Lyr Req: I Am a Youth That's Inclined to Ramble

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: I Am a Youth That's Inclined to Ramble
From: GUEST
Date: 12 Jun 21 - 08:27 AM

I always thought it was Slippery Bowl.

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: I Am a Youth That's Inclined to Rambl
From: Ross Campbell
Date: 13 Oct 08 - 11:10 PM

Cara Dillon's version here

I heard/misheard/misremembered Paul Brady's version as having "slippery bough", but either "bough" or "ball" makes sense. Can't find it at the moment but the Cara Dillon version will do very well meantime.

Ross

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: I Am a Youth That's Inclined to Ramble
From: ard mhacha
Date: 13 Oct 08 - 04:24 AM

Cara Dillon`s version of this song is on You Tube, lorgain2, nice singing.

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: I Am a Youth That's Inclined to Rambl
From: Ross Campbell
Date: 12 Oct 08 - 08:18 PM

Sam Henry has the following:-
The Rocks of Bawn   [H139: 10 Jul 1926]

Other titles: "...Baun(Bourne)."

Source: (w) Patrick Lagan (Park St, Coleraine);
(m) Jim Doherty [Dt: Lafferty] (the Doaghs, Magilligan).

s: After two years search the words have been obtained.... Pat Magill, the famous author, told me that he heard the song in Strabane Fair, where, I am told, it and "Killeter Fair" are sold as a broadsheet. Bawn or Bawnboy is in Co. Cavan.



(w) indicates source of words
(m) indicates source of music
Dt indicates the item was a typed copy in the Dublin set of collected columns
s   indicates Sam Henry's own notes


Ross

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: I Am a Youth That's Inclined to Ramble
From: GUEST,Mary
Date: 12 Oct 08 - 03:35 PM

Liam's Brother Dan:
I was part of the thread on the Rocks of Bawn, but I see on this thread in an earlier post that you mention you have the Sam Henry collection book. Does is by change have any information on Rocks of Bawn, or when Mr. Henry published it?
I'm trying to determine what week it printed, so I can see if he had any explaination to his research. I've found many sites stating he said "2 years of research", but I wanted the original Sam Henry words to that effect.
Thank you,
Mary

Subject: RE: Words to song sung by Paul Brady
From: Liam's Brother
Date: 13 Oct 98 - 08:20 PM

Hi Macmud! Sorry. Never heard Paul Brady sing "Rocks of Bawn". It is a "standard" of Irish folk song however and most versions sung today can probably be traced to Joe Heaney or to Colm O Locnlainn's "Irish Street Ballads". I assume you now have all the words and info on the song that you need. Just let me know if you don't.

Hi Martin! Thanks for your new address. Mine is the same though I've gotten a few new alternates. Was at a nice session at the Hammersmith & Fulham Irish Centre on Friday night.

All the best, Dan

Subject: RE: Words to song sung by Paul Brady
From: Martin Ryan.
Date: 09 Oct 98 - 07:51 PM

Liam's Brother,

Dan! I'm back on-line at: [e-mail]. Let me know if you've changed your address.

Regards

Subject: RE: Words to song sung by Paul Brady
From:
Date: 09 Oct 98 - 01:49 AM

Hi Alison.

Actually, I read that thread. I take the song at face value and infer that serving in the army was preferable to plowing the ROB, wherever they are. And, Sweeney, apparently, is no longer an attraction that might keep him from leaving.

What I am most curious about is Paul's actual words to that third verse. Liam's Brother was so helpful with the previous request re: Jamie and Mary and the "cliddery ba", that I thought I might strike paydirt again by asking him. -Jill

Subject: RE: Words to song sung by Paul Brady
From: alison
Date: 08 Oct 98 - 01:18 AM

hi Mcmud,

Do a filter search for "Rocks of Bawn" (or click here). We had a big discussion on it here within the last 6 months.

