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The great Irish Song theft conspiracy
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Subject: The great Irish Song theft conspirac y From: Declan Date: 26 Jun 02 - 12:37 PM Am I the only one around here who is starting to get a little bored with the fact that almost every song origin thread ends up with a list of songs that "the Irish" (whoever they are) have stolen. For example a German American wrote a song about someone who he chose to name Kathleen (an irish name). This was then sung and recorded by a number of 'Irish Tenors' and lo and behold some people thought it was Irish. Is this a surprize. I suspect the author had an eye to the market in choosing the name. If he'd written "I'll take you home again Grunhilde (sorry about the spelling) it might not have sold so many copies. Also a lot of Irish bands (both Irish and internationally based) have recorded songs that weren't written in Ireland. These may or may not have been properly accredited at the time, but not everybody studies the liner notes on albums, and some people may think they are Irish when they are not. The same is true of 'Irish' song books, not all of which are compiled by Irish people, who wrongly attribute songs as being Irish. There are cases where people have changed the words to Irish place names to make them more meaningful to their audience. Some may have done so to avoid copyright, in which case they are guilty of theft to some degree, but this is surely part of the folk process. Were Woody Guthrie and Bob Dylan thieves ? or did they just adapt songs to suit their circumstances. I'd just ask people out there to think twice before they start generalising about "the" anything. If these threads were written about other ethnic groups they would rightly be the subject of messages condemning racism for what it is. Or is it always only a joke ? Rant over. |
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Subject: RE: BS: The great Irish Song theft conspirac y From: RichM Date: 26 Jun 02 - 12:56 PM No one can 'steal' a song--I suspect this is one time I would agree with #1Peasant! Some songs are like the wind: they don't recognize borders, countries, cultures or languages...They move freely because their musicality is recognized universally. I leave up to the scholars, librarians and historians to record and debate their origins.
I simply sing them, and enjoy them. Rich McCarthy |
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Subject: RE: BS: The great Irish Song theft conspirac y From: Davetnova Date: 26 Jun 02 - 12:57 PM Well I have one songbook that has two entries for Macpherson's lament. One with eight verses is listed as a Scottish folksong, the other with only five verses is listed as an Irish folksong. So obviously the Irish were disturbed before they could steal the whole song. |
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Subject: RE: BS: The great Irish Song theft conspirac y From: Mrrzy Date: 26 Jun 02 - 12:57 PM Hey, you sing about Kathleen, even if you are German you are writing an Irish song, I agree. I hope so does poor otherwise-misguided Kevin Reilly...! |
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Subject: RE: BS: The great Irish Song theft conspirac y From: Mr Happy Date: 26 Jun 02 - 12:58 PM some years ago,a friend bought a cassette compilation called'songs of old ireland' among the listings on the sleeve notes was, 'i belong to glasgow'! |
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Subject: RE: BS: The great Irish Song theft conspirac y From: greg stephens Date: 26 Jun 02 - 01:36 PM You're right Declan, it is boring.Those little Ossian song books that evrybody has are very rightly entitled "Folksongs and ballads popular in Ireland"...and it would be better if people remembered that.It doesnt say "Irish Folksongs".It's bloody lovely when songs move around the world and get adopted and changed andshared, and who coud object to that. But you must also understand that people will also get amused, or niggled, or both if a pattern develops of attributing certain musical itmems or forms to "Irish origin" when they clearly aren't( or if it's a moot point). "Any old Iron"and "Lish young buy-a-broom" have been raised as obvious examples in recent postings. WThey are bound to make hackles rise if you call them "Irish", just as it would be plain ludicrous to go round calling "Spancil Hill" or "The
Flower of Scotland" English folksongs. |
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Subject: RE: BS: The great Irish Song theft conspirac y From: greg stephens Date: 26 Jun 02 - 01:56 PM Come on declan, you can't expect people not to have a little chuckle finding "Any old iron" or the"lish young buy a broom" described as Irish. "Foksongs and Ballads Popular in Ireland" is thevery fair title of the little Ossian books, and that is a wonderful non-controversialway of putting it. The English, Welsh, scottish and Irish have been sharing songs and tunes for untold centuries with enormous mutual pleasure. It is only a few rabid chauvinist cultural historians on all sides who stir things up occasionally by refusing to recognise this mutually beneficial borrowing, and adopt the line of "if it's sung in X it must have originated in X". And those sort of claims, believed by credulous people, do need jumping on, because they can feed feelings of ethnic superiority in inadequate people and we all know only too well where that can lead. My own position is I love English songs and I love Irish songs, and most of the time I havent a bloody clue which are which. But just sometimes I do have a clue, and will take a humorous dig at any Englishman who claims "Spancil Hill" is an old Norfolk folksong. PS Can we have St Patrick back? |
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Subject: RE: BS: The great Irish Song theft conspirac y From: greg stephens Date: 26 Jun 02 - 02:00 PM Sorry thought I'd lost the first letter, so I wrote it again and now it's reappeared. So youve gottwo versions. I think the second one's better, how about you? |
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Subject: RE: BS: The great Irish Song theft conspirac y From: PeteBoom Date: 26 Jun 02 - 02:03 PM Defintely, the second one is better.... |
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Subject: RE: BS: The great Irish Song theft conspirac y From: Wolfgang Date: 26 Jun 02 - 02:20 PM I disagree, Pete, the second one looks to me like a later Irish theft of minor quality of the strongly worded true English original. Wolfgang |
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Subject: RE: BS: The great Irish Song theft conspirac y From: GUEST Date: 26 Jun 02 - 02:45 PM I can't find the words thief/thieves/theft, or stole/stolen anywhere in the "Kathleen" thread. Do you have an example of a "song origin" thread which "ends up with" a "list" of songs "The Irish" "stole" ? That is, it must be a thread about the origins of a song, there must be a list of songs (i.e. more than one) near the end of the thread, and in the same post with the list there must occur the words "The Irish stole" or similar words, with the object of "stole" being the songs on the list. |
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Subject: RE: BS: The great Irish Song theft conspirac y From: greg stephens Date: 26 Jun 02 - 02:56 PM well its been a friendly chat so far lets keep it that way, huh? |
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Subject: RE: BS: The great Irish Song theft conspirac y From: MMario Date: 26 Jun 02 - 03:08 PM Guest does have a point in that as far as I can tell - recently - the trend has been in the other direction - with people complaining that songs are marked or considered "irish" and they are NOT. |
