Lyr Req: Avondale (Dominic Behan)

Subject: avondale
From: GUEST
Date: 19 Aug 02 - 10:24 AM

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: avondale
From: MudGuard
Date: 19 Aug 02 - 10:43 AM

here in the database

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: avondale
From: Susanne (skw)
Date: 19 Aug 02 - 06:08 PM

Thanks, Mudguard. (And how are you?) This gives me a chance to put my question again: When and for which album did Mick Moloney record this song (around 1975, I'd guess)? I've since eliminated the 1974 compilation 'Celtic Folkweave', but can't find it anywhere else. The tune, btw, is said to be an adaptation of 'The Orange Maid of Sligo'.

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: avondale
From: MudGuard
Date: 19 Aug 02 - 06:22 PM

Hallo Susanne, geht so! Und selbst?

switching to English:

I have a Mick Moloney recording of Avondale on a 4 CD set:

Irish Folk Favourites

Copyright for the CD is 1991, but I guess the recordings are older.

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: avondale
From: Snuffy
Date: 19 Aug 02 - 08:23 PM

The other LPs on that CD are late 60s (Dubliners, Grehan Sisters), so I would guess Mick's LP was about the same time

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: avondale
From: Wolfgang
Date: 20 Aug 02 - 11:36 AM

From memory, I'd say it is on the Mick Moloney LP 'We have met together'. I'll come back with a correction if I'm wrong.

Wolfgang

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: avondale
From: GUEST,Guest
Date: 20 Aug 02 - 03:42 PM

Is the song about Parnell, and who wrote it, D.Behan?

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: avondale
From: MudGuard
Date: 20 Aug 02 - 03:44 PM

If you read the text on the page I linked in my first posting above you will find that the answer to both your questions is yes.

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: avondale
From: Jim McLean
Date: 20 Aug 02 - 03:52 PM

http://www.dickalba.demon.co.uk/songs/texts/avondale.html
The lyrics can be found here, and were written by Dominic Behan (my best man at my wedding in 1966!) Cheers, Jim Mclean

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: avondale
From: Susanne (skw)
Date: 20 Aug 02 - 06:30 PM

Jim, isn't it time someone wrote a song about Dominic?
MudGuard, thanks. I'll email you one of these days!
Wolfgang, more thanks. If I've got the title I can find out the year. I like knowing when and where the original recording appeared, so compilations are no good to me. They rarely indicate where their tracks come from - unfortunately.

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: avondale
From: Wolfgang
Date: 21 Aug 02 - 04:35 AM

Susanne, my memory was correct this time, the song is on the LP 'We have met together' (Tra(nsatlantic) 263, 1973).

Wolfgang

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: avondale
From: Jim McLean
Date: 21 Aug 02 - 11:54 AM

Susanne, I think I'd have to wait until all Dominic's relatives were gone before I could write a song about him! I still keep in touch with his wife and sons. Cheers, Jim Mclean

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: avondale
From: GUEST,Guest, Big Tim
Date: 21 Aug 02 - 03:25 PM

Can anybody add to, or correct, this list of rebel songs by Dominic Behan? Aul Alarm Clock? Avondale Come Out Ye Black and Tans Nelson's Farewell? Patriot Game Rifles of the IRA Sea Around Us.

Is Avondale different in style, more reverential, than the others?

BT

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: avondale
From: GUEST,patdarlington
Date: 21 Aug 02 - 03:38 PM

Dominic wrote a good many songs: there are 2 books which he edited still in print, which have about 100 songs in each, well over half written by himself. The titles are "Ireland Sings" and "The Singing Irish"

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: avondale
From: Jim McLean
Date: 21 Aug 02 - 03:55 PM

Dominic has a great LP called EASTER WEEK AND AFTER on Topic Records and a song book IRELAND SINGS. some of the songs are rewrites, like The Sea Around Us ('S faigamid siud mar a ta se) and The Old Alarm Clock. I don't think he wrote Nelson's Farewell but The Merry Ploughboy is fun as is Arkle. Mother England, Trust in Drink (translated from his brother Brendan's gaelic song 'Preab san ol'). Then there's Connoly Will Be There, a very powerful song. Actually Dominic thought all folk songs were political and rebellious. Avondale's proud Eagle was just as irrevertiential as the others. He was a very good friend but a complex man and we were very close. He was responsible for the Dubliners' meeting with Phil Soloman of Major Minor records and their eventual launching on an international scale. I'm writing this from memory but should you pose more specific questions, I'll try to answer. Cheers, Jim McLean

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: avondale
From: Susanne (skw)
Date: 21 Aug 02 - 07:18 PM

Big Tim, as far as I know Dominic also wrote (at least the words of) Dicey Riley, Crooked Jack, Easy and Slow, Liverpool Lou, Spanish Lady, Sean South (to the tune of The Banks of Yarrow - NOT SS of Garryowen), and McAlpine's Fusiliers. The Auld Alarm Clock is credited to Trad/Phil Kelly on 'Easter Week & After'. Nelson's Farewell was written by Joe Dolan (one of them).
Jim, Preab san ol was credited to an 18th century songwriter in this thread. Who is having us on?