Slainte

alison

Subject: RE: Words to song sung by Paul Brady
From: mcmud
Date: 07 Oct 98 - 11:01 PM

Another question, Liam's Brother or anyone.

I'm looking for the verbatim lines to the third verse of the Rocks of Bawn as Paul sings it on Liam O'Flynn's The Given Note recording. The words he sings are not the words listed in the database. After he sings "May my curse attend you Sweeney You have me -" I lose track of the rest of it except for "sitting by the fireside with-" until "from the clear daylight til the dawn ..."

Thanks.

Subject: RE: Words to song sung by Paul Brady
From: alison
Date: 10 Sep 98 - 08:09 PM

hi Liam's brother,

you're quite right I'm not that old. however I was speaking to a friend of mine from Ballymena last night. he'd never heard it used either.

Perhaps some of our Scottish friends out there would know more seeing as a lot of the people in that area of Ulster came from Scotland.

I think the variety of accents is fun. If you drive half an hour in any direction in Northern Ireland you'll get something completely different, (and if spoken by an elderly farmer with no teeth, often completely impossible to understand). Great crack.

Slainte

alison

Subject: RE: Words to song sung by Paul Brady
From: Liam's Brother
Date: 10 Sep 98 - 01:45 AM

Alison, you are an Ulsterwoman, but, I suppose, not an 19th Century Ulsterwoman. Allow that cliddery ba's may have slipped out of vogue a good while before Sam Henry printed Jim Carmichael's song on 31 December, 1938. He was looking for older stuff.

Last March, I was at a seminar in Co. Donegal. At the gala dinner, I was seated across from an Ulsterman who seemed pleased to be in conversational range of someone who lived in America. Half-way through the main course, he excused himself. Whereupon I asked the other attendees at our table (all Northern Ireland natives) if they understood what my absent friend had been saying. "Not a word," was their reply. One never knows, but he might have spun a few cliddery ba's past the lot of us!

Nice to talk with you. All the best.

Subject: RE: Words to song sung by Paul Brady
From: alison
Date: 10 Sep 98 - 12:26 AM

Hi,

Speaking as someone who has the Ulster accent I've never said "cliddery ba' in my life! But having worked with people from Ballymena (and further North)it's perfectly believable. They have a lot of strange words up there. Many of them wonderfully descriptive.

I looked it up in my "dialect Heritage of North Ulster book" a wonderful little book put together by school kids the nearest it came to "clidder" was "clod" meaning to throw,

Slainte

alison

Subject: RE: Words to song sung by Paul Brady
From: mcmud
Date: 09 Sep 98 - 10:28 PM

How about that, Dan. I thought what I heard Paul sing was "slippery ball". I figured that I must have misheard that part of the phrase. It was logical in the context, but my onboard American-English filter didn't like it. Thinking longer about it, it's much more vivid than writing that fortune will never be in my grasp.

Another question: is this song related (other than being an emigration song) to the Willie and Mary song that appears on a Deanta recording?

Actually, I'm in Ann Arbor currently. I *wish* I was in Maine. I lived in Old Town for a couple years and did some archeology in the northern part of the state.

The Penobscot phrase (phonetic version) is:

Mahji golla dawup bettagwup skzzi seechay.

Your bonus is:

Mahji alamohss = bad dog

French Island is a modern (mostly) Penobscot settlement that rubs elbows with Old Town. I learned the phrases from a woman who taught English (lit. and language, I think) to Penobscot kids.

Thanks for the info. -Jill

Subject: RE: Words to song sung by Paul Brady
From: Liam's Brother
Date: 09 Sep 98 - 12:50 PM

Dear Jill,

If memory serves me well, Paul sings "slippery ball" which is just what cliddery ba' means. Seeing as you live in Maine, if you have any further trouble with "cliddery ba's" you can just go over to Belfast or Bangor. I'm sure they still speak the Ulster dialect there.

