins Prayer TTTO Troyte's Chant.
Not Irish, but a beautiful setting of Dylan Thomas. Full four part harmony makes this popular in Wales

Nigel

Subject: RE: Tune Req: Your favorite WAKE tunes and Songs
From: cetmst
Date: 05 Mar 03 - 05:59 AM

Who Will Sing for Me, Carter Stanley/John McCutcheon                  
Your Long Journey, Doc and Rosalie Watson                           
Midnight Prayerlight, Cathie Fink

Subject: RE: Tune Req: Your favorite WAKE tunes and Songs
From: GUEST,Geordie
Date: 04 Mar 03 - 02:16 PM

How Can I keep From Singing..and Bruce Cockburn's Festival of Friends.

Subject: RE: Tune Req: Your favorite WAKE tunes and Songs
From: Genie
Date: 04 Mar 03 - 02:00 PM

For serious/somber memorial service songs, my favorites include:

Abide With Me
 
(Swift to the end ebbs out life's little day.
Earth's joys grow dim, its glories fade away.
Change and decay in all around I see.
Oh, Thou who changest not, abide with me.)

His Eye Is On The Sparrow

Be Thou My Vision (tune: Slane)

Rock Of Ages

and Thomas A. Dorsey's
Peace In The Valley
and
Precious Lord, Take My Hand  (which he wrote the night his wife and new baby died during delivery)

Bill Staines  also has a great, appropriate song called, IIRC, Crossing The River

For a more celebratory wake, I like what the New Orleans jazz folks do with
When The Saints Go Marching In
and
Just A Closer Walk With Thee

and I'll Fly Away is good, too.

Subject: RE: Tune Req: Your favorite WAKE tunes and Songs
From: wilco
Date: 03 Mar 03 - 06:33 PM

What are some of the older wake songs of previous generations? I'm in Tennessee (USA), and I have many family lines from Ireland.

Subject: RE: Tune Req: Your favorite WAKE tunes and Songs
From: Willie-O
Date: 13 Feb 00 - 09:09 AM

OK it's Scottish. In my book it's good for wakes or funerals.

MACCRIMMON'S LAMENT

No more, no more
No more, forever
In war or in peace, shall return MacCrimmon
Till comes the great day, o' doul and burnin'
MacCrimmon is home, no more returnin.

************* But for a wake, definitely Paddy Murphy's. And whatever songs were important to the deceased in life.

And me, I like "Box of Rain" by the Grateful Dead.

Willie-O

Subject: Lyr Add: SLEEP ON, BELOVED^^
From: Grey Wolf
Date: 13 Feb 00 - 08:46 AM

As Gervase has mentioned there's a cracking funeral song on the first, self titled Waterson:Carthy album.

They sing it unaccompanied, but I've included chords for anyone interested.

C                           F                           C
Sleep on beloved, sleep and take thy rest
                                   G     (C)           G
Lay down thy head upon thy Saviour's breast
F                                C
We love thee well but Jesus loves thee best
         F              G             C
Goodnight, goodnight, goodnight

Until the shadows from this earth are cast
Until He gathers in his sheaves at last
Until the twilight gloom is over past
Goodnight, goodnight, goodnight

Until made beautiful by love divine
Thou in the likeness of thy Lord shall shine
And He will bring that golden crown of life
Goodnight, goodnight, goodnight

Until we meet again before the throne
Clothed in the spotless robes He gives his own
Until we know as we have known
Goodnight, goodnight, goodnight

Martin Carthy's sleeve notes:
In the1960s, the Incredible String Band renamed a song called 'I Bid You Goodnight' which they learned from Jody Stecher's recordings of the great Bahamian guitarist and his family, the Pindar family, and the song became, for some folkies, one of those great standards.A year or two ago, John Howson visited Staithes to record the Fisherman's Choir, and was accompanied by Maggie Hunt who, at the same time, was interviewing the individuals involved. During converstaions, Mr Willie Wright sung a snatch of the Sankey hymn Sleep on Beloved which he describes as a lowering down song at funerals, and which was clearly the same song as 'I Bid You Goodnight' but in an earlier form, and when Norma heard it, she went to see Willie, who kindly provided her with the other verses. When we sang the song to Jody Stecher, he was enormously pleased, not least because it's function as a funeral song in the Bahamian fishing community was identical to that in it's North Yorkshire counterpart.

