Origin: She Moved Through the Fair

Subject: She Moved Through the Fair
From: GUEST,Rebecca
Date: 11 Dec 00 - 10:23 PM

Does anyone happen to have any information on the origins of this tune and possibly about how it originated.

If you do I'd love to hear about it it is one of my fovourites.

Thanks

Subject: RE: Help: She Moved Through the Fair
From: alison
Date: 12 Dec 00 - 12:53 AM

Hi Rebecca... welcome to Mudcat...

There have been a few threads on this in the past... if you put the word "fair" into the forum search and set the age to 1 year... you'll find a few...... but here's one with 70 messages to get you started....

She moved through the fair

slainte

alison

Subject: RE: Help: She Moved Through the Fair
From: GUEST,fair
Date: 12 Dec 00 - 01:36 AM

Subject: RE: Help: She Moved Through the Fair
From: GUEST
Date: 06 Sep 06 - 07:57 PM

Does nayone no about this line and what it means?
"But one had a sorrow that never was said"

Subject: RE: Help: She Moved Through the Fair
From: Peace
Date: 06 Sep 06 - 08:07 PM

As in "what was the sorrow?"?

Subject: RE: Help: She Moved Through the Fair
From: Malcolm Douglas
Date: 06 Sep 06 - 08:55 PM

See the many other discussions here on this song: links are above. You seem somehow to have found, and revived, the only thread here that contains no information; apart from Alison's helpful link. It contains no information because pretty much everything worth saying (and a great deal that was not worth saying) has already been said elsewhere, in some cases many times over. For once, for a wonder, nobody gave into the temptation to repeat it all yet again.

Let's keep that good resolution. If, once you've read what the other discussions have to say, you are still puzzled by those lines, then do ask again; either here, or (preferably) in a thread that mentions them already. Just, as I'm sure you'll understand, so that discussion is kept focussed and reasonably accessible to people who may seek similar information in the future.

Subject: RE: Help: She Moved Through the Fair
From: leeneia
Date: 07 Sep 06 - 12:44 PM

A person could read a whole novel in the time it would take to go through all those threads.

The line about sorrow means that the narrator always regretted that he was not permitted to marry the woman who moved through the fair. He married someone else and never said anything about his regret to his actual wife.

It is amazing that the author of the words managed to convey so much in so few words and with an admirable absence of self-pity.

Subject: RE: Help: She Moved Through the Fair
From: Cllr
Date: 08 Sep 06 - 08:13 AM

what does the sorrw mean?
"The Sorrow that never was said referers to tuberculosis which poor people got (also known as consumption) as it was sameful or very sad so it was the illness that nobody talked about. this is the reason she dies and then he dies later. )

Cllr

Subject: RE: Help: She Moved Through the Fair
From: GUEST
Date: 08 Sep 06 - 11:35 PM

CLLR - What is your source? What is your reference? OR, what is your personal hypothothis based on? What is the location and time frame?

Be careful, of broad-brushed-assertions (unlike the DeltaBlues many "MCmembers" comments on the MudCat have become a trove of spurluous statements that have rendered dot-org a "eunich" in the world of folk-song research.) Regrets to Dick and Susan and the clan.

Sincerely,
Gargoyle

Subject: RE: Help: She Moved Through the Fair
From: Cllr
Date: 09 Sep 06 - 05:09 AM

I apologise for the brief response in my last post, so many other posts covered this in earlier threads that i didnt google will ifnd the relevent bits if you cant be bothered to go through (this thread also mentioned not bothering to read through so i just corrected leeneia's previous comment.

I notice you didnt take umbrage at the lack reference in that post, if it had more reference i would have gone into more detail in my response. perhaps we should be both feel castigated.

Even so Garg, no offence, but i will write how i like depending on how time, motivation and relevence to an issue seems to me at the time

Still its the internet and you take or leave what is said or written

I originally planned to summerise some of the earlier thread arguments, such as Padraig Colum being credited with it, but some take this to mean he was the originall author while some seem to accept that it is a modernised version of a traditional gaelic poem. Certainly Padraig Colum collected rewrote with modern language and published it in 1909.

