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Lyr Add: A Soft Day (W M Letts/C V Stanford)

05 Jan 01 - 10:21 PM (#369472)
Subject: A Soft Day
From: Alice

I have the lyrics to A Soft Day and that the tune is by C. V. Stanford, lyrics by W. M. Letts. Does anyone have more information regarding this song? Date of publication, more info about Letts and Stanford?

05 Jan 01 - 10:29 PM (#369477)
Subject: RE: A Soft Day
From: GUEST,Sarah

Winnifred? I do know she was some sort of author(ess).

I ought to look into this for you, I guess; Letts was my maiden name.

Sarah

05 Jan 01 - 10:47 PM (#369486)
Subject: RE: A Soft Day
From: GUEST,Sarah

Okay, off the top of Bartlett's we have Winifred Mary Letts, poetess, born 1882, died ??. I have vague impressions of information that she was a) related to Charles Dickens and b) Irish. I'll swear to neither, though -- but it ought to be a starting place.

Lemme go look for some Stanford info...

Sarah

05 Jan 01 - 10:55 PM (#369487)
Subject: RE: A Soft Day
From: katlaughing

I found one place that said she was born in 1887 with the death date left blank; she'd be pretty old now, eh?!

Saw Soft Day listed in British composer John Raynor's book of over 600 songs, but the online info was just the listing and that he used it in a song cycle in 1950.

Good luck,

kat

05 Jan 01 - 11:04 PM (#369491)
Subject: RE: A Soft Day
From: GUEST,Sarah

Barnes & Noble rare & second-hand books lists a Sir Charles V. Stanford by John F. Porte. It was published in London in 1921, which sounds the correct time frame W. M. Letts. It's listed as: "154pp. 8vo Black & white frontis photograph + occasional musical notation. Blue cloth. Title page lightly yellowed by frontis tissue guard, binding a bit stiff."

So you ought to be able to get more on both of these from a library.

Good luck.

Sarah

05 Jan 01 - 11:44 PM (#369511)
Subject: RE: A Soft Day
From: Alice

Mary O'Hara recorded it in the 1950's. I have the lyrics from her book, Song For Ireland, and the sound of the song made me think it was more contemporary. I didn't realize it would be that old. Does anyone want the lyrics? I'll post them.

05 Jan 01 - 11:48 PM (#369515)
Subject: RE: A Soft Day
From: GUEST,Sarah

If it's the same W.M. Letts, she wrote a neat poem about St. Stephen's Green...

Sure, post that rascal. I'd like to read it.

Sarah

06 Jan 01 - 12:19 AM (#369526)
Subject: Lyr Add: A SOFT DAY (W M Letts/C V Stanford)
From: Alice

A SOFT DAY
music C. V. Stanford, lyrics W. M. Letts

A soft day, thank God!
A wind from the south
With a honey'd mouth,
A scent of drenching leaves,
Briar and beech and lime,
White elder-flower and thyme,
And the soaking grass smells sweet
Crushed by my two bare feet,
While the rain drips, drips, drips,
From the eaves.

A soft day, thank God!
The hills wear a shroud of silver cloud,
The web the spider weaves is a glittering net,
The woodland path is wet,
And the soaking earth smells sweet
Under my two bare feet,
And the rain drips, drips, drips, drips,
From the eaves.

A soft day is an Irish expression that is not familiar to Americans. The music to this song doesn't really sound traditional, and neither does the poem, so I guessed it was a song from about the 1940's or '50's.... maybe not? I still need to know if it is in the public domain.

Alice

06 Jan 01 - 02:31 AM (#369556)
Subject: RE: A Soft Day
From: Sorcha

This site Click says it was set by Sir Charles Villiers Stanford who died in 1924, so I would guess it is PD.

06 Jan 01 - 01:57 PM (#369784)
Subject: RE: A Soft Day
From: Alice

Thanks, Sorcha. Now on to learning and recording it.

06 Jan 01 - 03:33 PM (#369845)
Subject: RE: A Soft Day
From: McGrath of Harlow

"A fine soft day" would normally mean it was raining, but not hard enough to keep indoors, if you had some reason to be out of doors. It sums up a cheerful attitude in the face of adversity. So it's also used as a joke when its raining cats and dogs.

"A fine moist day" I've also heard sometimes, meaning a litle bit wetter than that.