Wolf

Subject: RE: Tune Req: Your favorite WAKE tunes and Songs
From: Conrad Bladey (Peasant- Inactive)
Date: 13 Feb 00 - 07:01 AM

A wonderful song! Keep up the good work..... and someday we shall have a wake right here!

Conrad

Subject: Lyr Add: SONG ABOUT LIFE (Robert Oneman Johnson)^^
From: reggie miles
Date: 13 Feb 00 - 01:48 AM

My friend Robert Oneman Johnson has a great song called "Song About Life".

She's a rough one,
first, it's there and then it gone.
It's a tough one,
but you've got to keep on keepin' on.
Life's a treat if you don't weaken
and let the bastards beat you down.
She's a rough one,
but she's the only one around.

I've got a secret,
I'm gonna share it here with you.
Have no regrets,
just keep on doin' what you do.
Cause if you're doin' what you want to,
when they finally lower you down,
it might've been a rough one,
but she's the only one around.

Life is short,
it's seldom sweet
and it sometimes makes you sad.
But when it's gone,
you're gonna realize,
it was the only chance you had.

So just enjoy it,
and hope that the others like theirs too.
Don't destroy it,
cause nothing's gained by feelin' blue

If you're laughin' and you're gigglin',
about the way that the world went round.
And if you're doin' what you want to,
when they finally lower you down.
And if you grin while all those bastards,
try their best to beat you down.
It might've been a rough one,
but it's the only one around.
It might've been a tough one,
but she's the only game in town

Subject: RE: Tune Req: Your favorite WAKE tunes and Songs
From: Conrad Bladey (Peasant- Inactive)
Date: 13 Feb 00 - 12:50 AM

will do.... I have sound need notation.... I shall answer the people here then generally I post right away to another thread....

Conrad

Subject: RE: Tune Req: Your favorite WAKE tunes and Songs
From: alison
Date: 12 Feb 00 - 10:03 PM

conrad... start a different thread for each of the ones you are looking for.. that way people will know you're looking.. the requests get buried otherwise....

slainte

alison

Subject: RE: Tune Req: Your favorite WAKE tunes and Songs
From: Áine
Date: 12 Feb 00 - 07:57 PM

Dear Conrad,

I could send you a sound file of An Cailín Rua if that would do.

-- Áine

Subject: RE: Tune Req: Your favorite WAKE tunes and Songs
From: Conrad Bladey (Peasant- Inactive)
Date: 12 Feb 00 - 07:35 PM

nope cailin rua notation not in my one book of connemara sean nos songs.

Anyone got the title of a good sean nos songbook?

Conrad

Subject: RE: Tune Req: Your favorite WAKE tunes and Songs
From: Conrad Bladey (Peasant- Inactive)
Date: 12 Feb 00 - 10:24 AM

Thanks now I am searching for the abc for An Cailin Rua I might be writing it so look here....soon...

Conrad

Subject: RE: Tune Req: Your favorite WAKE tunes and Songs
From: Áine
Date: 12 Feb 00 - 10:01 AM

Dear Conrad,

Click here for the lyrics to An Cailín Rua.

-- Áine

Subject: RE: Tune Req: Your favorite WAKE tunes and Songs
From: Conrad Bladey (Peasant- Inactive)
Date: 12 Feb 00 - 09:00 AM

Looking for abc for The flowers of the Forest it is in the dt but not abc

Many thanks! Conrad

Subject: RE: Tune Req: Your favorite WAKE tunes and Songs
From: Conrad Bladey (Peasant- Inactive)
Date: 12 Feb 00 - 08:09 AM

Ok My old list- I am still seeking lyrics and tunes for these any one have them?

Songs of Connemara: Baile Ui Li (Ballylee), An Muilleoir Bán (The White Miller), Bhi Triúr Mac Agam (I had Three Sons), Oileán Éide (Edie Island), Buchaill na Gruaige Doinne The Brownhaired Boy), An Caillin Rua, (The Redhaired Girl) Sile Ni Ghadhra (The Cottage Maid), The Streams of Bunclody and Don't Marry

Subject: RE: Tune Req: Your favorite WAKE tunes and Songs
From: DougR
Date: 11 Feb 00 - 10:00 PM

It isn't Irish, but I'm a bit surprised no one has mentioned "Amazing Grace." Bach wrote a beautiful choral piece, "Come Soothing Death," and I'd attempt to write it in German as it should be buy my German Mudcat friends wouldn't be able to read it. (I think is it "Kum Susser Toad but I'm probably gonna regret writing that.)