One theory i have which is all my own (so you can take or leave it)is that the line "swan in the evening over the lake" is a litarary allusion to the the middle tale of the "Three Great Sorrows" of irish story telling,   All involve the death of family, particulary siblings. In the second tale "The Children of Lir" the family is cursed by being turned into swans once a month, so the hunting of the swan was made illegal in case one of the shapechangers was accidently klled.
You can look this story up on the internet or even *gasp* read it in a book.

Cllr

Subject: RE: Help: She Moved Through the Fair
From: Cllr
Date: 09 Sep 06 - 05:13 AM

http://www.ireland-information.com/articles/thechildrenoflir.htm

Subject: RE: Help: She Moved Through the Fair
From: MACA
Date: 12 Sep 06 - 01:10 PM

Hi,
Jo Mapes here. I learned She moved thru the fair from Margaret Barry, years ago. Have a couple of great stories about her. It's a haunting song, isn't it?
Jo.    www.jomapessingingpage.com

Subject: RE: Help: She Moved Through the Fair
From: Jim Lad
Date: 10 Jan 07 - 02:38 AM

^^^ A young lass said to me
My mother won't mind
And my father won't slight you
For your lack of kind
Then she laid her hand on me
And this she did say
Oh it will not be long love
'Til our wedding day

Then she went away from me
And she moved through the fair
So fondly I watched her
Move here and move there
And then she went homeward
With one star awake
As the swan in the evening
Moves over the lake

All the neighbours were saying
That the two would ne'er wed
For one had a sorrow
That never was said
And she smiled as she passed
With her goods and her gear
And that was the last
That I saw of my dear

Last night she came to me
My fond love came in
And she moved so soft
That her feet made no din
And she lay down beside me
And this she did say
Oh it will not be long love
'Til our wedding day

The song is about Tuberculosis which, at the time it was written, bore the same stigma as aids.
In the first verse she passes the disease to her lover "Then she laid her hand on me"
The second is simply a lover's verse.
In the third she is taken away to a sanitarium where she dies. While the neighbours gossip, they dear dare not speak of her illness by name... "one had a sorrow that never was said" Much the same way as "Cancer" was always said in a whisper, when I was a child.
In the final verse he sees her, either in his delirium or as a spirit
"And she moved so soft that her feet made no din" And now she tells him that soon he will join her "And she lay down beside me and this she did say, Oh it will not be long love 'Til our wedding day"

Subject: RE: Help: She Moved Through the Fair
From: nutty
Date: 10 Jan 07 - 03:17 AM

An interesting theory Jim Lad. Have you any evidence as to its authenticity?

Subject: RE: Help: She Moved Through the Fair
From: Jim Lad
Date: 10 Jan 07 - 03:26 AM

No! That's what makes it "Traditional". I've known this story and sang this song since I was a wee boy. You seem to doubt it and yet I speak with such authority. How could I be wrong.

Subject: RE: Help: She Moved Through the Fair
From: Georgiansilver
Date: 10 Jan 07 - 05:08 AM

Hi Nutty....my understanding of the song is the same as Jims..more or less. I knew it was illness but had not realised it was TB....I can accept that it would be TB.

Subject: RE: Help: She Moved Through the Fair
From: GUEST
Date: 10 Jan 07 - 10:26 AM

Can't help thinking that the use of the rhyme-word "din" is a flaw.

Subject: RE: Help: She Moved Through the Fair
From: Jim Lad
Date: 10 Jan 07 - 11:08 AM

"Din" is correct. Had this been a Scottish song, I would agree with you but the song is of Irish origin and the story is common knowledge in my circles. Sinead O'Connor and other female artists have so twisted the words, to fit their gender, as to render the song unrecognizable and completely bury the true meaning.
Check with your Irish friends. I'll be very surprised if less than 50% of the 40 & ups know the story. I don't know a lot but this one, I'm sure of.

Subject: Lyr Add: SHE MOVED THROUGH THE FAIR (Padraic Colum
From: nutty
Date: 10 Jan 07 - 11:59 AM

My version of the song comes from the Padraic Colum words printed in the New Oxford Book of Irish Verse published by the Oxford University Press in 1986.

