Subject: RE: Londonderry Air's original (Gaelic?) words
From:
GUEST
Date: 18 Jul 01 - 07:29 AM
There indeed is more than one guest in this thread.
As to Michael's site, his website generally is good. I now believe the Melody Lane site copied his work verbatim without crediting him. I am the guest who initially wondered aloud what was going on in that regard.
To find out, I spent a couple of hours doing a Google search, was able to come up with every on-line reference Robinson gives on his website and a whole lot more, in about an hour.
I read all the threads related to this on the Irish traditional music site yesterday. They go back to 1995. It appears to me that Michael Robinson's information on the Danny Boy page was largely gleaned from Internet sources and asking around, and not by doing legitimate research. There are so many holes in his story you could drive a truck through them.
In addition to that, he makes outrageously ignorant statements regarding the discourse surrounding this song, like:
"This illustrates one of the great modern myths of the traditional music establishment, which is that Irish traditional music is the province only of the Catholic Irish. In the Internet world of Irish music, people have been banned from list discussions for denying this myth.I would be hesitant to bring up the name of Jimmy McCurry in such online forums for fear of being accused of advocating the murder of children. (To some people this may seem ridiculous, but I speak from experience.) I'm afraid that dispassionate discussion of this part of the history of Irish music must be postponed until the Irish manage to settle their very complicated political disputes, which we all hope will come sooner rather than later. "
This is, I can only assume, is a reference to Conrad Bladey's removal from the Irish traditional music list after several years of his *abusive behavior* towards other posters on the list. To suggest that he was removed for discussing Orange music is disingenous in the extreme. John Moulden is probably one of the most expert, highly respected people alive today on Orange music in Ulster, and he regularly contributed (and sometimes still does) to that list.
Robinson's obvious personal bigotries calls his supposed "research" into question.
Robertson gives no information whatsoever to the many other sources of lyrics used with the tune, most notably Tynan's, whose version was sung by world famous Irish tenor John McCormack. I believe he didn't even bother with this fairly substantial Irish side of the song, because of his personal prejudices.
As I mentioned before, McCormick used Tynan's poem and an air which was believed to be traditional (the air is commonly believed to be "traditional" in Ireland, regardless of what Robinson claims). This is easily obtainable information, even on the Internet, and there is no reasonable explanation I can think of why that information wasn't included, if he is claiming to have "solved" the mystery (whatever the hell it was in his mind anyway).
I also stated he did no research into the American side of the story, including the O'Neill tunes, the most obvious place to look for American remnants of traditional tunes brought from Ireland. As I said, O'Neill's collection is referred to as "The Book" by Irish musicians.
Rather, Robinson's only real mention of this is in passing: referring (again) to another poster on the Irish traditional music list who is not an "expert" on Irish traditional music by any means.
He largely dismisses totally the idea that the tune Weatherly claimed came from an American source, may have come from O'Neill's collection. Rather, he focuses on an obscure cite about Percy Grainger (one of Robinson's Australian countrymen)being the American source for Weatherly's tune, which just flies in the face of reason.
He also dismisses out of hand the possibility that Weatherly may have appropriated/been influenced by the art song by Frank Bridge, which is an adapted version of the air. Rather, he creates wholly unrealistic speculation about Percy Grainger being the source, without presenting any evidence as to how Weatherly might have gotten the Grainger version (in the mail? I don't think so). Bridge's composition, apparently, was recorded in 1908, which fits the timeframe of the song's copyright date much more comfortably than does the Grainger version. Bridge was an English composer, the mentor to Benjamin Britten, and was a composer known for using folk music sources. If we are to look at composers of art songs from the era whom Weatherly may have been familiar with (as a contemporary), Bridge is much more plausible than Grainger.
Also, if Weatherly was, as many suspect, using folk music sources for tunes, as so many other composers of the era were, it is much more likely that he got the tune from the source most often cited, which is Petrie. It is possible that the source for his adaptation is O'Neill, which was also a published tune collection he may have had access to in London (and hence the claim it came from America).
Robinson doesn't even mention the connections of the song between Ireland and Britain--he doesn't mention Hyde or Yeats or Tynan or McCormack. Clearly hasn't done any research into the Gaelic League, Young Irelanders, or Anglo Irish literary movement of the era in both Ireland and London.
Rather, he quotes an Irish poem which doesn't even fit the music from Irish Minstrelsy, and uses that as his justification for claiming "mystery solved"! I might also mention that there is, to my knowledge, nothing in the historic record which connects that poem to the air in question. Robinson's website contains nothing more than idle speculation and wishful thinking. If that is what you call "conscientious" research, it says more about you than this anonymous guest.
We see this sort of so-called "research" more and more often on the Internet. Anybody can put up a website and make any outrageous claims they want, wholly unsubstantiated, without specific cites, and with only the sketchiest knowledge or background. Let me tell you something else--Robinson's page isn't where I'd go for information on the Irish language on-line.
BTW, to one of the other GUESTs--the source I quoted for Bunting was the one given on Robinson's page. There is a Bunting website on-line which may be the source of Robinson's claim, though he doesn't cite it. That page:
http://services.worldnet.net/~pybertra/ceol/tunes.htm
cites the source as "the first Bunting collection."
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sj
