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Lyr Req: Snowy Breasted Pearl
DigiTrad:
SNOWY BREASTED PEARL
Related thread:
Tune Req: Snowy Breasted Pearl (29)
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Subject: Snowy Breasted Pearl From: Mick Lowe Date: 18 Jul 98 - 07:50 PM Can anyone recommend a good recording of the Snowy Breasted Pearl. I keep being told that I play it too fast. Cheers Mick |
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Subject: RE: Snowy Breasted Pearl From: Brack& Date: 19 Jul 98 - 07:34 PM Paddy Reilly does a nice version. Mick |
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Subject: RE: Snowy Breasted Pearl From: Mick Lowe Date: 19 Jul 98 - 08:28 PM Brack& Don'r be mean, give me a clue, i.e. album title Cheers Mick |
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Subject: RE: Snowy Breasted Pearl From: Brack& Date: 19 Jul 98 - 08:53 PM Mick, it's on Paddy Reilly's Greatest Hits Live. |
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Subject: RE: Snowy Breasted Pearl From: Mick Lowe Date: 20 Jul 98 - 03:55 PM Brack& Many thanks Mick p.s. It's a cracking tune don't you think? |
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Subject: RE: Snowy Breasted Pearl From: Brack& Date: 21 Jul 98 - 05:19 AM It is Mick, tho I've never really learned it. I think you need a bit of a voice to sing it. I do the Irish scene myself and as yet I've never had it requested, well only by my mum! I don't think I'd do it justice. |
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Subject: RE: Snowy Breasted Pearl From: Mick Lowe Date: 21 Jul 98 - 06:27 PM Yeah! Know what you mean Brack& I'm alright until you get to the France and far off Spain bit. It's a bit of a job getting your tongue round the lyrics also As an aside and complete change of tack, do you play in the UK? If so whereabouts. Cheers Mick |
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Subject: RE: Snowy Breasted Pearl From: Brack& Date: 21 Jul 98 - 06:43 PM Mainly round Manchester way, but I do get agency work that'll take me anywhere from Coventry to Carlisle. Agency work fills in the gaps and you never know what kind of venues they are, usually theme bars and such. regards Mick |
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Subject: RE: Snowy Breasted Pearl From: Mick Lowe Date: 22 Jul 98 - 05:45 PM Brack&, if ever you find yourself at a loose end on a Friday night down in Leicestershire (Hinckle to be precise), ask directions to the Queen's Head, we play just for the craic, but you never know you might pick up the odd tune or two. Cheers Mick |
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Subject: Lyr Add: SNOWY BREASTED PEARL^^^ From: John in Brisbane Date: 22 Jul 98 - 07:54 PM MY search of the DT yielded no lyrics or tune for this song. If indeed there are not, here is my contribution.
The lyrics cane from: THE SNOWY BREASTED PEARL
There's a colleen fair as May
If to France or far off Spain
2. But a kiss with welcome bland There is a Midi there as well, which I have not yet extracted. Could those more learned than me please confirm that this is not in the DT.
Regards |
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Subject: RE: Snowy Breasted Pearl From: Brack& Date: 23 Jul 98 - 06:12 AM Will do Mick...sometime in the future! |
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Subject: RE: Snowy Breasted Pearl From: dick greenhaus Date: 23 Jul 98 - 10:15 AM John- You don't have to be particularly learned to use the DT--if you did, we'd be a failure. We don't have Snowy-Breasted Pearl--yet--but thanx to you we will shortl |
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Subject: Tune Add: SNOWY BREASTED PEARL From: John in Brisbane Date: 23 Jul 98 - 10:19 PM Here is the tune courtesy of the site I referred to above and Alan's program:
MIDI file: thacolle.mid Timebase: 384 TimeSig: 4/4 96 8 This program is worth the effort of learning it. To download the March 10 MIDItext 98 software and get instructions on how to use it click here ABC format: X:1
Regards John |
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Subject: Lyr Add: SNOWY BREASTED PEARL^^^ From: Brack& Date: 24 Jul 98 - 03:47 AM Just noticed that half the second verse is missing.
