Tune Req: Fields of Athenry

Subject: Fields of Athenry
From:
Date: 11 Mar 99 - 07:49 PM

I was wanting to know somewhere i could get the notes to the Fields of Athenry.

Subject: RE: Fields of Athenry
From: Anne
Date: 11 Mar 99 - 09:12 PM

Danny Doyle recorded "Fields of Athenry." If no-one else posts the words I'll look them up when I get home from work and post them. Anne

Subject: RE: Fields of Athenry
From: Sandy Paton
Date: 11 Mar 99 - 09:16 PM

The words are in the DT, along with the tune. Just put "Fields of Athenry" in the box at the top and click on search.

Sandy

Subject: RE: Fields of Athenry
From: GUEST,m uck
Date: 05 Oct 03 - 02:20 PM

please find music tab and lyrics for fields of athenry

Subject: RE: Fields of Athenry
From: GUEST,Mr Ahern
Date: 05 Oct 03 - 04:17 PM

They are buried under the soil closet behind Mrs Flynn's house in field No. 6

Subject: RE: Fields of Athenry
From: paddymac
Date: 05 Oct 03 - 05:38 PM

Dear bdncgran - Please forgive "Mr. Ahern's" response. I'm sure it was meant as humor. If you haven't yet, just click on the blue title at the top of the thread, and then, If you've got a couple of hours to really explore the history of the song, check out the "related threads" noted at the top as well. Many people think the song was written by Pete St John, but in those trheads you'll learn that iot was first published in the 1880s, and Mr St' John's copywright applies to some word changes, principally in the chorus. The song remains quite popular, and a review of the generous historical contributions of mudcatters in thos previous threads will enable you to peform it with an accurate historical context.

Subject: RE: Fields of Athenry
From: Strupag
Date: 05 Oct 03 - 06:20 PM

If you ever get over here to Scotland go to a Glasgow Rangers football game and sing it with gusto.
I can guarantee that it will go down a bomb!

Subject: RE: Fields of Athenry
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 05 Oct 03 - 06:47 PM

"Many people think the song was written by Pete St John, but in those threads you'll learn that it was first published in the 1880s, and Mr St' John's copywright applies to some word changes, principally in the chorus."

In fact if you follow through you'll find that it is pretty clearly proved the story paddymac mentions there is totally unsubstantiated. It's one of those Internet hoaxes that get passed around, and then passed on by people who are taken in by them (such as paddymac apparently).

No trace whatsoever of that alleged 1880 version has ever turned up, outside the Internet." Remember, by no means everything you read on the Internet is true.

Subject: RE: Fields of Athenry
From: boglion
Date: 05 Oct 03 - 06:49 PM

Rangers 0 Celtic 1

"Low lie the Fields of Athenry Where once we watched the small free birds fly....." Sung with gusto!!!

Terry

Subject: RE: Fields of Athenry
From: pixieofdoom
Date: 05 Oct 03 - 06:57 PM

Most people ask for a note to be excused the Fields of Athenry

Subject: RE: Fields of Athenry
From: Joybell
Date: 05 Oct 03 - 07:47 PM

There are many songs that are passed off, either deliberatly or otherwise, as old - or ..... (fill in the latest fashion for a particular birth-place for a song - such as "Irish" for example) Singers familiar with the language of old songs are usually not fooled. The language used in The "Fields of Athenry" is appropriate and it works but it is not the same as -- say the language in "Wildwood Flower" "Little Rosewood Casket" " "Moreton Bay" "Jim Jones of Botany Bay" and other sentimental songs actually written at the time, or soon after, the time when "The Fields of Athenry" is presumably set.
This is not a comment about preference really, but I'll ask to be excused too please.

Subject: RE: Fields of Athenry
From: GUEST,Steve
Date: 06 Oct 03 - 07:07 AM

One of the worst songs ever written!!

Subject: RE: Fields of Athenry
From: Joybell
Date: 06 Oct 03 - 07:28 AM

Steve, You have just won my true-love's heart. He has always said that.

Subject: RE: Fields of Athenry
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 06 Oct 03 - 07:43 AM

I think it's a pretty good song. There's a lot of snobbery about these things - if it's popular with people who aren't notiveably into folk somhg, it must be terrible.