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Subject: RE: BS: The great Irish Song theft conspirac y From: PeteBoom Date: 26 Jun 02 - 03:41 PM "people complaining that songs are marked or considered "irish" and they are NOT. " Actually... it strikes me that Guest, 26-Jun-02 - 02:45 PM above, is slicing and dicing Declan's metaphores. I *believe* that the gist of Declan's original post (that songs like "I'll Take You Home Again Kathleen" and "Dirty Old Town" are considered "Irish" by many people) is not something to blame the Irish themselves for. The fact that The Pogues did a cover of Dirty Old Town does not make it Irish. Right? Blaming "the Irish" because of other people's assumptions (mainly Americans it seems) is silly. It seems that Declan's main thrust is that there are folks too lazy to verify sources before posting in DT (and elsewhere) or so unscrupulous to publish a book of "Irish" songs that aren't. The stuff I write is "American" although it may be written in a style similar to Irish folk or Scottish folk. If my cousin in Dublin sings it, or a friend in Ayreshire sings it, it is still American, not Irish or Scottish, but some folks may never figure that out. Now let us quit violently agreeing... ;-) Pete |
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Subject: RE: BS: The great Irish Song theft conspirac y From: gnu Date: 26 Jun 02 - 03:44 PM Perhaps the Irish are just better at performing these tunes ? |
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Subject: RE: BS: The great Irish Song theft conspirac y From: GUEST,Ewan McVicar Date: 26 Jun 02 - 03:58 PM My favourite reallocation as an Irish song is Sonny's Dream. A Nova Scotian composition, recorded in Dublin by Scot Hamish Imlach with Mary Black among the backing singers, then recorded by Mary Black herself, and at last performed on the Bringing It All Home TV series as a genuine Irish-American folksong. How irritating / embarrassing for all concerned. |
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Subject: RE: BS: The great Irish Song theft conspirac y From: little john cameron Date: 26 Jun 02 - 05:31 PM See there is a perfect example.Sonny's Drean was written by Ron Hynes from NEWFOUNDLAND.Ah'm surprised at ye Ewan.ljc |
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Subject: RE: BS: The great Irish Song theft conspirac y From: Lanfranc Date: 26 Jun 02 - 07:17 PM Let it never be forgotten that "Sing Out" once described "On Ilkley Moor Baht 'At" as a Welsh folksong. Errare humanum est. Alan |
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Subject: RE: BS: The great Irish Song theft conspirac y From: Den Date: 26 Jun 02 - 09:24 PM So the Irish are music thieves now...uhm! I thought they were all just terrorists and itinerants. Or is that just the crowd from the north...hard to know. |
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Subject: RE: BS: The great Irish Song theft conspirac y From: GUEST Date: 26 Jun 02 - 09:28 PM It's NOT????? I thought it was ............... (insert nationality to taste in order to start another argument) |
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Subject: RE: BS: The great Irish Song theft conspirac y From: GUEST Date: 26 Jun 02 - 09:30 PM Last post referring to Lanfranc's post, but beaten to the Submit button by Den...... |
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Subject: RE: BS: The great Irish Song theft conspirac y From: Midchuck Date: 26 Jun 02 - 09:41 PM One of the "Folksongs popular in Ireland" pamphlets that we have has Bill Staines' "A Place in the Choir," without any attribution whatever. I think Planxty liberated Norman Blake's "Billy Grey," more or less in cold blood, retitling it "True Love Knows no Season." I don't know if they paid any royalties, but I doubt it, since he grumbled about it in introducing the song at a concert once. Peter. |
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Subject: RE: BS: The great Irish Song theft conspirac y From: katlaughing Date: 26 Jun 02 - 09:52 PM If you have corrections for any song origin threads, it would helpful if you'd post them in the appropriate threads, with whatever references you have. We'd like the Song Origins Permathread, with its links to those threads, to be as accurate as possible. Thanks, kat |
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Subject: RE: BS: The great Irish Song theft conspirac y From: GUEST,guitarfixer Date: 27 Jun 02 - 02:01 AM Irish groups tend to latch on to all kinds (usually good) songs or tunes. Of course, by they time they are passed around and recorded by 6 or 8 Irish groups, they are thought of as "Irish" songs. Tommy Makem and Liam Clancy had a pretty good hit with Bill Staines' "A Place in the Choir". Several groups "stole" it from them and I don't imagine many of them heard Staines' own recordings of it. On the other hand, many recordings have been made of Tommy Makem's "Four Green Fields" and seldom have I seen it credited. It is hard to keep track sometimes. |
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Subject: RE: BS: The great Irish Song theft conspirac y From: Declan Date: 27 Jun 02 - 05:48 AM Ok guest. The Kathleen thread didn't actually say steal - it said "claimed as trad. Irish" but I think this is not quite accurate. I'd say in most cases these songs have been attributed as trad Irish - in many cases by those who either knew no better, or were too lazy to go and check it out. Maybe I was getting a bit paranoid, but I've read a lot of these threads and the same stuff gets repeated again and again. Maybe I should have named this thread "Songs wrongly thought to be Irish" and everybody could have posted their favourites there. Then people could just add a link to that thread every time they felt inclined to rant on the subject rather than clog up the origin threads. I'm all for accuracy. There are people out there who seem to feel qualified to publish song books who don't feel the need to research the material in any sort of a thorough way. But obviously there's a market there for this stuff, so they might feel there isn't any need for accuracy. At the end of the day (as Roy Keane might put it) I think Rich M has the right attitude. I sing and play songs from many parts of the world, and if anybody can be bothered to listen to me, and they want to know, I'll tell them as much as I know about the provenance of the song. In the unlikely event that anyone was willing to record and publish any of that material I'd do my best to produce accurately researched sleeve notes, but there's no guarantee that people would read them. By the way, as far as I'm concerned you (The English and/or The Scots) can have Danny Boy back now. We're finished with it ! |
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Subject: RE: BS: The great Irish Song theft conspirac y From: greg stephens Date: 27 Jun 02 - 06:00 AM Come on Dekkers old chap. We're not allowed to say "the English" or "the Scots", for fear of being racist (your ruling, in your original post). I refuse to allow any of my English or Scottish blood to make me feel any collective responsibility for "Danny Boy", whoever wrote it. I hate it, because I can never make the high note. Do you think this Orac bloke is right, that it was written about Scotland? Seems unlikely to me. I know it's got pipes and glens in it, but I thought this was a general "celtic twilight" overwash on a portrait of Ireland. |
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Subject: RE: BS: The great Irish Song theft conspirac y From: Hrothgar Date: 27 Jun 02 - 06:05 AM Let's pick a fight - aren't the Welsh reputed to be thieves? |
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Subject: RE: BS: The great Irish Song theft conspirac y From: GUEST,JTT Date: 27 Jun 02 - 06:09 AM In Tin Pan Alley, so I've heard, a lot of the Jewish songwriters wrote for their audience, so a song about an Irish mammy might have more buyers than one about a Yiddischer mama, at one particular time.