2nd Verse Mick Bracken |
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Subject: RE: Snowy Breasted Pearl From: Martin Ryan Date: 24 Jul 98 - 06:23 AM Just came across this one in Graves's "Irish Songbook" (1897) where it is given as "Translated from the Irish by George Petrie" Regards |
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Subject: Snowy Breasted Pearl Péarla an Bhrollaigh Bháin From: Philippa Date: 08 Dec 99 - 01:36 PM This song is George Petrie's translation from the 18th century Irish poem. I've added Irish language lyrics at a later thread. click here |
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Subject: RE: Snowy Breasted Pearl From: Llanfair Date: 08 Dec 99 - 02:57 PM Brack&, do you ever run into a guy called Bryn Pugh on your travels in Manchester?, he's a sort of cousin of mine, and I lost touch years ago. Hwyl, Bron. |
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Subject: RE: Snowy Breasted Pearl From: SingsIrish Songs Date: 09 Dec 99 - 01:39 PM This is the December 1999 Featured Song at Prof's Irish Pages...for other information (ie about Petrie himself)visit the Prof's page and select Featured Song on the Navi Bar... Enjoy! Mary |
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Subject: RE: Snowy Breasted Pearl From: GUEST,JTT Date: 21 Jan 04 - 02:32 PM Anyone know the original Irish words? And is there an extant recorded *sung* version that I could buy on a CD? I'd like to sing it, and it's long days since I've done so. |
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Subject: RE: Snowy Breasted Pearl From: Nigel Parsons Date: 21 Jan 04 - 03:43 PM Guest,JTT: as Phillipa said, they're posted Here Nigel |
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Subject: RE: Snowy Breasted Pearl From: GUEST,JTT Date: 21 Jan 04 - 08:13 PM Thanks very much, Nigel Parsons. |
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Subject: RE: Snowy Breasted Pearl From: Art Thieme Date: 21 Jan 04 - 10:50 PM You will never go wrong with the wondrous JOHN Mc CORMACK singing this song. You can find it on the lovely 2-CD set caled John McCormack---The Acoustic Victor And HMV Recordings (1910-1911)--- issued 1995 on Romophone. Art Thieme |
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Subject: RE: Snowy Breasted Pearl From: ard mhacha Date: 22 Jan 04 - 03:37 AM Art, You are right, McCormack`s singing of The Snowy breasted Pearl, is perfection. |
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Subject: RE: Snowy Breasted Pearl From: GUEST,Guest, Big Tim Date: 22 Jan 04 - 04:57 AM The tune is also used for "Ashtown Road' - about the death of IRA man Martin Savage in 1919. (Yea, McCormack's the man for this song, tho it's a pity Finbar Wright doesn't seem to have recorded it. If he has, let me know!) |
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Subject: RE: Snowy Breasted Pearl From: ard mhacha Date: 22 Jan 04 - 06:33 AM An interesting footnote to this Thread, John McCormack then aged 19, won the Tenor class in the 1903 Dublin Feis Ceol, competing against McCormack was the writer James Joyce. Joyce thought himself a great Tenor until hearing John`s rendition of The Snowy Breated Pearl, and decided there and then to concentrate on another career, and like John McCormack the great writer Joyce became equally as famous in another field. |
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Subject: RE: Snowy Breasted Pearl From: GUEST,Guest, B.T. Date: 22 Jan 04 - 12:26 PM Amazing to think that McCormack's version was recorded in 1910. (It's a pity that James Joyce didn't stick to the singing!) |
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Subject: RE: Snowy Breasted Pearl From: Art Thieme Date: 22 Jan 04 - 12:45 PM ard mhacha, Good to see a post from you. That is pretty amazing. I never figured Joyce for a singer. But in thinking it over, most of the Irish are singers ! Art Thieme |
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Subject: RE: Snowy Breasted Pearl From: ard mhacha Date: 22 Jan 04 - 01:55 PM Art, Thanks amigo, but I can tell you I have lost lots of friends through my singing. BT, I know of thousands who would disagree with your judgment on Joyce`s writing. |
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Subject: RE: Snowy Breasted Pearl From: GUEST,JTT Date: 23 Jan 04 - 05:57 AM Joyce was a fabulous singer, apparently; his work is also full of references to opera and traditional music. |