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: avondale
From: GUEST,Guest, Big Tim
Date: 22 Aug 02 - 02:43 PM

Susanne: do you have the words of "Sean South"? I've never heard of it. Anyone know anything about Sean Costelloe, the composer of "Sean South of Garryowen"? (I've asked this before, to no avail).

Jim: Are you sure DB wrote "Connolly Was There"? I posted the lyrics on Mudcat a couple of months ago, with no idea who wrote it, transcribed from an anon rebel CD compilation.(I don't think it's much of a song but someone wanted the words, Connolly still awaits the great, and deserved, ballad). Kathleen, "The Mother of All the Behans", has given my favourite description of Connolly,amid all the propaganda and hype, "a wee fat man with a big moustache")!! By the way, Dom's brother Brian has already said some awful (but hilarious) things about Dom, and Brendan and Patrick Kavanagh,)in "The Brothers Behan" - 1998). I think anything you might write would be tame by comparison. (If anyone wants a few examples, come back). Regards, BT.

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: avondale
From: Susanne (skw)
Date: 22 Aug 02 - 03:28 PM

Tim, I haven't got the words to 'Sean South' down, but it's on Easter Week and After so I may try and tackle it when I have a week off work in a fortnight's time.
'Mother of All the behans' is a great book. I found it in a second-hand bookshop a couple of years ago and lent it to a friend who'd played with Dominic in the '70s. When he returned it he said he understood much better now how he'd become the man he was.

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: avondale
From: GUEST,Pat Darlington
Date: 22 Aug 02 - 04:07 PM

Big Tim: I met Dominic Behan on a couple of occasions and found him perfectly charming company. However, some years ago in conversation with poet/playwright/author Freddie Anderson (Try to find "Oiney Hoy" [pub. Polygon] - it's hilarious) he told me of a visit to the Behan family home. Cut a long story short, some machinations on Dominic's part resulted in a description of him by his own father so colourful that any subsequent attempt at blackening his character would be futile.

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: avondale
From: Jim McLean
Date: 22 Aug 02 - 05:04 PM

I'll tell you a story about Wee Freddy Anderson! Dominic always sent him a tenner (£10) for Christmas and one year Freddy was slagging him off to me. " But Freddy," I said. "Hasn't he always sent you a tenner every Christmas for the last few years?". "Yes", said Freddy, "But hasn't he heard of inflation?" Cheers, Jim McLean

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: avondale
From: Jim McLean
Date: 22 Aug 02 - 05:32 PM

PS I knew all the Behans including Rory and Sean who were Furlongs, half brothers. Brian, I'm afraid, was not my best choice and the trouble with such a gifted family is that more lies than truths were told within it due to selective memory and booze. Another story about Cathleen: She had a two pictures on her wall, one of Lenin and one of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. When asked why she had Lenin up there, she replied that he, Lenin, was on the right hand of God this minute! As to the songs Domininc wrote, we can be sure of The Patriot Game, Liverpool Lou, Connolly Will Be there, Avondale (he always sang' O have you been to Avondale'), Crooked Jack, McAlpine's Fusileers, but some others were rewrites. Again I'm writing this from memory. Cheers, Jim Mclean Jim Mclean

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: avondale
From: GUEST,Guest Big Tim
Date: 23 Aug 02 - 04:49 AM

Jim, thanks for clarification re "Connolly Was There", that's great. What do you make of this quote from Brian? "I had given Dominic the words of "McAlpine's Fusuliers, so if we wanted to talk about who was a phoney we should start there. The nearest he's ever been to a building site was when he posed as a hod carrier with a straw hat on his head"!

Plus, in Michael O'Sullivan's biog of Brendan he tells how Brendan gave the royalties from "Ould Triangle" to Someone Whose Name I Can't Find at Present, implying that possibly this guy, not Bren, wrote the song. (O'Sullivan's book is not a muckracker but an apparently honest attempt to get at the reality, as far as it is possible, for the reasons who give above Jim.

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: avondale
From: GUEST,Guest, Big Tim
Date: 23 Aug 02 - 04:54 AM

It's worth noting that, according to Brian, Dom didn't speak to him for the final 34 years of his life. (Brian is still alive).

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: avondale
From: GUEST
Date: 23 Aug 02 - 06:15 PM

Hi Big Tim, all I can say is that Dominic was fantastic company for the first couple of hours of each day. After that every thing became rather hazy. His knowledge of English literature was immense and always overshadowed by his projected image as a drunken gobshite. I stayed with him amd his wife Josephine many a time and wrote for and with him. Brian, I fear, is a Behan manque without the flair of his brothers and half brothers. Cheers, Jim Mclean

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: avondale
From: GUEST,Guest
Date: 24 Aug 02 - 07:20 AM

Thanks Jim, all the best.

BT (at daughter's house - broadband wow!!)

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: avondale
From: GUEST,Guest, Big Tim
Date: 24 Aug 02 - 05:37 PM

Susanne: re "Spanish Lady": source? I've also seen this song credited to Joseph Campbell, definite composer of "My Lagan Love". I think: it's hard to imagine DB having written "Spanish Lady". Any thoughts, ideas,clues, sources?

