Lyr Req: drink no more on road to Sligo

Subject: LyrReq drink no more on road to Sligo
From: GUEST,tom guest
Date: 26 Nov 03 - 02:20 PM

The song is by Sigerson I believe. It starts :
I will drink no more on the road to Sligo/ I will turn my sail from its shelving shore.
Any help would be much appreciated .

Subject: RE: LyrReq drink no more on road to Sligo
From: GUEST,tom
Date: 27 Nov 03 - 07:17 AM

I hope I'm not cheating by replying to my own thread .I just want to keep my request extant for another day.

Subject: RE: LyrReq drink no more on road to Sligo
From: GUEST,Martin Ryan
Date: 27 Nov 03 - 07:52 AM

No cheating involved, Tom! We'll find it eventually.

Regards

Subject: RE: LyrReq drink no more on road to Sligo
From: GUEST,Martin Ryan
Date: 27 Nov 03 - 07:53 AM

By the way - can you tell us any more? Have you heard it as a song? What context?

Regards

Subject: RE: LyrReq drink no more on road to Sligo
From: GUEST,tom
Date: 27 Nov 03 - 11:33 AM

No, I never heard it sung but there is atune to it .I've got one in mind it - along the lines of My Love She lives in Donegal Town which is in PW Joyce's book . I had the words cut out from a newspaper, once ,along with Sigerson's version of The Mountains of Pomeroy but I've since lost the cutting .
Iwill drink no more on the road to sligo/I will turn my sail from its shelving shore/but there's something I'll tell you before I do go /From that dear sweet land I will see nore .
Thanks Martin

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: drink no more on road to Sligo
From: Jim Dixon
Date: 30 Nov 03 - 11:45 AM

Could this be the tune?
Air Mo Grabháil Dhom air an M−Bóthar Shligigh,
or: As I Walked on the Road to Sligo

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: drink no more on road to Sligo
From: GUEST,guest tom
Date: 30 Nov 03 - 12:11 PM

I don't think so Jim .I've seen that tune before -in Joyce I think. It sounds too playful for the Sigerson lyric which is mournful.
Thanks for the post ...........tom

Subject: Lyr Add: I WILL DRINK NO MORE ON THESE ROADS OF...
From: Jim Dixon
Date: 30 Dec 11 - 09:54 AM

From The Petrie Collection of the Ancient Music of Ireland by George Petrie, edited by David Cooper (Cork University Press, 2002 [first published 1855]), page 46:

Ní Ólfaidh Mé Níos Mó ar na Bóithre seo Shligigh* (I Will Drink No More on these Roads of Sligo)

For this beautiful and, as it appears to me, very ancient melody, I am indebted to my friend Mr Eugene Curry, on whose memory it was fixed in early youth from the singing of his father: and to the latter it had become familiar so far back as about the year 1760, together with words which were then considered ancient, and which the old man treasured in his memory until his death, in the year 1825, at the age of eighty-one. Of those words, however, Mr Curry unfortunately can only remember a small portion; but this is valuable as indicating the Connaught county to which the melody—though preserved in Clare—most probably belongs, as will be seen from the first line of the following stanza, which is the only perfect one that Mr Curry remembers:

Ní ólfaidh mé níos mó ar na bóithre seo Shligigh,
Agus tógfaidh mé mo sheolta fá bhord na coille glaise;
Ólfaidh mé mó dhóthain Dé Domhnaigh is bead ag mire,
Mar shúil is go bhfaighinnse póigín óm stóirín bláth na finne.

I will drink no more on those roads of Sligo,
And I will raise my sails to the border of the green wood,
(Where) I will drink enough on Sunday, and will be merry,
In hopes that I may get a kiss from my stóirín, the blossom of whiteness.

Standing alone, it may appear to many that these lines have but little pretension to poetical merit, but in two lines of another stanza—which are all of it that Mr Curry can recollect—there are indications of a poetical feeling which might lead to a regret that the whole of this old song has not been preserved. These lines are:

Tá an bláth bán ar na móinte agus an fómhar ag filleadh;
Is cé gur lách lách an rud é an pósadh is dubhach deorach a d'fhág sé mise.

The white blossom is on the bogs, and the autumn is on the return;
And though marriage is a pretty, pretty thing, it is sorrowful and tearful it has left me.

* Ní olfa mé ní's mó ar na bóithre seo Shligigh.


[A tune is also given on that page.]