But then I thought the Partisan song was about Mao |
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Subject: RE: BS: The great Irish Song theft conspirac y From: Declan Date: 27 Jun 02 - 06:19 AM greg, Danny Boy can't be about Ireland 'cause it mentions the summer and we don't get them in Ireland (at least not this year so far). The "the"s (wasn't that the name of a band?) were deliberate, for effect. |
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Subject: RE: BS: The great Irish Song theft conspirac y From: greg stephens Date: 27 Jun 02 - 06:21 AM The Welsh were certainly always supposed to steal sheep. But it's what they do with thm afterwards that causes the fuss. |
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Subject: RE: BS: The great Irish Song theft conspirac y From: Orac Date: 27 Jun 02 - 01:13 PM Yippee.. I got a mention. Nice to see someone else has taken up my theme about the Irish claiming ownership of pretty well anything. Most of the books I have do not say "songs popular in Ireland" at all they most definitely say "Irish Folk songs" and include "The Rose of Allandale" (written by Charles Jeffrys) and always spelled wrongly as Allendale. Fiddlers Green, The Shoals of Herring, When you were sweet sixteen..... I can go on for ever how many do you want?. Frederick Whetherley who wrote Danny Boy in 1911 was quite clearly thinking of Scotland when he wrote it. The song never became "Irish" until it was hi-jacked by Irish Americans like Bing Crosby in the 1920's and after. |
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Subject: RE: BS: The great Irish Song theft conspirac y From: greg stephens Date: 27 Jun 02 - 01:28 PM Well, I dont know about your collections, Orac, but I reckon the Ossian books outsell everything else ten to one, judging by the fact you find them in every shop, and everyone I know seems to have a few of them. And they are definitely labelled "Folksongs and Ballads popular in Ireland" (admittedly with the "popular in " in rather smaller print). Every one of the songs you quote are in the ossian books,incidentally. And you'll have to better than just say "quite clearly" to convince me Danny Boy was written about Scotland. That's just an assertion: what's your evidence, or reasoning? Maybe it was, I'm just curious to know. But in general I will say I define folksongs in terms of usage, not origin, once they have bedded in and become part of the landscape. |
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Subject: RE: BS: The great Irish Song theft conspirac y From: GUEST,SeanN Date: 27 Jun 02 - 11:13 PM For Danny Boy saga, see here: http://www.standingstones.com/danny3.html Mr. Happy, I don't know anything about the origins of "I belong to Glasgow" but I do know there is a very large Irish immigrant population in Glasgow, so that likely explains common attributions to that community. Many Donegal natives go back and forth between Ireland and Scotland, for instance. It isn't at all uncommon to read an obit in Gweedore for some local who had lived in Glasgow most their life. Sometimes they are even brought back to Donegal for burial. |
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Subject: RE: BS: The great Irish Song theft conspiracy From: katlaughing Date: 28 Jun 02 - 12:20 AM Personally, I think Stravinsky was really Irish... |
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Subject: RE: BS: The great Irish Song theft conspiracy From: GUEST,ozmacca Date: 28 Jun 02 - 12:58 AM Of course the Irish are claiming songs that aren't irish, and this is only one aspect of a saddening world-wide campaign to deprive the creators of every worthy thing which is decent and honest from their rightful recognition. I base this on the proven principle that everything worth having in this world was, of course, written, composed, invented or at the very least perfected by a scot. As we all know, Wallace the MacBruce not only single-handedly caused the downfall of the roman empire, married Cleopatra, composed the Beethoven symphonies, kicked out the english from the American colonies, filmed Gone With The Wind, invented the steam engine, postage stamp and sewing machine, flew a balloon to the moon and was lead singer for the Beatles before they went to Germany (teaching Paul McCartney everything he knew), all the while developing the first waterproof road-going bicycle pump. Oh yes kat, AND he also wrote Stravinsky - mind you, anybody could have done that... I just did, and so did you. Half the fun of the folk process is waiting for people to say "Wait on, wasn't that originally a 15th century Patagonian shepherd's madrigal arranged for noseflute and two pieces of string by an obscure monk posing as Henry VIII in a kilt while standing on one leg in front of the wardrobe?" While the provenance of the music is important, it ain't THAT important, as long as we like singing it and hearing it... and as long as the audiences enjoy it. Introduce a piece properly, and if they think it's irish, and it's not, let them worry about it. |
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Subject: RE: BS: The great Irish Song theft conspiracy From: greg stephens Date: 28 Jun 02 - 03:57 AM Totally agree about provenance, Ozmacca, it's interesting but not important in itself. It only becomes significant if chauvinists start using it for racist purposes. Folk music's like football....worth playing, not worth beating up rival supporters for. |
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Subject: RE: BS: The great Irish Song theft conspiracy From: GUEST,Frank McGuiness Date: 28 Jun 02 - 08:03 AM There is definitely begrudgery towards most things Irish from the English on the folk scene. That is not imagined at all, and has it's roots in the Troubles. Nationalism isn't racism though, so people should stop calling the bigoted anti-Irish attitudes of the English racism. It is a very particular sort of English nationalist bigotry, commonly directed towards the Irish, and commonly condoned by those who have assimilated into the Anglo Irish and Anglo American dominant cultures. As long as folk music and the "folk process" is believed by the English in particular to be their most sacred "national" music, we will continue to see this ugly, virulent nationalist bigotry continue. Because so many Brits in particular believe that any English language folk song which can be found within their political borders must have originated in England or Scotland--but absolutely not in Ireland, we will likely continue to see this ignorant and spiteful sort of thing on the British folk scene continue. Many Brits who believe themselves above all that will still engage in this particular form of Irish bashing that Declan mentioned in his original thread. They will continue to do it because their bigotry has it's roots in the belief and value systems of 19th century romantic nationalism--and