DougR

Subject: RE: Tune Req: Your favorite WAKE tunes and Songs
From: wysiwyg
Date: 11 Feb 00 - 07:44 PM

"I Will Meet You in the Morning (just inside the eastern gate)"

Where the Roses Never Fade

Never Grow Old

The Great Divide (Kate Wolf)

Subject: RE: Tune Req: Your favorite WAKE tunes and Songs
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 11 Feb 00 - 07:40 PM

We're drifting from songs for a wake to songs for a funeral. Which is very logical, that's the right order to have thigs in. People sometimes talk about the party after a funeral as being a wake, but it's not, it's the night before, preferably in the locality of the deceased.

Funeral should have songs that represent what the person being buried or burned stood for, if they stood for anything.

So for example:
The Red Flag
The Strangest Dream
Faith of Our Fathers
Waltzing Matilda
Didn't he Ramble
Abide with Me (especially for football fans - that's "Soccer" to some people
Nearer my God to Thee (especially if you got drowned on a liner like the Titanic, or killed in a train crash like Engine 143)

Funerals tend to have much better songs than weddings. Good wakes are much more life enhancing than stag parties and hen nights. As I said "You can't beat death!"

Subject: RE: Tune Req: Your favorite WAKE tunes and Songs
From: Conrad Bladey (Peasant- Inactive)
Date: 11 Feb 00 - 06:04 PM

This is fantastic! Keep up the good work! Conrad

Subject: RE: Tune Req: Your favorite WAKE tunes and Songs
From: GUEST,JohnB
Date: 11 Feb 00 - 11:50 AM

Isn't It Grand Lyrics These come from Ray Austin. They differ from the DT lyrics. I like them better. Enjoy Look at the casket, bright golden handles Look at the preacher, bloody fine fellow Look at the flowers, all bloody withered Look at the choir boys, all bloody tonsils Look at the mourners, bloody great drunkards Look at the tombstone, bloody great boulder Look at the guiness, half bloody water Look at the widow, bloody great female See the mortician, fat bloody billfold Look at the luncheon, dry and so tasteless

from Fribourg Folk Club singing, 1973

Subject: RE: Tune Req: Your favorite WAKE tunes and Songs
From: Gervase
Date: 11 Feb 00 - 11:16 AM

There's a wonderful Sankey hymn on one of the Waterson/Carthy albums, 'Sleep on Beloved, as sung in the Bahamas, which is a near-relation to the north-east funeral song 'I Bid You Goodnight'. It really is a belter!

Subject: RE: Tune Req: Your favorite WAKE tunes and Songs
From: bob schwarer
Date: 11 Feb 00 - 09:02 AM

By Michael Simmons

RELEASE: SNAKEFARM: SONGS FROM MY FUNERAL (RCA) Snakefarm's Songs from My Funeral is a collection of classic American folk songs, like "Tom Dooley," "Frankie and Johnny," and "John Henry," which have been deconstructed and reassembled using the techniques of electronica and trip-hop. Along with the banjos, Dobros, and acoustic guitars, Anna Domino and her partner Michel Delory also use synthesizers, drum machines, and a variety of electronic effects to create a new sonic landscape for these tales of death, murder, and loneliness. This is not folk music as Woody Guthrie or Leadbelly knew it but a surprisingly effective modern interpretation. The spooky synth tones and long, echoing reverbs serve these songs well. The noises may have been created by twiddling the knobs on a bunch of electronic boxes, but the feeling behind the music is organic. Songs from My Funeral is not for everyone. If you are one of those people who think Dylan should never have picked up an electric guitar, you should pass this by. But if you want to hear an intriguing new way of singing old songs, you might want to give this a listen.

Subject: RE: Tune Req: Your favorite WAKE tunes and Songs
From: Mary in Kentucky
Date: 11 Feb 00 - 08:57 AM

My husband likes Finlandia, but I would have to go with a medley of my 50 favorite Scotch/Irish songs. (played on the piano of course because the bagpipes just don't seem appropriate in KY).