Subject: RE: Fields of Athenry
From: Joybell
Date: 06 Oct 03 - 07:58 AM

The melody is lovely and it is well crafted. I don't find it too bad myself, although I don't usually sing it, but my true-love says it's plastic. I think the line "you must raise our child with dignity" is the one that really upsets him --not the way she would have put it in the 19th century. That's true I think. Mind you he cries through "Little Rosewood Casket" and he thinks that's just as false.

Subject: RE: Fields of Athenry
From: GUEST
Date: 06 Oct 03 - 08:11 AM

I first heard The Fields of Athenry some 15 years ago in an Irish pub and enjoyed it. Since then it has become so hackneyed that I dread being asked to sing it, but when you are singing to a non-folk pub crowd it is one of the most requested songs, and what the customers want the customers get. And McGrath, yes it isn't a bad song just one that has been done to death and parodied.

Subject: RE: Fields of Athenry
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 06 Oct 03 - 08:35 AM

That seems a strange objection of Joybell's truelove. "You must raise our child with dignity" sounds to me very much the kind of thing a father in a situation would be likely to say, in the 19th century as as readily as in the 20th or 21st, in those words or the equivalent.

But anyway, it's not setting out to be a pastiche 19th century song. It's set in famine times, but it's a modern song about a situation that arises often enough in all times, most definitely including the time when it was written. That's why it has such resonance with Irish crowds especially.

A song isn't worth parodying unless it's a good song.

Subject: RE: Fields of Athenry
From: GUEST,KB
Date: 06 Oct 03 - 08:44 AM

The words always sounded too clumsy to me - though the melody makes up for it a bit, so its quite singable. It just doesn't have that lyrical celtic phrasing that I love. It does have that "anthemic" thing going though - as per another current thread. Anyway - I'm with Steve on this one.

Subject: RE: Fields of Athenry
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 06 Oct 03 - 10:51 AM

Very much the same tone as in Sacco's letter to his son Dante five days before the State killed him - for example "So, Son, instead of crying, be strong, so as to be able to comfort your mother."

Subject: RE: Fields of Athenry
From: Joybell
Date: 06 Oct 03 - 07:24 PM

Yes you are probably right McGrath. Mostly my True-love and I agree on what we like and don't about songs, but sometimes it's hard to put your finger on the real reasons. I have a great love of very silly and contrived songs like " The Gypsy's Warning" My dear-one hates this one with a vengence so I make him go away if I want to sing it. Other songs that seem a bit contrived at first have become much-loved favourites of both of us. We both now have trouble getting through "The Picture That is Turned Towards the Wall" without bursting into tears and the idea behind that song is a bit contrived to say the least.

Subject: RE: Fields of Athenry
From: Brendy
Date: 06 Oct 03 - 09:30 PM

... I always wondered how you could sing a dream....

B.

Subject: RE: Fields of Athenry
From: Joybell
Date: 06 Oct 03 - 09:42 PM

.... don't be concerned it's only me pursuing something I'm not sure of. Across my dreams in fields of wonder I chase the bright elusive butterfly of love.......

Subject: RE: Tune Req: Fields of Athenry
From: Shimbo Darktree
Date: 06 Oct 03 - 11:46 PM

What a surge of sentiments emerge when someone mentions a popular song. There appear to be some places (people?) where a popular song is banned, presumably because it is not sufficiently obscure, and cannot be claimed to be known only by the "true believers". "Fields of Athenry" is one I liked from the first time I heard it. I don't give a rat's rectum if it is overdone. Popular songs will get thrashed as a matter of course ... look at "Fiddler's Green".

As a matter of interest,Joybell, I also loved "The Gypsy's Warning" when I was a child, #$%^ years ago (goodness, didn't the number come out?); yet I have never heard it sung live.

Surely we shouldn't stick exclusively to songs which are at least a millenium old!

Chuck things at me as much as you like ... I'm far enough away from most of you!

Subject: RE: Tune Req: Fields of Athenry
From: Murray MacLeod
Date: 07 Oct 03 - 03:48 AM

I think Fields of Athenry is a pretty good song and it is not the writer's fault it has become hackneyed, any more than it was Ralph McTell's fault that Streets of London was done to death.

I have no objection to the sentimentality of the song but I do take issue with the astronomical assumptions contained therein.

"I watched the last star falling" ?????

From which medieval treatise on the heavenly bodies did that astute observation come from ?

Murray

Subject: RE: Tune Req: Fields of Athenry
From: GUEST,Martin Ryan
Date: 07 Oct 03 - 05:03 AM

Muray

You can always sing "I watched the last tarpaulin"!