they believe that to be A Good Thing. Many conservative English folk (and the English folk scene is made up of a lot of conservatives, just as the Anglo American folk scene is) consider the anti-Irish begrudgery something of a sport. They don't care how tiresome it all gets for Irish people, who are expected to have the skin of an armadillo in regard to anti-Irish English and British nationalist "setting people straight" about all things Irish. It is all about provocation. The button pushing is engaged in by the Brits (particularly English Brits) just to see how far they can push us before they get a reaction. Sort of like time spent with a dysfunctional family, which the English most certainly are. No different than the ways that whites used to be able to get away with baiting blacks in the US. Blacks were hyper-aware when it was happening, and so were raised by their elders to learn to take any humiliation and harrassment, because if they reacted they risked their lives and possibly the lives of other blacks, by responding to it. So it was done by whites with impunity for centuries. It is the same behavior between the English and the Irish. It has it's roots in colonialism and romantic nationalism. |
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Subject: RE: BS: The great Irish Song theft conspiracy From: Declan Date: 28 Jun 02 - 08:42 AM Frank, You may very well have some good points to make there, but to my mind making generalised comments about "the English" and "the Brits" is also arrogant and bigoted. That is the kind of behaviour I was giving out about in my original post, whether it is perpetrated by a British person towards "the Irish" or an Irish person towards "the Brits". We are all individuals ("I'm not") and while there may be certain national traits or ways of behaving it does nobody any good if a whole nation (or race or whatever you want to call it) gets tarred with the same brush becuse of the actions or a percieved attitude of a few people. |
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Subject: RE: BS: The great Irish Song theft conspiracy From: greg stephens Date: 28 Jun 02 - 09:48 AM Dont rise to the "Frank McGuiness" bait, a first posting to Mudcat under that name, but a poster well known to all under various names and none. Be fascinating if the powers-that-be were to give us a list of messages coming from that computer. |
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Subject: RE: BS: The great Irish Song theft conspiracy From: GUEST,Dolly West Date: 28 Jun 02 - 09:50 AM Declan me lad, it is nigh on impossible to discuss nationalist bigotry or racism meaningfully without mentioning the names of the groups involved. There is an English/British nationalist form of bigotry which is directed towards the Irish. If you don't want to admit that exists, fine. But to suggest we all just get along here merely sweeps those realities under the rug. I can appreciate people's attempts to defuse ugly bigoted flame wars between the majority English/British posters here in Mudcat and the Irish/Irish American posters. But you can't have it both ways. Either a problem exists in relation to the Irish and Irish music, or it doesn't. If you don't think it is an issue, why did you bring it up to begin with? |
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Subject: RE: BS: The great Irish Song theft conspiracy From: greg stephens Date: 28 Jun 02 - 10:49 AM Another first-time poster. Welcome to Mudcat, Dolly, this topic is attracting a lot of attention. |
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Subject: RE: BS: The great Irish Song theft conspiracy From: Declan Date: 28 Jun 02 - 10:59 AM Dolly, Things must've got odious quiet over at thon Dumcree campsite, if you're over here joining in this discussion. |
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Subject: RE: BS: The great Irish Song theft conspiracy From: GUEST,Dolly West Date: 28 Jun 02 - 11:01 AM We Irish have a quizzical sort of saying that roughly translates to "If drowning is your intention, why bother wading in shallow water?" |
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Subject: RE: BS: The great Irish Song theft conspiracy From: GUEST Date: 28 Jun 02 - 11:28 AM I'm having some difficulty understanding what difference it makes if there is one or one thousand posts under any given name here, greg. I'm not sure what mysterious, cryptic meaning you have assigned to those who post as guests for the first time under a particular name? I note you yourself only managed to post 32 times on 27 June. Nothing very fascinating about those posts, to be sure, regardless of the fact that we can be fairly certain they are all coming from the same computer under the same name. Ad nauseum. |
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Subject: RE: BS: The great Irish Song theft conspiracy From: Gloredhel Date: 28 Jun 02 - 12:58 PM So, what do you call a song that consists of lyrics by an Irish poet set to music by an American? Is it Irish? Is it American? Irish-American, American-Irish, just a good song, or nobody cares? |
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Subject: RE: BS: The great Irish Song theft conspiracy From: GUEST,dermod in salisbury Date: 28 Jun 02 - 01:47 PM All songs written in English are English folksongs. English,however, is a language that belongs to anyone who cares to speak it. Many do and it is greatly enriched on that account. |
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Subject: RE: BS: The great Irish Song theft conspiracy From: GUEST,Philippa Date: 28 Jun 02 - 03:24 PM Usually it's not the Irish singers who popularise songs that originated outside of Ireland are not the people who wrongly describing songs as Irish. Unfortunately people who learn the songs from the Irish sources assume that they are Irish and describe the songs as such. Often they are half right as the songs have been created or developed by Irish emigrants and brought back home after a generation or more. As many of you have already said, you can't always pin a song down to one country or another. Sometimes Irish singers and songwriters have deliberately turned songs from elsewhere into Irish songs. Si Kahn's "Aragon Mill" got turned into "Belfast Mill". OK, often in the folk tradition people change placenames to fit a song to their own locality. And the author of this song may even be pleased at evidence of its universality. But it doesn't seem right that a known living author isn't acknowledged; lots of people think this song is Irish because of a one-word alteration. Curiously, several of the songs of the fight for Irish independence from Britain were closely modelled on English songs. Examples include "All around my hat I wear a tri-coloured ribbon" and "I am a merry ploughboy and I plough the fields all day ... I'm off to join the IRA" ozmacca - give Dan O'Connell credit for the steam engine (or at least for a novel use of it - see the song) |