Mary

Subject: RE: Tune Req: Your favorite WAKE tunes and Songs
From: wysiwyg
Date: 11 Feb 00 - 12:58 AM

There was a really beautiful one I actually heard on a county station some years ago called, "If You Could See Me Now" by a male solo artist whose name escaped me. It was about how lovely heaven is, how well the deceased is now feeling, how he will wait as long as God gives for the widow to get there someday, how they'll have all eternity together... how the body torn by pain and disease is not the real man, and the real man is fine...

I don't think I'll ever find that song, but if I did that's what I would want.

At a funeral my husband conducted earlier this year, for a girl killed in her car weeks from her college graduation, the last song played before he entered to conduct the service was... Spirit in the Sky. The parents had honored her quirky sense of fun and subjected this very staid, grief-outraged crowd to the whole thing, long intro with spacy effects and all. They were rockin' by the second riff, it was something. Thank you Bobbi Jo!

Subject: RE: Tune Req: Your favorite WAKE tunes and Songs
From: GUEST,Bruce O.
Date: 11 Feb 00 - 12:41 AM

"Since Flowers of the Forest" was written by a Scotswoman in Scotland it's undoubtably Scottish. Taken from her own MS, it's in the Scarce Songs 1 file on my website [with both the old and new (c 1740) tunes as ABCs]

Subject: RE: Tune Req: Your favorite WAKE tunes and Songs
From: JamesJim
Date: 11 Feb 00 - 12:39 AM

Paddy Murphy

"Oh the night that Paddy Murphy died, we never shall forget - We all got stinkin' drunk that night and some ain't sober yet - But the only thing we did that night that filled my heart with fear - We took the ice right off the corpse and put it on the beer.

And that's how we paid our respect to Paddy Murphy - That's how we showed our honor and our pride - That's how we paid our respect to Paddy Murphy - On the night ol' Paddy Murphy died."

Subject: RE: Tune Req: Your favorite WAKE tunes and Songs
From: Mbo
Date: 10 Feb 00 - 11:00 PM

Or what about "Rosin The Beau"?

--Mbo

Subject: RE: Tune Req: Your favorite WAKE tunes and Songs
From: Pete Peterson
Date: 10 Feb 00 - 10:49 PM

last summer at my mother's funeral we sang some of the songs she had liked hearing my friends sing: I'll Fly Away and Anchored in Love Divine. (Carter Family) I have told these same friends should they need to arrange mine, please sing Northfield (155 in the 1991 Sacred Harp book) Not quite "wake songs" but -- hasn't anybody mentioned Finnegans' yet?

Subject: RE: Tune Req: Your favorite WAKE tunes and Songs
From: Guy Wolff
Date: 10 Feb 00 - 10:33 PM

Is flowers of the forest Scotish??? It is beautiful..I have always played Ireane good night and May the circle be unbroken at local gatherings of this kind. Not Irish sorry but well loved here in Connecticut farm country..All the best, Guy

Subject: RE: Tune Req: Your favorite WAKE tunes and Songs
From: GUEST
Date: 10 Feb 00 - 09:26 PM

"Nelly coming home from the wake"

Subject: RE: Tune Req: Your favorite WAKE tunes and Songs
From: Conrad Bladey (Peasant- Inactive)
Date: 10 Feb 00 - 09:06 PM

wonderful keep em comming

Conrad

Subject: RE: Tune Req: Your favorite WAKE tunes and Songs
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 10 Feb 00 - 07:52 PM

No Irish wake would be complete without someone singing "The Old Bog Road", especially the last verse:

Ah! Life's a weary puzzle,
past finding out by man.
I take the day for what it's worth,
and do the best I can.
Since noone cares a rush for me,
what needs to make a moan,
I go my way and draw my pay,
and smoke my pipe alone,
Each human heart must know its grief,
tho' little be their load.
So God be with you, Ireland,
and the Old Bog Road.

Followed by a general chorus of "Sure, he/she always loved that one..." and a round of fresh drinks and reminiscences.

Subject: RE: Tune Req: Your favorite WAKE tunes and Songs
From: Sourdough
Date: 10 Feb 00 - 07:14 PM

I would love to see some more verses to "Isn't it Grand, Boys, (to be Bloody Well Dead") in addition to the relatively common ones in the DT base. There must be an awful lot of them.