Regards

Subject: RE: Tune Req: Fields of Athenry
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 07 Oct 03 - 07:05 AM

Well, if it was "setting" there wouldn't be the rhyme with "calling" and the half rhyme with "wall". But it seems a perfectly reasonable way of referring to the way the stars go down out of sight as they set, and matches the way you'd be feeling in a situatioon like that.

It occurs to me that one reason it has such resonance for many people is that having a father forced to go away while the family stayed behind has been a very common experience in many families. That's especially so in Ireland, but also true for a whole generation in other countries whose fathers were away in the war.

Subject: RE: Tune Req: Fields of Athenry
From: Tattie Bogle
Date: 07 Oct 03 - 08:07 PM

He was being transported to Botany Bay (Australia) for his crime, not going away to the war. His crime was stealing Trevelyan's corn, just to keep his kids from starving, Trevelyan being one of the English landlords put in to supervise Irish farms, hence the political overtones of the song. I think it's a lovely song (when sung properly)and hate the fact that it has become a football club anthem and therefore cannot be safely sung in certain places in Scotland, as I have said before on another thread on the subject.
Tattie B

Subject: RE: Tune Req: Fields of Athenry
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 07 Oct 03 - 08:15 PM

He was leaving his family, not of his own free will,to go to a far distant country, and they knew there was a good chance they'd never be together again. That's very much what happens in wars too.

War or economic necessity or prison or transportation, it's all very much the same for the people left behind. And that's a major reason for the effect the song can have on people, who stop and turn and listen to it, in a way they don't for many songs.

Subject: RE: Tune Req: Fields of Athenry
From: Joybell
Date: 07 Oct 03 - 08:31 PM

Shimbo where have you been? Come and visit. I'll sing you "The Gypsy's Warning" Just for you I will mention that this was the first song to be sung on the telephone! Now that is something!
About Trevelyan he was Cornish surely? Perhaps before he moved to Ireland.
My great-great grandmother was shipped off to Australia in 1850 - as a nursemaid at the age of sixteen - by herself- to escape the famine in Ireland. Her daughter - my great grandmother - married a Cornishman - a poor miner. For all I might say about "The Fields of Athenry" It reminds me about the stories of my ancestors.

Subject: RE: Tune Req: Fields of Athenry
From: GUEST,mike
Date: 12 Nov 06 - 01:40 AM

It seems that everyone in this thread is refering to the revised version of this song as th original, oyur all wrong the original is as follows:By a lonely prison wall
I heard a sweet voice calling,
"Danny, they have taken you away.
For you stole Travelian's corn,
That your babes might see the morn,
Now a prison ship lies waiting in the bay."
Chorus
Fair lie the fields of Athenry
Where once we watched the small freebirds fly.
Our love grew with the spring,
We had dreams and songs to sing
As we wandered through the fields of Athenry.

By a lonely prison wall
I heard a young man calling
"Nothing matters, Jenny, when you're free
Against the famine and the crown,
I rebelled, they ran me down,
Now you must raise our children without me."

Chorus

On the windswept harbour wall,
She watched the last star rising
As the prison ship sailed out across the sky
But she'll watch and hope and pray,
For her love in Botany Bay
Whilst she is lonely in the fields of Athenry.
Whilst she is lonely in the fields of Athenry.

Hence forth changing the relevance of the lyrics to the era in which it was written the 1880's. Is correct.

Subject: RE: Tune Req: Fields of Athenry
From:
Date: 12 Nov 06 - 01:58 AM

Sorry Mike, If you go through some of the other threads here at the Mudcat, you will find that that set of lyrics was disproved. It was a fake. The supposed print house couldn't have been when they say it was on that web0site you got it from.

Subject: RE: Tune Req: Fields of Athenry
From: GUEST
Date: 28 Nov 06 - 07:48 AM

listen to music and lyricts to the fields of Ahenry

Subject: RE: Tune Req: Fields of Athenry
From: GUEST
Date: 28 Nov 06 - 07:55 AM

listen to music and lyrics to the fields of Athenry

Subject: RE: Tune Req: Fields of Athenry
From: Shields Folk
Date: 29 Nov 06 - 04:51 AM

"His crime was stealing Trevelyan's corn, just to keep his kids from starving, Trevelyan being one of the English landlords put in to supervise Irish farms"

Sir Charles Edward Trevelyan (1807 - 1886)-assistant secretary of the treasury.