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Subject: RE: BS: The great Irish Song theft conspiracy From: Jimmy C Date: 02 Jul 02 - 11:25 AM I meant to respond to this thread a few days ago but my computer went belly up. It is now fixed. I believe that the main reason people assume some songs are Irish is because the Irish may be the only ones taking the trouble to sing them. It's the old adage " USE IT OR LOSE IT",. I guarantee that if one was to poll 100 people on any street in Dublin, Belfast, Derry, Galway or anywhere in Ireland , at least 95% of those polled could sing up to 10 to 20 folk songs apiece as well as name 10 or more folk groups and/or singers. The same would not be true in London, Manchester or most cities in England. Scotland would fare a little better with the Corries known to most of them. Welsh folk songs would be more popular outside of Wales if someone would take the trouble of translating them and recording them. Music and singing is more than a hobby in Ireland, it is part of the fibre of the Irish people. We sing and play songs from all over the world, and if no one else is doing this to the same extent, then it stands to reason that the uninformed will assume that the song is Irish. Please make every effort to correct this and please take Danny Boy back, along with Kathleen. It would be a great help if more English radio stations played the folk songs from the vast treasury of english folk songs available. Unfortunately this is not the case. One or two weekly radio slots dedicated to folk music is not enough to get the nmessage across to the general public that they have a great folk song tradition that has died out in many of the large populated regions, all being replaced by Rock, etc. |
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Subject: RE: BS: The great Irish Song theft conspiracy From: DMcG Date: 02 Jul 02 - 12:03 PM There is a difference between the way scholars and researchers think of music and the way sellers/purchasers think of it. One is interested in the 'real' origin, no matter how unlikely or obscure, the other simply ease of access. This can give rise to some odd classifications. To find English Traditional Folk on "Emusic" for example, you look under "World/Reggae" and then the subsection "Celtic/British Isles" I can just picture Bob Copper in dreadlocks! |
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Subject: RE: BS: The great Irish Song theft conspiracy From: beachcomber Date: 02 Jul 02 - 04:40 PM Aw c'mon fellas. Irish singers and groups had a very international popularity from the 60's up to , maybe the early 90's. Don't you expect publishers , producers et al. to attempt to cash in by pushing out everything that was Irish or could even be proposed as Irish to an eagerly receptive public? It will all return to normal, anyday now ok?? beach |
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Subject: RE: BS: The great Irish Song theft conspiracy From: Manitas_at_home Date: 03 Jul 02 - 04:32 AM Jimmy C and Beachcomber have very good points. In the 17th and 18th centuries there was a fashion for ascribing jigs to Ireland as they tended to sell better. People had got it into their heads that Irish jigs were the best and the composers pandered to this belief. |
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Subject: RE: BS: The great Irish Song theft conspiracy From: Grab Date: 03 Jul 02 - 09:49 AM Frank, can I say "bollocks"? Yep. Good. I suggest you re-read Declan's first post - he said that he was OPPOSED to ppl complaining about the Irish "stealing" songs, and that the fact some songs are popularised as "Irish" is just a part of the folk process. I can understand why serious music researchers would get annoyed by CDs like "20 favourite Irish songs" though. It's rather the same way that films like "Elizabeth", "Braveheart" or "U571" annoy historians - they give the public the impression that the songs originated in Ireland or were written by Irish people, which is provably false for some of these songs (eg. Wild Rover). Whether it's a big deal depends on how much you care. I'm not sure how you bring all this back to the Troubles - does everything ultimately come back to that for you, like Freud says it all comes back to sex? FYI, folk music hasn't been Britain's "national music" for ages, Britain's national music has been whatever the latest (American-inspired) pop music is, for over half this century, from American dance-hall jazz forwards. There sure as hell isn't anything "sacred" about it - just check out Shambles' threads about local councils shutting down folk clubs to see how much anyone non-folky cares about it! For the record, many folk songs popularised by Irish bands (and sometimes labelled traditional) were actually written by English, Scottish or American authors. And many folk songs popularised by English bands were actually written by Scottish, Irish or American authors. Big fat hairy deal. Graham. |
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Subject: RE: BS: The great Irish Song theft conspiracy From: GUEST,Frank McGuiness Date: 03 Jul 02 - 12:34 PM Dear Grabby Graham, Can I say bollocks yerself? And now I'm quite sure we'll all just get along. The English folk scene is where you will find English people claiming Britain's folk music as the national music, even today. Just ask the illustrious editor of Folk Roots magazine about it. He can wring his hands and bitch about the Celts, particularly the Irish Celts, with the best of them. For examples of English begrudgery towards Celts/Irish, see uk.music.folk newsgroup just about any day of the week. My point is that the complaints about the Irish stealing English folk songs and taking credit about them is rooted in anti-Irish begrudgery, not fact. It is an urban myth, fueled by (some/many--take your pick) English people's anti-Irish tendencies. Why do they have anti-Irish tendencies? 30 years of being at war with the Irish does have an effect on the English national psyche. English people view the relationship between themselves and the Irish in many different ways. Of course many of them are positive. But many of them are quite negative, and I view the anti-Irish begrudgery so common on the English folk scene in the latter context, not the former. Others have a right to view the context differently of course, but that doesn't make my interpretation wrong, now does it? What I'm saying is, the complaints Declan speaks of are, IMO, rooted in anti-Irish sentiments among English and some Scottish nationalist leaning folkers. I simply don't see these attitudes expressed when I am in the company of people who have little interest in the English and Scottish nationalist wings of the folk scene. It seems to me to be a phenomenon peculiar to the nationalistically inclined. Cheers.