The poem/song is included in a fine anthology called "Rich and Rare", edited by Sean MacMahon in 1984. (He has four drips in the last line first verse as well as in the second, which sounds more likely to me.)

The book has a potted biography of the writer: Winifred Letts was born in Dublin in 1882, educated at Alexandra College, and practised as a masseuse. She contributed several plays to the early Abbey repertoire, notably "The Challenge" (1909) and wrote reminiscences about life in Leinster called "Knockmaroon" (1933). She married WHF Verschoyle. She is mainlt remembered today for her lyric "A Soft Day" which was printed in her first collection of poetry, "Songs from Leinster". She died in 1950.

But let's have that Letts poem about Stephen's Green as well, Sarah. There's a lovely little poem about Stephen's Green which I can't lay my hands on, but I think it's by Patrick Kearney who wrote The Soldier's Song - about being born in the heart of the city, but there's fairyland on the doorstep, in Stephen's Green.

06 Jan 01 - 04:31 PM (#369884)
Subject: RE: A Soft Day
From: GUEST,Sarah

Sorry, McGrath, I can only recall the first lines, which you can read in Bartlett's anyway:

That God once loved a garden
We learn in Holy writ,
And seeing gardens in the spring
I well can credit it.

I think it's in The Spires of Oxford volume of her stuff, which is around here somewhere. But the library's a mess -- am constructing a built-in bookshelf of one wall and the books are in stacks EVERYWHERE.

If no one beats me to it, I'll try to get to the city library next week and get it all. Even if other lines come to me, I never memorized it, and you'd rather have the correct poem, wouldn't you?

Sarah

06 Jan 01 - 04:36 PM (#369885)
Subject: RE: A Soft Day
From: Den

I have to agree with McGrath here Rich and Rare is a beautiful book for anyone interested in Irish songs and poetry. Den

07 Jan 01 - 06:10 PM (#370478)
Subject: RE: A Soft Day
From: MartinRyan

Stanford (1852-1924) was born in Dublin. Choral scholar at Cambridge. Eventually professor of music at Cambridge. Prolific composer. Edited the Petrie Collection of Irish Music . Among others, Ralph Vaughan WIlliams and Gustav Holst studied under him. Ashes are buried in Westminster Abbey.

Regards

p.s. notes abstracted from Dictionary of Irish Biography.

07 Jan 01 - 06:39 PM (#370494)
Subject: RE: A Soft Day
From: Alice

Thanks, everyone.

07 Jan 01 - 06:45 PM (#370496)
Subject: RE: A Soft Day
From: MartinRyan

There's no mention of Winifred Letts in the dictionary, interestingly enough. I occasionally see "Songs of Leinster" in the secondhand bookshops - have almost gotten out of the habit of picking it up to see if there's anything singable!

Regards

08 Jan 01 - 09:22 AM (#370807)
Subject: RE: A Soft Day
From: McGrath of Harlow

THe Margaret Drabble Companion to English Literature doesn't give her a mention.But then it doesn't mention Patrick Pearse, or James Plunkett, or Patrick Kearney - even though its definition of English Literature includes Irish and American. I'm glad I only bought it in a jumble sale, I'd be highly indignant if I'd paid full price for it. It's got masses of gaps.

08 Jan 01 - 01:43 PM (#370962)
Subject: Lyr Add: FAIRYLAND (Peadar Kearney)
From: McGrath of Harlow

That should have of course been Peadar Kearney, who wrote The Soldiers Song, and a lot of other very good somgs too.

I think I left some brain-cells back in the 20th Century...

But I've laid my hands on his Stephen's Green poem/song, and I'm glad I have. Here it is:

I wake to the thrush revealing
His joy on a dewy morn,
And soft through my window stealing,
The scent of the flowering thorn.
I haste to share in the splendour
Of water and flower and tree,
And up from my heart I render,
My praise, oh my God to Thee.

And little children straying
O'er paths where their elders trod,
Their wondering eyes surveying
The wonderful works of God.
For the innocent hearts of childhood,
Find God in each flower and tree,
And I pray while I tread life's journey
With the eyes of a child to see.

Where beauty has birth and being -
Men call it Stephen's Green,
And pass on their way unseeing
What the eyes of a child has seen.
Their blindness but moves our pity,
And now you will understand
How here in the heart of a city,
I was born in Fairyland!