SHE MOVED THROUGH THE FAIR

My young love said to me, 'My brothers won't mind,
And my parents won't slight you for your lack of kind.'
Then she stepped away from me, and this she did say,
'It will not be long, love, till our wedding day.'

She stepped away from me and she moved through the fair,
And fondly I watched her go here and go there,
Then she went her way homeward with one star awake,
As the swan in the evening moves over the lake.

The people were saying no two were e'er wed
But one had a sorrow that never was said,
And I smiled as she passed with her goods and her gear,
And that was the last that I saw of my dear.

I dreamt it last night that my young love came in,
So softly she entered, her feet made no din;
She came close beside me, and this she did say,
'It will not be long, love, till our wedding day.'

Colum died in 1972 and may well have given that explanation for the poem, but I would prefer to have concrete evidence before believing it.

Subject: RE: Help: She Moved Through the Fair
From: nutty
Date: 10 Jan 07 - 12:03 PM

I should also have said - 'din' has common usage (particularly in the North of England) as meaning 'noise'

Subject: RE: Help: She Moved Through the Fair
From: Fred McCormick
Date: 10 Jan 07 - 01:05 PM

Hugh Shields discussed the origins of this song, and the relationship of the traditional versions to Padraic Colum's rewrite in a detailed article called "The Proper Words". Irish University Review Vol 5. 1975.

Subject: RE: Help: She Moved Through the Fair
From: GUEST,leeneia
Date: 10 Jan 07 - 01:07 PM

There is no reason to think that tuberculosis has anything to do with it. It's a subtle and meloncholy love song. Her parents wouldn't let her marry him because he wasn't rich enough. He married someone else but mourned for her without saying anything. When he was old, he had a vision that she was with him, still young and beautiful.

Don't wreck it.

Subject: RE: Help: She Moved Through the Fair
From: Jim Lad
Date: 10 Jan 07 - 01:18 PM

Well guest Rebecca asked and the answer is for her. If you're somehow disappointed with its meaning, I'm sorry. It is what it is but there is absolutely nothing to stop you from reading into it, what you will. It is a beautiful song, regardless of its meaning.
Thank You for the information on the author, Nutty
Regards
Jim

Subject: RE: Help: She Moved Through the Fair
From: GUEST
Date: 10 Jan 07 - 01:31 PM

I have known and sung this song for many years as did my father before me and his before him. I have never heard this tb story nor has anyone I know who sings this song. Could the tb thing be a recent myth regarding this strange and wonderful piece ?

Subject: RE: Help: She Moved Through the Fair
From: Jim Lad
Date: 10 Jan 07 - 01:55 PM

Depends what you mean by recent. I've known the story since I was young and I'm 52 now. I believe that it's a major accomplishment, by the author, that the song stands alone regardless of the hidden content. Some folks are happier when there's a little mystery to it.
Hence some of the earlier comments. I tend to feel the same way but for this one, I'm just as happy knowing.

Subject: RE: Help: She Moved Through the Fair
From: nutty
Date: 10 Jan 07 - 04:44 PM

I've spent a good part of the evening reading through the numerous threads on this subject and am puzzled by the seeming need to label this as a 'traditional' song.

I accept that there are traditional songs with similar lyrics but the song as sung by the great majority of people today is the one that was written by Padraic Colum.

He appears to have followed in the footsteps of AP Graves and resurrected a traditional theme, making a much more singable song by doing so.

Subject: RE: Help: She Moved Through the Fair
From: Malcolm Douglas
Date: 10 Jan 07 - 09:59 PM

Yes, that's exactly what he did. It's a pity that people didn't take my advice (given more than a year ago) to leave this thread alone and instead take the trouble to read the other ones before repeating baseless fantasy and misinformation as "fact".

Where, I wonder, do they get all that foolishness from? Why does folk music (and what is imagined to be folk music) attract so much bizarre speculation from people with vivid imaginations but -apparently- no conception of how to construct an argument based on actual evidence?

That was a rhetorical question. It doesn't require an answer.