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Subject: RE: BS: The great Irish Song theft conspiracy From: DonD Date: 03 Jul 02 - 09:03 PM Creeping desperately here, in response to Kat's Stravinsky reference, and away from the skirmishing between the Tans and the IRA -- When Dame Myra Hess made her post-war return to the USA, my friends and I were kicked out at the beginning of the second half for uncontrolled hilarity and guffawing. During the intermission, the lady in front of us had referred to the famous Russian cellist Piatogorsky as "Paddy O'Gorsky", another shameless Irish theft that left us hysterical (we were only 17). We supposed he was related to that other noted Russo-Irishman, Marshal Tim O'Shenko. |
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Subject: RE: BS: The great Irish Song theft conspiracy From: Declan Date: 04 Jul 02 - 05:54 AM In a similar vein to DonD's last post, there's a story that a well known classical violinist holidaying in Donegal was once introduced "And now we'll have a few tunes on the Fiddle from Hiudai Mc Mennaman. And what about Peadar Rooskey and Pat Ganeeny. The list of Irish classical musicians is endless. |
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Subject: RE: BS: The great Irish Song theft conspiracy From: manitas_at_work Date: 04 Jul 02 - 07:16 AM I read uk.music.folk everyday and I wonder when the last such thread appeared. I can't remember one at all. |
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Subject: RE: BS: The great Irish Song theft conspiracy From: GUEST,Song Fein Date: 04 Jul 02 - 07:44 AM In the interests of peace, harmony, & parity of esteem, we are willing to admit that "Dirty old Town" & "The Shoals of Herring" are NOT in fact old Irish Folksongs. However, in return for this major concession, we DEMAND that "The English" admit full responsibility for the unprovoked & unjustified promulgation of "The Wild Rover" Crazy Eddie |
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Subject: RE: BS: The great Irish Song theft conspiracy From: Grab Date: 04 Jul 02 - 08:05 AM OK Frank, I got a bit OTT there, sorry. :-) I'm not sure how it's an urban myth, for songs which are well-documented as coming from particular areas of England or Scotland. Sure, Irish ppl play some songs which originated in England. English ppl also play "Whiskey in the Jar". If you know where each came from, no big deal. If you say, "This is an Irish song" and someone says, "No it isn't, it was written by Fred Dibble from Chipping Norton, and the original broadsheet is in the Bodleian Library" then it's hardly a matter of prejudice. I guess the thing is for those songs which don't have a well-known provenance. In that case, anyone can pursue their private agendas. And there'll always be some nutters around. Some may have reasons for being anti-Irish like getting caught up in IRA bombings (just as many NI Catholics have damn convincing reasons for being anti-English, like being shot and beaten up by English soldiers), and some may just be nutters out for a fight. It's not the whole English folk scene, it's just the loony fringe. That's the difference between saying "the English" (from your first post) and saying "some English nationalists", which makes a pretty serious difference! So you're right on that, it will just be those nationalist nutters who pursue this, the rest of us just want those nutters to stop bloody talking so we can carry on playing! :-) I've checked the archives of UMF on Google. I can't find a single thread for the past two months on the subject. So I guess there can't be too many nutters around wanting to fight about it, compared to the number of "normal" ppl who just want to listen to good music. :-) Graham. |
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Subject: RE: BS: The great Irish Song theft conspiracy From: GUEST,Frank McGuiness Date: 04 Jul 02 - 01:54 PM The point, again, is that if you are looking for national origins of songs, there is a nationalist politics which not only informs that search, but defines it. There are imbedded political agendas and assumptions inherent in the search for "origins" of folk songs by nation. The roots are in the European movement known as romantic nationalism, which is where the origins of what we now refer to as "folklore" and "antiquities" and "anthropology" and "archaeology" lie. In the very recent past, when Europe was constructing the modern nation-state. The nationalist study of folk song was part and parcel of that process, and while that now antiquated model of enquiry still drives the study of much folk song in Ireland and Britain's academies of higher learning, it is considered outdated in the US especially, because of it's racialist and nationalist assumptions and essentializing.
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Subject: RE: BS: The great Irish Song theft conspiracy From: Malcolm Douglas Date: 04 Jul 02 - 05:11 PM That would certainly be the case when considering the putative origins of older material, but in fact the majority of songs found in tradition are not very old; many began life in the theatre, music hall, vaudeville or minstrel show, and can in many cases be traced to their original writers. It is equally true that a great many songs circulating at present in the early stages of aural transmission were written by people who are still living or are only recently deceased; and are beginning already to acquire false attributions. I do not see how establishing correct attributions or clarifying the history and origins of a song, where this can be done accurately, can reasonably be considered nationalist, let alone racialist. Perhaps some academics, in America and elsewhere, are over-compensating for the preconceptions of their predecessors; this is normal, but can itself be a manifestation of political agendas quite as destructive of objectivity as those which they have rejected. It is all too easy to impute ignoble motives to others with whom one disagrees; harder, but more worthwhile ultimately, to approach even subjects about which one feels strongly, with a reasonably open mind. |
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Subject: RE: BS: The great Irish Song theft conspiracy From: GUEST,Frank McGuiness Date: 05 Jul 02 - 10:31 AM Citing proper attribution for a song is never wrong. It is the way it's done that causes the offense being discussed here (as I understand it), Malcolm. If we are to have a reasonably open mind, then that means accepting the fact that most of the Irish/British or Irish/English "arguments" are rooted, at least partially, in people's (usually unexamined) prejudices about the other. I'm not saying that doesn't cut both ways, it does. But there are differences too, as I pointed out in my analogy about whites treatment of blacks in the US. Irish bigotry towards the English is a result of being on the shallow end of the colonial relationship, and living with the British as occupiers for centuries. OTOH, British bigotry towards the Irish on the folk scene seems, to me, to be rooted more in recent politics of the Troubles, and the fact that Irish music has, in the past few years, enjoyed more popularity than English and Scottish music has. So it really just seems to be more about jealousy, than anything else.