If there's a tune to that, I'd be grateful to know it. There are a couple of Peadar Kearney songs in the DT, but this is a bit different from them.

08 Jan 01 - 01:48 PM (#370967)
Subject: RE: A Soft Day
From: McGrath of Harlow

I wake to the thrush revealing
His joy on a dewy morn,
And soft through my window stealing,
The scent of the flowering thorn.
I haste to share in the splendour
Of water and flower and tree,
And up from my heart I render,
My praise, oh my God to Thee.

And little children straying
O'er paths where their elders trod,
Their wondering eyes surveying
The wonderful works of God.
For the innocent hearts of childhood,
Find God in each flower and tree,
And I pray while I tread life's journey
With the eyes of a child to see.

Where beauty has birth and being -
Men call it Stephen's Green,
And pass on their way unseeing
What the eyes of a child has seen.
Their blindness but moves our pity,
And now you will understand
How here in the heart of a city,
I was born in Fairyland!

08 Jan 01 - 03:42 PM (#371043)
Subject: RE: A Soft Day
From: CarolC

I apologize for butting into this discussion where I clearly don't belong, but I just want to say this...

Every time I read the title of this thread when I'm scanning down the list of thread titles on the forum home page, it makes me feel good inside.

Carol

08 Jan 01 - 05:11 PM (#371102)
Subject: RE: A Soft Day
From: MartinRyan

McGrath

it's a bit different from his usual stuff alright! Got a source?

Regards

11 Jan 01 - 10:41 PM (#373125)
Subject: RE: A Soft Day
From: Sarah2

Well, three things:

1) Refreshing to give CarolC another smile.

2) McGrath, as promised, I spent about four hours at the downtown library today, wading through Irish poetry anthologies -- well, okay, maybe I was wallowing in some of them -- for "Stephen's Green." No luck; I'd probably have gotten more forward in the search by working on the shelves in my own library, so I could put those books away. (Although I've been told by me mum that it actually might be in one of those footlockers in the garage, since it was from my father's libaray -- gads, that's a chore a'waitin'!) I may have to stop and just start tossing books around to find it here -- it's really beginning to niggle.

3) However, MartinRyan, I found some of her stuff that seemed perfectly suited to put to music: "Glorny's Weir," certainly. But also "Blessings," "My Blessing Be on Waterford," and even (if you could get that Roger Miller-ish odd rhythm going) "Spring, the Travelling Man." Might have a go at it, myself...

Sarah

12 Jan 01 - 09:19 AM (#373279)
Subject: RE: A Soft Day
From: McGrath of Harlow

That's the great thing about looking for things, Sarah you find other things you weren't looking for.

Yes, Martin, it is a bit different, which is why it stuck in my mind as being by him. Where I found it is in a little book of words published I think by Walton in Dublin sometime in the 1950s or so. The cover's gone and so is the title page so I can't be sure.

I'd trust them to have it right though, because it starts with "A Soldier's Song"(sic) in both English and Irish, and has Fairyland just next to Peadar Kearney's "Three-coloured Ribbon", and a few pages away from "Michael Dwyer" and "Whack Fol the Diddle", so they knew their Peadar Kearney. Which you'd expect, if I'm right and it was pubished by Waltons, since Martin Walton was interned with Peadar.

There's a life of Kearney by Seamus de Burca called "The Soldier's Song", published by P.J.Bourke in Dublin in 1957, but I don't think that's got a mention of this one in it. What it does have though is a set of songs and poems, some of which I've not seen elsewhere, including an extra for the "Soldier's Song" about the North. And there's a lively one about a singing pub, "Down in the Village", with the chorus:

Heigh ho! slan to the revilry, Shouting and drinking and singing so merrily Red nights we never again shall see Down in the village we tarried so long.

12 Jan 01 - 03:35 PM (#373492)
Subject: RE: A Soft Day
From: GUEST,Martin Ryan

Thanks, McGrath. Must keep an eye out for the biography.

Regards

13 Jan 01 - 12:32 AM (#373764)
Subject: RE: A Soft Day
From: Liz the Squeak

CV STanford is best known for composing religious music, such as the settings for the Magnificat, Nunc Dimitis and other canticles.... I've sung lots of them, they are great for sopranos, but not nice for altos....

LTS