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Subject: RE: Snowy Breasted Pearl From: An Pluiméir Ceolmhar Date: 23 Jan 04 - 11:22 AM Art, JJ came close to opting for a career as a singer, and won several prizes as an amateur. I can't quote chapter and verse from Ellman's biography, but he records the fact that Joyce's wife Nora quite seriously thought he'd have been better off sticking to the singing. I got to know the song as a swinging ballad, sung, if I remember correctly, by the Wolfe Tones in the early 1970s, and it was quite a surprise to discover that my mother knew it as a genteel parlour song, sung in the J McCormack style. Joyce would certainly have known it and probably sang it, since it was clearly one of the well-known tunes in Dublin in the early 20th century. Anyone of his background with even half a voice in the Dublin of his era would have been expected to deliver a song or two as his party piece. But he probably would have despised the 1970s version of it, and I suspect he also would have had little regard for traditional music as we know it. The atmosphere of the Dublin of his era with musical evenings around the piano in even quite modest but "respectable" households is very faithfully recreated in John Huston's film of Joyce's "The dead". When I saw that film, it brought me back to my childhood in the 1950s. Apart from my mother, four or five of my parents' circle of relatives and friends would take turns at the piano, and accompany the singers at regular Sunday musical evenings. We still have my mother's piano, which was the centrepiece of many such gatherings right up to the 1960s, and I can't bring myself to get rid of it, even though it can't cope with central heating so it is permanently out of tune and pretty unplayable. |
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Subject: RE: Snowy Breasted Pearl From: ard mhacha Date: 23 Jan 04 - 01:04 PM |
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Subject: RE: Snowy Breasted Pearl From: Art Thieme Date: 23 Jan 04 - 01:31 PM And The Dead is a favorite film of mine. I've mentioned in other threads that my wife has put together a collection of 14 John McCormack LPs that I do want to have digitized onto Cds ---some day. There is something to his voice that none of the others have ever had to my ear; A sincerity and a realness that comes through like a sword piercing the valley. Those old records retain all of their quality even when played through the cheapest speakers. Don't mean to go on about the man but... Art |
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Subject: RE: Snowy Breasted Pearl From: ard mhacha Date: 23 Jan 04 - 01:33 PM Further reading of McCormack`s biography, gives a different reading of his encounter with Joyce. From the Biography, "despite some initial self doubt, McCormack prepared for the Feis Ceol, which included a competition for various types of voices, It was known in advance what pieces must be sung: They were the aria "Tell Fair Irene" by Handel and a ballad "The snowy breasted pearl". McCormack`s account of his preparation suggests that he worked hard to meet his teacher O`Brien`s expectations, and that his teacher was largely satisfied. Thirteen Tenors were entered in that division, and McCormack became the 14th after he entered late, aided by the fact that a friend paid the fee of ten shillings, [a large sum in those days] for his entry. McCormack waited apprehensively through the thirteen performances of each of the two pieces. When his turn came, he asked the pianist who was playing the accompaniments to use a slower tempo and then began. When he finished, there was sudden and prolonged applause, which was actually forbidden, a rule that had been observed by the audience up to that point. The Judge Luigi Denza announced, "You have shown by your applause that you have made my decision for me, and you are quite right, The winnner is the young man whom you have just heard". John`s future wife, Lily Foley, had competed in the Feis the previous year and won the Gold Medal in in the Soprano competition. It is sometimes reported that James Joyce competed in the same year Feis as McCormack, however he actually sang in the 1904 competition, also as a Tenor, and won the Bronze Medal". I suppose you can take that as read/ |
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Subject: RE: Snowy Breasted Pearl From: GUEST,Charmion at work Date: 23 Jan 04 - 05:18 PM Kenneth MacKellar (Scottish opera singer who went native in middle age) did an album of Irish songs ca. 1970, and "The Snowy-Breasted Pearl" is one of the nicest things on it. It's a genteel McCormick-style performance, but the man's beautiful voice was in top nick. Well worth a listen; every phrase perfectly turned, every word (English, sorry) as clear as a very clear thing. |
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Subject: RE: Snowy Breasted Pearl From: ard mhacha Date: 24 Jan 04 - 06:54 AM Kenneth McKellar`s version uses the more modern words, beginning , "There is a Coleen fair as May", McCormack`s begins "She is not like the rose". Of the two` I much prefer the older McCormack version, McKellar`s singing is pleasant, no one compares with the Scot`s brilliant singing of "Afton Waters. |