Subject: RE: Help: She Moved Through the Fair
From: Jim Lad
Date: 10 Jan 07 - 10:05 PM

No. It doesn't

Subject: RE: Help: She Moved Through the Fair
From: Jim Lad
Date: 10 Jan 07 - 11:42 PM

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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"She Moved Through the Fair" or "She Moves Through the Fair" is based on a traditional Irish folk song. Its original author is unknown. The song, a folk staple, has been performed by many artistes, and its haunting tune and lyrics will be familiar to many.

The song was first collected in Donegal by Padraic Colum and Herbert Hughes, and published by Boosey & Hawkes in London in a work entitled Irish country songs in 1909, though some claim it dates back to medieval times. The lyrics, except for the last verse, were composed by Padraic Colum, and the tune was written down by Herbert Hughes. Most modern arrangements of the song can be traced to the recording by Fairport Convention in 1968, who adopted the style of the song from the travelling singer Margaret Barry.

Subject: RE: Help: She Moved Through the Fair
From: GUEST
Date: 11 Jan 07 - 07:51 AM

So is the tb tale true or no ?

Subject: RE: Help: She Moved Through the Fair
From: JeremyC
Date: 11 Jan 07 - 08:22 AM

Who cares? You can read anything you like into a song, and the author's intentions don't even matter anymore, beyond a certain point. This is like asking whether "Puff, the Magic Dragon" is about pot--who cares what the "right" answer is! If it's meaningful to you with your interpretation of it, then your interpretation is "right."

A friend of mine does "The Foggy Dew" (the Easter Uprising version) with an Irish band he's in, and he spins it so that it focuses more on the soldiers than on England. He sees the last verse as talking about post-traumatic stress syndrome, and whether he's "right" or not in his interpretation, he sings it as well as I've heard it played, and it comes across to the listener--which is the point. Debating whether some detail is "correct" is silly. Songs by their nature are open to interpretation, and they can always move beyond their author's original wishes.

Subject: RE: Help: She Moved Through the Fair
From: Scrump
Date: 11 Jan 07 - 08:24 AM

She's over there by the coconut shy.

Subject: RE: Help: She Moved Through the Fair
From: GUEST
Date: 11 Jan 07 - 12:04 PM

I know/knew "din" approximates to "noise", but feel that it is rather to strong a word; that is, unless she had tackety boots on and was tap-dancing, "din" isn't the word which I'd use naturally for "sound of footsteps", and it therefore seems a forced word, chosen for its rhyme with the simple "in"; that is, I didn't mean it's a word distorted from Colum's original (but then, too, isn't the choice of "no two ever wed", as used in some recordings, better than the awkward "no two were e'er wed"; alliteration and assonance are all very well, but the repetition of "w" here makes it seem as if some unduly plummy-voiced Tory MP is blustering. Admittedly, the better sounding version - to my way of hearing - implies more volition to the couple, whereas "were e'er wed" does have a greater impression of their being forced by parents. And I read somewhere that this song is of a type found in fishing communities where the drowned husband/lover appears to the widow, that is, it's not a love-song only but a ghost-story too. It tends to be sung quite a lot at weddings, unfortunately.

Subject: RE: Help: She Moved Through the Fair
From: Jim Lad
Date: 11 Jan 07 - 12:41 PM

Guest& Jeremy: All excellent points. The song is wide open to interpretation, as any song of this ilk, should be.
As for the repetition of "W"... sorry to say, it's part of my speech pattern all the time (due to my unfortunate accent) so it suits me fine but there is no reason why you shouldn't make it fit your own accent.
Music is for pleasure and for sharing so why not sing it which ever way it pleases you?
Subject: RE: Help: She Moved Through the Fair

From: GUEST
Date: 11 Jan 07 - 07:51 AM

So is the tb tale true or no ? It's true but if it bothers you.. follow Jeremy's advice.

Subject: RE: Help: She Moved Through the Fair
From: GUEST,Nixie
Date: 11 Jan 07 - 03:17 PM

I think we can all agree that regardless of the various translations, the song is truly beautiful.

May I say, I have really enjoyed reading all of your contributions to this topic. How refreshing it is to find articulate and intelligent conversation on a chat/forum instead of inane babble about the latest Big Brother programme and whether Jade's had liposuction!!