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Subject: RE: BS: The great Irish Song theft conspiracy From: GUEST,Frank McGuiness Date: 05 Jul 02 - 10:39 AM BTW, the reference I made above to uk.music.folk involved a fairly recent thread wherein Dick Gaughan challenged Ian Anderson's claim (my paraphrase here from fallible memory) that the Celts were getting more attention than they deserved. It summed up this whole argument rather neatly for me. So I went to google.groups to check the archive, and I can't find the thread in question, of course. Both men are somewhat prolific usenet contributors, and I've just not got the time to keep looking. I do wish I'd saved the exchange, however. See how useful it would be now to quote the two of them on the subject! What I did come across though, was an interesting thread on how historians view folk song, which is something of a side issue to this one. The argument that it is only one community striving for accuracy about the origins of songs is misleading, I think. There has never been a tremendous amount of accuracy among folk music scholars, most of whom have been amateurs, not professional academics, with an entirely different agenda. So I'll quote a good post from Dick Gaughan here, which may illuminate the bigger issues at work here for some. Quote from Dick in the following post. |
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Subject: RE: BS: The great Irish Song theft conspiracy From: GUEST,Frank McGuiness Date: 05 Jul 02 - 10:42 AM Quoted from post by Dick Gaughan in the Google Groups archive: Subject: Re: Folk song as historical document...any help? Date: 2001-11-14 06:25:59 PST A previous, unattributed poster had written: >I need to be able to explore the validity of folk song >as a useful document for historians. I doubt very much whether such validity could be proven to the satisfaction of historians. The orthodox historical method is to seek corroboration and supporting evidence and most historians would regard folk song as being interesting but necessarily anecdotal. Which is missing the point somewhat as they are different phenomena with different purposes. Perhaps it might be useful to look at it this way - where "history" is largely interested in trying to establish what happened, "folk song" is largely a record of how those involved perceived and reacted to what happened. Where folk song *can* be useful as historical evidence is when contemporary 'official' records of events were heavily tilted towards one point of view ("history is written by the winners") and the bulk of the songs give a different picture, as in the case of the 1798 United Irishmen attempted revolution in Ireland. In such cases, folk song can present an alternative view of events. But given that songs present the subjective views of individuals, they are open to romanticism, sentimentalising (as in the 'Jacobite' songs of 1715-46 in Scotland), bowdlerising and misinterpretation. As an emotional record, songs are wonderful and probably totally truthful; as an objective record of events, they are often less reliable. -- DG |
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Subject: RE: BS: The great Irish Song theft conspiracy From: GUEST,Frank McGuiness Date: 05 Jul 02 - 10:55 AM As a follow up to DG's post, I think Irish singers have a tendency to come to "own" the songs as performers emotionally, and that comes through in their performances of material, regardless of the song's source. Of course, the same can be said of other cultural groups too, but the "emotional truth" of the song is central to Irish traditional singers interpretation of any song they perform. The words often tend to matter less than the emotion evoked by the song. It is the emotion that is being communicated in a good performance. Once an individual "owns" a song in this way, in the Irish tradition, it often does become "their" song, and other singers likely won't perform it publicly. It is a very different idea of ownership of song than the standard used by folk song collectors interested in attributing a song to a specific nation/ancestral group. Which is another issue I don't see being discussed here much, though I don't know if gnu was half serious or half joking when he said 'perhaps the Irish perform the songs better'. Misattribution of the national origin of the composers of songs (folk or pop or jazz or gospel) is very common. So why is it that the British/Scottish/English focus so much on the misattribution of songs to the Irish, and not the other way around, or about other cultural groups/nationalities, d'you suppose? Prejudice is the only rational answer I can come with. I'm not suggesting it to be inflammatory at all. Declan asked, and I gave an answer I believe is at least partially correct. |
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Subject: RE: BS: The great Irish Song theft conspiracy From: GUEST,Frank McGuiness Date: 05 Jul 02 - 11:13 AM And now one more thing, and I'll leave it to rest. The following link is to the British government's Commission on Racial Equality Adobe site. It is a report on anti-Irish prejudice and bigotry in Britain: http://www.cre.gov.uk/pdfs/irinbrit.pdf People will, of course, likely already have their minds made up about this. But it apparently still bears repeating: the Irish have largely been treated much worse by the British than the other way around, and that certainly continues to be the case in Britain, as this study found. It would be quite unrealistic to say that those prejudices and bigotries are not an issue in this discussion. |
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Subject: RE: BS: The great Irish Song theft conspiracy From: Declan Date: 05 Jul 02 - 11:18 AM This has turned out to be a very interesting debate. Thanks to all who contributed. I've no doubt there's a bit of the truth in a lot of what people have been saying around here. For some the desire for accuracy is paramount, for others there is an element of begrudgery/jealousy/ prejudice. It is possible, for example, to post accurate information as to the provenance of a song, without having a little side-swipe in the process. All I wanted to achieve with this thread was to get people to think for a minute before they make generalisations which others might find offensive. There have been several different points of view from a number of people who I assume are Irish. This is healthy and natural but goes to show that it is pointless to generalise about any group of people - the begrudgers might say it proves that the Irish can't agree about anything, but Brendan Behan had the right attitude to begrudgers. I'm going to be off-line for the next couple of weeks as I'll be over in Miltown Malbay puting some of this theory into practice. I'll look forward to seeing how things have developed when I return. |