Sourdough

Subject: RE: Tune Req: Your favorite WAKE tunes and Songs
From: Áine
Date: 10 Feb 00 - 06:46 PM

Bheir Mí Ó, Fill A Rún Ó, Gleanntáin Ghlas Ghaoth Dobhair, or An Mhaighdean Mhara would be my choices for songs.

-- Áine

Subject: RE: Tune Req: Your favorite WAKE tunes and Songs
From: Lanfranc
Date: 10 Feb 00 - 06:45 PM

"The Lyke Wake Dirge" ( Young Tradition, Pentangle et al) is my favourite. We had a Lyke Wake for my late father-in-law (The coffin was placed before the altar in the church for the night before the funeral).

"This ae neet, this aye neet, every neet and all, Fire and fleet and candleleet and Christ receive thy saul"

It' s probably in the database, if not, I'll post it

Subject: RE: Tune Req: Your favorite WAKE tunes and Songs
From: Mbo
Date: 10 Feb 00 - 06:35 PM

There's one I've heard called "The Celtic Lament" played by a fiddler by the name of Eugene O'Donnell. Perfect for a wake.

--Mbo

Subject: RE: Tune Req: Your favorite WAKE tunes and Songs
From: GUEST,Rich(stupidbodhranplayer...)
Date: 10 Feb 00 - 05:57 PM

The Carter family had a song called "Just a Few More Days" about a dying mother leaving her child in Jesus' care. Suzanne Thomas (formerly of Dry Branch Fire Squad) does a nice version on her solo CD "DEar Friends and Gentle Hearts". I don't know who did it originally, but the Jerry Garcia Acoustic Band Used to do a song called "They Have Gone Home". I read in an issue of Treoir a few years ago about a collector of tunes who had set out (and succeeded) to not only outdo Chief O'Niell's 1001 tunes, but he collected 1002 reels. At his wake, his wife had people come over and play reels. I can't remember the man's name but I'll look it up and post it tomorrow. Rich

Subject: RE: Tune Req: Your favorite WAKE tunes and Songs
From: Conrad Bladey (Peasant- Inactive)
Date: 10 Feb 00 - 05:16 PM

Any more Irish wake tunes? Conrad

Subject: RE: Tune Req: Your favorite WAKE tunes and Songs
From: Mbo
Date: 09 Feb 00 - 07:43 PM

I want ELO's "I'm Alive" played at my wake!

--Mbo

Subject: RE: Tune Req: Your favorite WAKE tunes and Songs
From: bob schwarer
Date: 09 Feb 00 - 07:29 PM

"Tie me kangaroo down"

Bob S.

Subject: RE: Tune Req: Your favorite WAKE tunes and Songs
From: alison
Date: 09 Feb 00 - 07:20 PM

wild mountain thyme

slainte

alison

Subject: RE: Tune Req: Your favorite WAKE tunes and Songs
From: Sorcha
Date: 09 Feb 00 - 11:49 AM

Definitely "Parting Glass"! At my dad's service, a pianist played all his favorites, mostly 40' and 50's C&W,for Intro music, and then read the poem that begins....."Oh Lord, I've never lived where churches grow."
At mum's, my daughter requested "Will the Circle Be Unbroken" and "Wayfaring Stranger"

Subject: RE: Tune Req: Your favorite WAKE tunes and Songs
From: alison
Date: 09 Feb 00 - 01:27 AM

A stor mo chroi,

The Parting Glass,

slainte

alison

Subject: RE: Tune Req: Your favorite WAKE tunes and Songs
From: The Shambles
Date: 08 Feb 00 - 05:01 PM

I liked Peter Sellers Idea to play 'In The Mood', during the church service.

Subject: RE: Tune Req: Your favorite WAKE tunes and Songs
From: Snuffy
Date: 08 Feb 00 - 04:50 PM

I would like "What's the life of a man, any more than a leaf" for my funeral

Wassail! V

Subject: RE: Tune Req: Your favorite WAKE tunes and Songs
From: GUEST,mike cahill
Date: 08 Feb 00 - 04:49 PM

"Look at the Coffin", A wry look at a funeral