Thank you for restoring my faith in the art of discussion and debate.
xxxx

Subject: RE: Help: She Moved Through the Fair
From: GUEST,mickburke
Date: 11 Jan 07 - 04:14 PM

According to collector Sam Henry ,the original song wasn't haunting or melancholic.I think he said that the verse about the dead love was added by Padraig Colum . Before then it was a much lighter more whimsical song.

Subject: RE: Help: She Moved Through the Fair
From: GUEST,meself
Date: 11 Jan 07 - 04:16 PM

'I know/knew "din" approximates to "noise", but feel that it is rather to strong a word; that is, unless she had tackety boots on and was tap-dancing, "din" isn't the word which I'd use naturally for "sound of footsteps", and it therefore seems a forced word, chosen for its rhyme with the simple "in"' ...

Trad. songs and faux-trad. songs are full of words which are peculiar to some or all modern listeners because they are archaic, denote archaic meanings, are faux-archaic, dialectal, faux-dialectal, artificially 'poetic', or some combination of the preceding. I don't know which of these apply to the word 'din' in this song, but to my ear, that word has a tone (so to speak) consistent with that of the rest of the diction of the song. The cumulative effect of this archaic-poetic diction, like that of the diction of the King James Bible, is to place the story in a world that is strange and charming, at the same time that it is familiar. If, like me, you ignore the interpretation of the song that gives it TB and infection and ghosties and hocus-pocus, then a simple expression of erotic longing comes through somehow all the more powerfully because of the slightly-jarring diction. In other words, the contrast between the unfamiliarity of the diction, on the one hand, and the familiarity of a universal human passion, on the other, makes the effect all the more striking.

Subject: RE: Help: She Moved Through the Fair
From: PoppaGator
Date: 04 Apr 07 - 02:12 PM

I discovered this 3-month-old thread thanks to a reference from a more recent discussion, which pointed to Jim Lad's thorough and very interesting explication of his understanding of this very lovely and mysterious song.

I'm surprised that his "correctness" was challenged, and very much surprised that anyone would consider the song to be "ruined" by this ~ or any ~ interpretation.

I would venture the opinion that Jim is indisputably "correct" insofar as his understanding of the song is something he learned from the tradition whence he came ~ his family and the larger community of they were a part. Perhaps other groups have passed down versions of the song with minor but meaningful differences in the lyrics because their shared understandings of the song may have developed differently over time.

Having just "digested" or internalised this particular backstory that I just learned today, I am now much more likely to try performing the song myself. Only now might I be able to infuse every obscure, archaic line with meaning. Earlier, I was certainly able to enjoy listening to a haunting air with vaguely mystical lyrics, but I could not possibly have sung the piece with any level of conviction, with any idea of what I might be trying to communicate.

Anyone else who prefers to understand the song's tragic story in therms of parental diapproval, etc., rather than disease, more power to you ~ especially if your understanding allows you to bring your own feelings to your effort to pass the song along via performance.

As for myself, I may be more prone than most to adopt Jim's intrerpretation because my own late father lived with tuberculosis, and survived for many years enduring the aftermath of the surgery that "cured" him by removing a lobe from each lung. In the mid-20th-century Irish-American community, his disease no longer held the stigma that was once the case back in the old country, but because we were so aware of the disease, everyone in our family certainly knew about TB's historical association with shameful poverty.

Another angle: if and when I start to sing the song, and certainly whenever I hear it from know on, it will be impossible not to think about the very recent plague of incurable sexually-transmitted disease. Not part of the "tradition," certainly not anything intended by the author(s), but an inescapable subtext now that the world has changed (as it always does).

Subject: RE: Help: She Moved Through the Fair
From: GUEST,meself
Date: 04 Apr 07 - 04:26 PM

And as Jim Lad pointed out: " ... I speak with such authority. How could I be wrong"?

(And if he tells us that there are Weapons of Mass Destruction hidden in the lyrics, we'll go to war against them!).

Oh - and "it's part of my speech pattern all the time (due to my unfortunate accent)" - should that not read "my unfortunate ACCIDENT" (I assume involving a bottle thrust gobward with too much vigour ... )?

