One Leg One Eye (Ian Lynch - Lankum) - Songs From The Craic Pipe

 

One Leg One Eye - Songs from the Craic Pipe

1 Quare Bungle Rye 3:33

2 When I Was In Horseback 3:33

3 The Brown and the Yellow Ale 6:15

4 Pat Maguire 7:58

5 Lord Abore and Mary Flynn 8:04

6 I'd Rather Be Tending My Sheep 5:44

7 Sweet Liberty / The Prayer of Sheil 3:27

8 Gough's Immortal Statue 2:22

9 The Ballad of Persse O'Reilly 5:28

10 Napoleon's Farewell To Paris 9:08

11 Four Green Fields (with Junior Brother) 6:13

Various field recordings uploaded to youtube during the Covid-19 lockdowns...

Track Notes: 

1. This was the first song from the craic pipe that I made as a message to Norma Waterson and Martin Carthy during the Corvid 19 lockdown.

2. I first heard this song from the mighty Jem Mitchell many years ago. It is a very truncated version of the Unfortunate Rake ballad that has been reduced to little more than the famous funeral scene. All renditions of this particular version can be traced back to Traveller Mary Doran, who sang it for Peter Kennedy in Belfast, on the 1st of August, 1952.

3. This is an English translation of the Donegal song Cuach Mo Lon Dubh Buí. Usually the songs referred to as Chansons de Malmariée tell of the grievances of an unhappy marriage from the female point of view. This song may be the only one where the narrator is male. It was reportedly one of James Joyce's favourites.

4. I don't know much about this song apart from the fact that it seems to have been well known in Donegal (check out the Inishowen Song Project - https://www.itma.ie/inishowen - for a few different versions). The mention of 'Molly's Sons' in the last verse is a reference to the Molly Maguires, a secret society active in the 19th Century.

5. Lord Abore and Mary Flynn is a version of Child ballad #87 Prince Robert. Although Child included 4 versions in The English and Scottish Popular Ballads, there have been very few incidences of it appearing in the oral tradition. Apart from 2 versions recorded in West Virginia, USA, in the early part of the 20th century, it only ever turned up in Dublin, where Frank Feeney sang it for Tom Munnelly on the 5th December 1970. This song was shot in the Craic Factory.

6. I'd Rather Be Tending My Sheep comes from the singing of Lucy Farrell of the Furrow Collective. Lucy learned it from Ruth Tongue's book the Chime Child. Although Tongue claimed that she got the song from an 'Old Shepherd', some are of the opinion that she actually wrote it herself. This song was shot in the Craic Factory.

7. The poet and weaver John Sheil had perhaps the biggest impact of any songwriter in 19th Century Ireland and many of his songs are still extant in the oral tradition, especially in and around Drogheda where he died in 1872. This song was learned from the singing of Pat Usher of Tinure, Co. Louth in the 1970s. Its powerful message of liberation and racial equality speaks for itself. 

8. In Ireland the practice of defacing, destroying or otherwise removing statues connected with our colonial past is long and well established. In 1898 it was said that the statue of William of Orange in College Green had ‘been insulted, mutilated and blown up so many times, that the original figure, never particularly graceful, is now a battered wreck, pieced and patched together, like an old, worn out garment.’ Monuments commemorating King George II, Queen Victoria and most famously Admiral Nelson also found themselves being eventually deemed unfit for Irish public life. This song relates to the equestrian statue erected in honour of Field Marshal Hugh Gough, a British Army officer. It had its head removed on Christmas Eve 1944 and then in 1957, after having been blown up, it was removed from the park for safekeeping. In 1986 it was moved to the grounds of Chillingham Castle in Northumberland, England, where it now resides.

9. The Ballad of Persse O'Reilly was written by James Joyce and appears in his magnum opus Finnegan's Wake. It concerns the character Humphrey Chimpden Earwicker (Here Comes Everybody, Haveth Childers Everywhere) and allegations of sexual misconduct that were made against him in the form of rumours which spread across Dublin. There is so much to unpack with this song and just looking up the references contained in each line will provide many days of fascinating and hilarious education. Apparently the entire book - considered to be written in some kind of primordial 'Babylonish dialect' - uses over 80 different languages. I can detect elements of at least 9 here...Maybe you can hear more? 

I have to credit Ronnie Drew and Barry Gleeson for the heavy inspiration of their versions.

I recorded this in a Martello tower in South Dublin, even though I am neither stately nor plump.

10. In the early 1800s a French invasion of Ireland under Napoleon was seen as a very real threat, the extent of which can be seen by the construction of around 50 Martello towers all around the Irish coast. There were many, however, who welcomed such an invasion and songs praising Napoleon were widespread in the 19th century not just in Ireland, but also amongst the working classes of the UK, who hoped that such an invasion might liberate them from the oppressive toil of their day-to-day lives. Napoleon’s Farewell To Paris is the story of Le Petit Caporal’s life couched in the most heroically epic imagery. I learned it from the singing of Dublin singer Terry Timmons. 

Recorded in the stairwell of a Craic-Martello-Tower in South Dublin.

11. Four Green Fields was written by Tommy Makem in 1967. The words spoken by the old woman in the song are taken directly from W.B. Yeats' play "Cathleen ni Houlihan". The personification of Ireland as a female figure can be traced back to early Irish literature, with the concept of the sovereignty goddess dating much further back. This version was largely based on the one recorded by the English vocal harmony group Swan Arcade.

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