Thanks for offering the Penobscot phrase. I used to work with some Maltese who gave me something like "I don't want to have a good time with the monkey with the boots on." This is handy for faking out Russian immigrants in stuck elevators in Manhattan. If you find any Irish-American traditional songs in Maine, appeciate it if you shoot them my way. Thanks.

All the best, Dan

Subject: RE: Words to song sung by Paul Brady
From: mcmud
Date: 09 Sep 98 - 12:19 PM

Thanks, Liam's Brother. It was that fourth verse that was giving me trouble- cliddery ba' and favoring gale. The former I simply didn't understand (what is it?) and the latter was somewhat obscured by his guitar playing.

Unfortunately, the only things I can offer you in return for your time are 1) a spoof ballad that I wrote for some forester friends in Maine or 2) or the (phonetic) Penobscot phrase for "the black flies are bad today."

Seriously, thank you very much.

Subject: Lyr Add: I AM A YOUTH THAT'S INCLINED TO RAMBLE
From: Liam's Brother
Date: 09 Sep 98 - 09:17 AM

I AM A YOUTH THAT'S INCLINED TO RAMBLE

I am a youth that's inclined to ramble,
To some foreign country I mean to steer;
I am loath to part from friends and comrades
And my old sweetheart whom I love dear,
But there's one of those I do most admire,
On her I'll think when I'm far away,
For, since fate's decreed, I'm resolved to part her
And try my fortune in America.

"Now farewell, darling, since I must leave you
I put great dependence in your constancy,
That no other young man may gain your favor
Nor change your mind when I'm o'er the sea,
For although the seas do separate us,
And between us they may rise and fa',
If fortune favors me you'll find your Jamie
Returning home from America."

"Oh Jamie dear, do you remember
When I sat with you many an hour,
When my young fancy away was carried?
The bees hummed round us on each opening flower;
But when you're crossing the western ocean,
The maid that loved you, you'll ne'er mind ava,
You'll scarce e'er think on the maids of Erin,
You'll get strange sweethearts in America."

"Oh, Mary dear, I don't dissemble,
To all other fair maids I'll prove untrue,
And if you think that these are false promises,
I'll leave these vows as a pledge to you,
That what I have may prove unsuccessful,
And fortune prove to me a cliddery ba',
That a favoring gale it may ne'er blow on me,
If I forsake you in America."

Now to conclude and end these verses,
May God to protect this young female fair
And keep her from every wild embarrassment
And of my darling take the greatest care.
She's slow to anger, of kind disposition,
Her cheeks like roses in June do blaw,
In my nightly slumbers, when I think on her,
I could court her vision in America.

Sam Henry's source was Jim Carmichael of Ballymena, Co. Antrim.

Subject: RE: Words to song sung by Paul Brady
From:
Date: 08 Sep 98 - 11:52 PM

Thanks very much for the quick reply, Liam's Brother. If you don't mind spending the time posting the words from the songbook, I'd be much obliged.

I've been a Planxty fan for a long time, but only recently purchased Liam O'Flynn's recent recordings. I heard Brady sing on one of them, and picked up a couple of his recordings. All make for great listening pleasure.

Thanks again for your help. I wasn't having much luck with other on-line archives. -Jill McMahon

Subject: RE: Words to song sung by Paul Brady
From: Liam's Brother
Date: 08 Sep 98 - 09:19 PM

The original ("Love's Parting / Jamie and Mary") came from the Sam Henry collection, i.e. "Songs of the People", a weekly newspaper column in the Northern Constitution newspaper in Coleraine, Co. Derry.

The record is in storage but I have the Sam Henry collection book here and can give you those words. If you want them exactly the way Paul sang them, then someone else can help you I'm sure.

All the best.

Subject: Words to song sung by Paul Brady
From:
Date: 08 Sep 98 - 04:13 PM

I'm looking for the words to "I Am A Youth That's Inclined to Ramble", sung by Paul Brady on his Welcome Here Kind Stranger recording. Thanks for the words or directions on where to find them.