Subject: RE: Help: She Moved Through the Fair
From: Jim Lad
Date: 04 Apr 07 - 04:44 PM

Actually, I learned the story from Paddy Graber after I sang it at the Midsummers Festival in Smithers in the early eighties. He made a point of writing the third verse out for me. A little too late though. I had already recorded it without that verse.
That being said. My closest friends over the years are Irish and all of them, without exception, knew the story and were somewhat surprised that I didn't.
So, handed down by tradition? I suppose. If you include being told by an Irishman, raised in the far east, residing in Vancouver's China Town and attending a Folk Festival beneath Hudson Bay Mountain, which is far removed from Hudson Bay or Hudson's Bay for that matter, on a drizzly Sunday morning on the twenty third of June which, although it marked summer solstice, is a long way from being the middle of the summer.
And yet: I do remember every detail after all these years.
Tradition or Evolution. Who really cares. The story will evolve.

Subject: RE: Help: She Moved Through the Fair
From: Jim Lad
Date: 04 Apr 07 - 05:01 PM

I should clarify one point though. Although I had often heard, as a boy that the song was about "Consumption", I hadn't a clue what that meant and always felt too stupid to ask. Something we could all keep in mind when someone posts a thread such as this one.
Paddy was the first one to sit down on the bleachers with me and interpret the song line by line. He didn't wait to be asked. Just passed along a little knowledge.
If I had payed attention in school the way I did to him that day, I'd be far too important to talk to any of yous!
Grin!
Jim

Subject: RE: Help: She Moved Through the Fair
From: GUEST,meself
Date: 04 Apr 07 - 05:23 PM

'Although I had often heard, as a boy that the song was about "Consumption", I hadn't a clue what that meant and always felt too stupid to ask.'

Why didn't you just Google it, Uncle Jim?

Subject: RE: Help: She Moved Through the Fair
From: GUEST
Date: 04 Apr 07 - 05:30 PM

Just another Celtic Woman number. Is there no end to the songs they turn into massive hits ?

Subject: RE: Help: She Moved Through the Fair
From: PoppaGator
Date: 04 Apr 07 - 05:33 PM

Yeah, after I posted earlier today, it had occurred to me that one bit of TB "lore" that I learned as a kid, and might have mentioned, was that it used to be called "consumption" back in the bad old days.

Subject: RE: Help: She Moved Through the Fair
From: GUEST,meself
Date: 04 Apr 07 - 05:42 PM

"Just another Celtic Woman number."

Someone else respond to this. I don't know anything about "Celtic Woman" and this is the first I've heard of her having anything to do with this song.

Subject: RE: Help: She Moved Through the Fair
From: GUEST
Date: 04 Apr 07 - 05:59 PM

Celtic Woman is a group made up of 5 Irish women (4 singers and one fiddle player), and one singer from New Zealand. They are currently on a North American tour, you can check them out at Celticwoman.com. This song is one of the ones they do, and quite beautifully IMO. Be warned, you may become an instant fan, and become 'obsessed' with their music. Enjoy!

Subject: RE: Help: She Moved Through the Fair
From: Jim Lad
Date: 04 Apr 07 - 06:07 PM

I know I've said this before but it always annoys me when people change the lyrics to this one. Please tell me that Celtic Woman doesn't do that.

Subject: RE: Help: She Moved Through the Fair
From: GUEST
Date: 04 Apr 07 - 06:10 PM

Celtic Woman does the very best rendition of that song. And they don't change anything as far as I know. Hey Jim, are you a fan yet ??

Subject: RE: Help: She Moved Through the Fair
From: Jim Lad
Date: 04 Apr 07 - 06:12 PM

Not yet. I'll try to watch it during the next pledge drive. You just never know, do you?

Subject: RE: Help: She Moved Through the Fair
From: GUEST,meself
Date: 04 Apr 07 - 06:13 PM

GUEST - why don't you give yourself a handle, so we'll know if it's the same GUEST making each post? If it is, I assume I misinterpreted your first post - if it was yours - in which case, I missed the irony, and took it as a slag at both CW and the song ...