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: avondale
From: Jim McLean
Date: 24 Aug 02 - 06:08 PM

Dominic wrote that Hamish Henderson said Joseph Campbell of Ulster wrote "Spanish Lady". Fancy that now!(said Dom!)

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: avondale
From: Jim McLean
Date: 24 Aug 02 - 06:15 PM

Also, Dicey Riley was 'made' by Zozimos, the blind fiddler and some of Easy and Slow is in O'casey's RED ROSES FOR ME. The rest, said Dominic, he got off an old lady with a string bag in Giggleswick who had an awful voice! jim Mclean

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: avondale
From: GUEST,Guest, Big Tim
Date: 25 Aug 02 - 10:55 AM

Zozimos link takes Dicey Riley way back! Zozimus, named after the bishop who converts the lady in his best known performance, "St Mary of Egypt", real name was Michael Moran (c1794-1846), born in Faddle Alley, off Black Pitts in the Liberties [Dublin]- according to the Oxford Companion to Irish Literature. Same source also credits him with "St Patrick Was a Gentleman", the original version at least. I've seen most of Campbell's vols of poetry and none contains "Spanish Lady" and Saunders and Kelly in their critical biog of him don't mention it either. Could still have been written it of course, it certainly seem to me to be closer to his "pure", romantic style and type of language than to the raggle taggle working class slum toughness of DB. I saw Dom on stage many times in the 60s, he often compered folk concerts in the old Concert Hall, of fond memory, in St Vincent St, Glasgow.

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: avondale
From: Jim McLean
Date: 25 Aug 02 - 06:26 PM

Hi Big Tim, you should get a hold of Dominic's novel, Parable Jones, issued just before he died. A marvellous read. Jim Mclean

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: avondale
From: GUEST,Guest, Big Tim
Date: 26 Aug 02 - 06:23 AM

I've just checked recently, all DB's books are out of print. I'll try inter lib loans and keep an eye open for 2nd hand copies.

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: avondale
From: Susanne (skw)
Date: 27 Aug 02 - 06:09 PM

I found a 2nd hand hardback copy of 'Parable Jones' a couple of years back - in Glasgow, I think. A weird book, but it did yield the odd quotation on folk songs!
Thanks to those who corrected my list of 'Dom' songs - I just looked them up in my database, but that doesn't mean every attribution is correct (even if it comes from a Dubliners LP). Seems it's easier to find out who didn't write the songs than who did!

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: avondale
From: GUEST,Guest, Big Tim
Date: 28 Aug 02 - 03:02 PM

Susanne: you know I could be wrong but...I'm sure I left my copy of that DB book on the Glasgow subway one night, after a few pints, probably at Hillhead. So if you could just send it back to me, along with the lyrics of DB's "Sean South" I'd be much obliged. Enjoy your upcoming holiday!

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: avondale
From: GUEST,Martin Ryan
Date: 28 Aug 02 - 04:53 PM

Behan's "Sean South of limerick Town" is in his book "The Singing Irish"

I'd be more than a little sceptical about attributing "Dicey Riley" to Zosimus. As far as I know, vereral of the verses are a great deal more modern than that!

Regards

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: avondale
From: Susanne (skw)
Date: 28 Aug 02 - 08:33 PM

Sorry, Big Tim, but I distinctly remember paying for my copy ... Also, I don't use the Glasgow subway all that often. :-)

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: avondale
From: GUEST,Guest, Big Tim
Date: 29 Aug 02 - 06:51 AM

Martin, if you have that book could you please post the lyrics, or email them to me: [e-mail]

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: avondale
From: GUEST,Martin Ryan
Date: 29 Aug 02 - 07:28 AM

Show's how rusty I am after the holidays!

What I was about to say, before I rudely interrupted myself, was that I'll post the words when I get a chance - probably early next week.

Regards

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: avondale
From: MartinRyan
Date: 03 Sep 02 - 04:23 AM

Tim

I've posted "Sean South of Limerick" HERE

Regards

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: avondale
From: GUEST,Guest, Big Tim
Date: 03 Sep 02 - 06:18 AM

Thanks very much Martin, I had spotted it!

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: avondale (Behan)
From:
Date: 26 Aug 05 - 06:15 PM

Hello,
i need an original Gaelic text for song Preab san ol. Do you make help me? Best regards from Czech Republic.
Dan

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: avondale (Behan)
From: michaelr
Date: 26 Aug 05 - 07:34 PM

Dan, you'll get better results by starting a new thread with the song you're looking for in the thread title (example: "Lyr. Req.: Preab san Ol (Gaelic)". It will also help if you include anything you know about the song, like who recorded it, or where you know it from.

(Sorry, that's all the help I can give.)

Cheers,
Michael

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: avondale (Behan)
From: Malcolm Douglas
Date: 26 Aug 05 - 07:42 PM

Don't start a new thread. Simply type preab into the onsite search engine which you will find at the top of every page here.