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Subject: RE: BS: The great Irish Song theft conspiracy From: GUEST,Frank McGuiness Date: 05 Jul 02 - 11:34 AM And I for one suffer no delusions about the side-swipping of the Irish in this regard ending any time soon. But it is possible, in a small forum like this, to curtail it when we anti-Irish remarks occurring in our midst. As the study I linked to points out, it is just these sorts of so-called "jokes" about the Irish that feed the hurtful stereotypes the British hold of the Irish as frauds. That said, have a grand time and enjoy the craic in Miltown Malbay! |
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Subject: RE: BS: The great Irish Song theft conspiracy From: GUEST,Guest Date: 15 Oct 02 - 01:41 PM Interesting that "Craic" has now been accredited as a word of Scottish origin (I was told this by a friend who is an eminent Irish archaeologist!). He also enters into the debate on musical origins and makes the point that the movement of Scots to Ireland and vice-versa has been occuring for over 10,000 years. There is now evidence for the first settlers to the island that is now Ireland (since the last ice age) having gone over from the area of Britain that is now known as Scotland. Since then, there has been a constant movement of people of all social classes between the two countries. The other thing that makes it so confusing is that many of the people in North America who are probably of Scottish origin think they are of Irish origin as a lot of the boats last port of call was in Ireland to pick up fresh water, regardless of the original origin of the boat. Apparently, when the ship arrived in the USA the people would all be listed as coming from the last port of call if they couldn't be understood. |
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Subject: RE: BS: The great Irish Song theft conspiracy From: Gareth Date: 15 Oct 02 - 01:57 PM Belated comment from Wales - We are proud to pray on our knee's and prey on our neighbours. Click Here Gareth |
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Subject: RE: BS: The great Irish Song theft conspiracy From: Amos Date: 15 Oct 02 - 02:02 PM You lot do carry on! It seems to me that these national labels mixed up with these genetic labels mixed up with these cultural labels mixed up with these commercial labels -- all using the same terms to mean different things -- are producing an incredible foaming up of codwallop. As that famous Irishman, Mister O'Data, would say, "It is completely illogical!" A |
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Subject: RE: BS: The great Irish Song theft conspiracy From: weerover Date: 15 Oct 02 - 02:58 PM I started to catalogue the Irish songs for which I have words in songbooks, record sleeves and so on, and enthusiastically copied from websites at the same time to keep the collection growing. I at first agonised over what I should include as Irish. I set a few ground rules:(1) include anything with specific reference to Irish places, people or institutions (2) anything which appears to have been in the irish tradition for generations (3) anything obviously Irish in language or context and (4) anything written by Thomas Moore, Percy French, Thomas Davis, Samuel Lover, etc. I specifically did not include fairly recent Irish acquisitions from such as Ewan MacColl and Eric Bogle. Apart from a few particularly extreme examples, I did not "filter" on the grounds of taste or quality and I'm now at 2600+ and counting, many hundreds fairly recently added with the help of Mudcat. |
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Subject: RE: BS: The great Irish Song theft conspiracy From: Big Mick Date: 15 Oct 02 - 06:26 PM Neither Ewan MacColl nor Eric Bogle are Irish. |
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Subject: RE: BS: The great Irish Song theft conspiracy From: Leadfingers Date: 15 Oct 02 - 07:25 PM Provenance is something which I and a number of friends think is of greater importance than others think.It is absurb to credit a 'written'song to the singer,rather than the author,which is where all this bother starts.Just'cos some very capable Irishman sings 'Black is the Colour'(and credits his source on record)does not make it an'Irish'or even a Christy Moore song.By the same token,if you've nicked a 'real'traditional song from a non source singer or group, credit the singer you stole the song from if you dont know the 'traditional'source.And I speak as a known thief of songs,simply because I'm incapable of writing any thing worth singing.I always try to credit authors if known,and often singers if author is not known. Frank.I think you are overstating the case about bigotry.But everybody should carry on singing anything they enjoy and the Hell with the clots who say'You cant sing that here,this a 'folk'or what ever club or venue.Was it Burl Ives who when asked how he knew a song was a'Folk'song said 'I never heard a horse sing it'. |
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Subject: RE: The great Irish Song theft conspiracy From: weerover Date: 16 Oct 02 - 10:52 AM Big Mick, The fact that neither Eric Bogle nor Ewan MacColl is Irish is the very point I was making (I spent a weekend at Eric's house in Peebles once, so I'm well aware of the fact). The point is that some of their songs have become phenomenally popular in Ireland and are beginning to be regarded by some as Irish. |
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Subject: RE: The great Irish Song theft conspiracy From: Big Mick Date: 16 Oct 02 - 11:25 AM I specifically did not include fairly recent Irish acquisitions from such as Ewan MacColl and Eric Bogle. Your post seemed to indicate that these were "Irish" songs. I didn't editorialize, but I also felt it was important that we not leave the implication here for future readers. |
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Subject: RE: The great Irish Song theft conspiracy From: weerover Date: 16 Oct 02 - 01:15 PM I can see that my wording could have been better - I tend just to type it in as I think it rather than compose. What I should also have said was that songs with specific Irish references are included regardless of authorship, such as Eric Bogle's "Plastic Paddy" and "My Youngest Son Came Home Today". It's a very mixed bag - because I was very unselective there are a few Orange songs in there, though heavily outnumbered by "rebel" songs. |
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Subject: RE: The great Irish Song theft conspiracy From: Big Mick Date: 16 Oct 02 - 01:29 PM hahahahaha..........I compose the same way, and it has gotten me in trouble over a few times over my years here. My Youngest Son Came Home Today..........powerful song. Thanks for reminding me of it. Mick |
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