Chords Req: Heather on the Moor

Subject: Heather on the Moor...anyone?
From:
Date: 30 Aug 00 - 10:33 PM

I would like to know the chords to this lovely tune...i am a 20 year old guitarist in charleston, sc, usa and am just "getting into" some Irish traditional and folk music. if any one knows how this tune is played i will pay big (with singing it of course)

asia

Subject: RE: Heather on the Moor...anyone?
From: DougR
Date: 30 Aug 00 - 10:53 PM

Welcome, Asia! Someone will be along directly to help you I'm sure. At least I think I'm sure. DougR

Subject: RE: Heather on the Moor...anyone?
From: GUEST
Date: 31 Aug 00 - 12:11 AM

"Down the moor and across the heather", Scots, but sung by at least one Irish folk song singer that I know of. Can you give us a line or two of the song?. Titles are poor identifiers.

Subject: RE: Heather on the Moor...anyone?
From: Anglo
Date: 31 Aug 00 - 01:13 AM

It's in the database under the title "Heather on the Moor" as one might expect. The source is given as Dan Milner's book, A Bonnie Bunch of Roses. There are two tune files, the first is Dan's tune, the second, I think, is the one Paul Brady recorded and is slightly different. Dan's version is harmonized, in his book, with just three chords (A, D, and E in the key of A major). I'd start like that with your version of the tune and see what you copme up with.

Subject: RE: Heather on the Moor...anyone?
From: Anglo
Date: 31 Aug 00 - 01:14 AM

PS Peter Bellamy also recorded the song and I think it's on the 3-CD set that came out last year on Free Reed.

Subject: RE: Heather on the Moor...anyone?
From: Liam's Brother
Date: 31 Aug 00 - 01:24 AM

I'm very happily amused to read Anglo's comment. Paul Brady once lived in New York and it was at a benefit concert for the Irish Arts Center in the Bronx about 18 years ago where I first heard the song; Paul was the singer. Paul's source, by the way, was Robin Morton's lovely little book, Folksongs Sung in Ulster.

I only sing this song nowadays when I do a session with Brian Conway, the fiddler.

All the best,
Dan Milner

Subject: RE: Heather on the Moor...anyone?
From: Liam's Brother
Date: 31 Aug 00 - 01:26 AM

Sorry, make that 28 years ago. Time flys when you're having fun.

All the best,
Dan

Subject: RE: Heather on the Moor...anyone?
From: Liam's Brother
Date: 31 Aug 00 - 01:38 AM

Peter Bellamy was really getting into Ulster singers when he used to sing at our folk club at the Eagle Tavern in NYC. His version of the song (called "Down the Moor," as I recall) was from another Northern singer. I don't recall whether it was Eddie Butcher or Geordie Hanna.

They are both great song versions. Try to make your strumming hand work in close concert with you vocal phrasing regardless which you pick. It seems to work well.

All the best,
Dan Milner

Subject: RE: Heather on the Moor...anyone?
From: DougR
Date: 31 Aug 00 - 02:30 AM

Well and good, guys, but can anybody give Asia the chords? DougR

Subject: RE: Heather on the Moor...anyone?
From: Anglo
Date: 31 Aug 00 - 03:44 AM

Well Doug, since we don't know what tune he's using...I did give him three chords.

Subject: RE: Heather on the Moor...anyone?
From: Liam's Brother
Date: 31 Aug 00 - 09:52 AM

Hi Doug!

I, IV, V.

All the best,
Dan

Subject: RE: Heather on the Moor...anyone?
From: GUEST,Bruce O.
Date: 31 Aug 00 - 02:09 PM

"Heather on the Moor" is a new title for an old Scots song somewhat altered. The song is in 'The Scots Musical Museum', IV, #328 (1792), as "O'er the moor amang the heather". The song was taken to be by a Jean Glover (by Robert Burns), but she was born in 1758, and the attribution is now very doubtful. The tune seems to have first been printed in P. Thompson's 'Twenty Four Country Dances for the Year 1758' as "In the Moor among the Heather" and two years later in Bremner's 'Reels' as "O'er the moor among the heather". The latter copy can be found reprinted as #1569 in 'Sources of Irish Traditional Music', I, 1998. Song, tune, and notes (with belief that Burns slightly revised the text) are in James Dick's 'The Songs of Robert Burns', #356.

Delia Murphy (Mrs. Walter Kiernan) sang the Irish version on an LP recording ('The Queen of Connemara', Irish 35002) about 1960. Her title for it was "Down the Moor".

The song is Roud #375 in Steve Roud's folks song index. Only one Irish version is listed, in Journal of the Irish Folk Song Society. Most traditional versions are Scots, and the song in SMM was reprinted in songbooks and chapbooks. Search on 'muir' for copies of a slightly different version on the Bodley Ballads website.

[From SMM, IV, #328, 1792.]

O'er the moor amang the heather

Comin thro' the craigs o' Kyle,
Amang the bony blooming heather,
There I met a bonie lassie
Keeping a' her yowes the-gether.
[Cho] O'er the moor amang the heather,
O'er the moor amang the heather,
There I met a bonie lassie
keeping a' her yowes the_gether.

Says I my dear whare is thy hame,
In moor, or dale, pray tell me whether,
She says, I tent thae fleecy flocks
That feed amang the blooming heather
Cho: O'er the moor, &c.
O'er the moor, &c.
She say, I tent the fleecy flocks
That feed amang the blooming heather.

We laid us down upon a bank,
Sae warm and sunny was the weather,
She left her flocks at large to rove,
Amang the bonie blooming heather.
Cho: O'er the moor, &c.
O'er the moor, &c.
She left her flocks at large to rove,
Amang the bonie blooming heather.

While thus we lay she sang a sang,
Till echo rang a mile and farther,
And ay the burden o' the sang
Was, o'er the moor amang the heather.
Cho: O'er the moor, &c.
O'er the moor, &c.
And ay the burden o' the sang
Was, o'er the moor amang the heather.

She charm'd my heart, and ay sinsyne
I could na think on ony ither:
By sea and sky! she shall be mine!
The bonie lass amang the heather.
Cho: O'er the moor, &c.
O'er the moor, &c.
By sea and sky, she shall be mine,
The bonie lass amang the heather.

Subject: RE: Heather on the Moor...anyone?
From: GeorgeH
Date: 31 Aug 00 - 02:15 PM

June Tabor sings this as "Heather Down The Moor" . . I'll check which album it's on. FAR better to buy the album than simply get the chords from here . .

Cheers!

G. (back again briefly)

Subject: RE: Heather on the Moor...anyone?
From: GUEST,Bruce O.
Date: 31 Aug 00 - 03:09 PM

An obituary of Delia Murphy that I saved (d. at 68 on Feb. 13, 1971) gives her husband a different name than I'd seen earlier (above), Dr. T. P. Kiernan. The obit notes that she used her (Irish) diplomatic immunity in Italy during WWII to smuggle English POWs to Switzerland under a rug in the back of her car. She is reported to have collected a version of "Chevy Chase" from an old woman also shopping in Woodward and Lothrup in Washington, DC, while her husband was Irish Ambassador to the US.

Subject: RE: Heather on the Moor...anyone?
From: GeorgeH
Date: 01 Sep 00 - 08:05 AM

OK, "Heather Down The Moor" is on the June Tabor/Martin Simpson "A Cut Above" CD, which should be on EVERYONE's "essentials" list . .

G.