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Subject: RE: Snowy Breasted Pearl From: GUEST,JTT Date: 24 Jan 04 - 05:51 PM Hmmm. I got a McCormack CD called Prima Voce out of the library today, and it has him singing The Snowy-Breasted Pearl, but the words he sings are not like the ones above (in English, I mean), but much better. His version - which is, I think, the version I knew as a child, starts: O she is not like the rose That proud in beauty grows... But the sound is truly awful; it's very furry. Is the version on the CD John McCormack Rare Recordings 1904-42 remastered, does anyone know? |
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Subject: RE: Snowy Breasted Pearl From: AllisonA(Animaterra) Date: 25 Jan 04 - 06:36 AM This thread keeps haunting me. Last summer I began working with my partner Byron on a number of songs collected by P.W. Joyce, George Petrie, and Edward Bunting. Byron on concertina, me singing. Snowy Breasted Pearl was one of our favorites; we sang very "parlor style" keeping it as straight and pure as possible, without making it sound maudlin or sappy. We were just getting into the groove of how to get the sound just right when Byron died of a heart attack. All that work has stopped, and I have no interest in continuing it- but every time I come onto Mudcat, here's this thread, and the melody sticks with me for hours afterwards! Thanks, I guess. Allison |
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Subject: RE: Snowy Breasted Pearl From: GUEST,Guest, B.T. Date: 26 Jan 04 - 04:44 PM I've just been flicking through "The Encyclopaedia of Ireland" and noticed a photograph of Joyce playing the guitar (in 1915 in Zurich). The guitar has survived and is on display in the James Joyce Museum in Sandycove, Co. Dublin. A talented all-rounder! |
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Subject: RE: Snowy Breasted Pearl From: ard mhacha Date: 27 Jan 04 - 08:51 AM JTT, I have a fairly good quality recording on CD of McCormack singing The Snowy-breasted Pearl , it is on a CD Box set from Nimbus Records,Wyastone Leys Monmouth Wales, it can also be purchased in the US from Nimbus PO Box 7746, Charlottesville, Viginia 22906-7746 USA. |
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Subject: RE: Snowy Breasted Pearl From: GUEST,JTT Date: 27 Jan 04 - 12:35 PM Alison - the last thing I'd want to do would be to haunt you with sadness. I hope it seems more of a loving voice from the past. Macca - Thanks, yes, I have that CD box set - if it's the one of his rare recordings, yes? - booked on amazon.com for when my money glugs up a bit. I might even lean on the library to get a copy. |
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Subject: Lyr Add: OH! SHE IS NOT LIKE THE ROSE From: Helen Date: 27 Jan 04 - 04:39 PM Allison, Maybe this is why the song is sticking with you. Read the last four lines. It's about you and Byron. I have loved this melody since I first found it in one of my music books, but the lyrics never really felt right to me. I like the other ones better. Here are the other lyrics I found: OH-SHE-IS-NOT-LIKE-THE-ROSE OH! SHE IS NOT LIKE THE ROSE (pearl of the white breast) Stephen Edward De Vere B 1812 Oh, she is not like the rose that proud in beauty glows And boasteth that she's so wondrous fair But she's like the violet blue, ever modest, ever true From her leafy bower perfuming the still night air Oh, she's gentle, loving, mild, she's artless as a child Her clustering tresses softly flowing down I'll love thee ever more, sweet colleen oge as-thore My true love, my snowy breasted pearl. If I sigh, a sudden fear comes o'er her and a tear Stands quivering within her downcast eye When I smile those orbs of azure gleam forth with love and pleasure Like sudden glory bursting through a clouded sky If I claim her for my bride she trembles at my side And gently lifts her eyes with looks so tender I love the, only thee, my colleen oge machree My true love, my snowy breasted pearl Such was she, but oh! A change, how mournful and how strange On my loved one, my own beloved one came Paler still her pale cheek grew and her eyes of azure hue Seemed lighted with a flame, a fatal, wasting flame Oh! We laid her in the grave, where the willows sadly wave And the hollow winds are sighing a plaintive wail I'm alone, alone, alone; so wearily I moan For my lost love, my snowy breasted pearl |
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Subject: RE: Snowy Breasted Pearl From: Jim Lad Date: 11 Aug 07 - 02:38 PM Interesting words but not what I'm looking for. My Father always included a verse, I remember some of it. Come to think of it, so did he... For she is not like the rose that once in summer grows ........................ .............................. For they laid her in the grave where the willows sadly wave their heads And I love thee only thee, My darling cush machree My loved one, My snowy breasted pearl. I'm told that it's a John McCormack version. I've been through the threads and found bits and pieces of it, scattered around. I'd love to use it in a recording. Any takers? All Irish need apply! |
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