St. Patrick's Day

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

This year, to supply you with Irish music on the one day of the year when it is on demand, I will show you a few videos that illustrate the influence America has played on traditional Irish music today.

Most of the earliest commercial recordings were actually made in America by Irish immigrants. Perhaps the most famous of these musicians was Michael Coleman, a fiddler born in Killavil, Co. Sligo who came to New York City in 1914. He soon found work as a professional player in vaudeville shows, and picked up many tunes that he recorded in a traditional style but to our ears today sound unmistakably like rag-time. Many of Coleman's records were sent back to Ireland, where young musicians were so enthralled that they copied his music note for note. Even today, musicians throughout the Irish diaspora will play sets that were first popularized  by Coleman.

One of those sets is of two reels: Bonnie Kate & Jenny's Chickens:



But, he could also play more graceful waltzes popular with the American crowds he played for:




Coleman's influence on the world of Irish music was so strong, not just because of his records, but also because of the fiddlers he taught. One of the most prominent of those students was Andy McGann, who recorded a number of albums in the 1970's, and who has a remarkably similar style as Coleman:



And that New York-Sligo fiddle style is still alive today, particularly in the playing of Brian Conway, who is shown here doing his own rendition of Bonnie Kate & Jenny's Chickens (with a third reel added to the set):



Another well-known musician who emigrated to New York around the same time was the Leitrim-born flute player John McKenna, who also recorded in the 1920's and 1930's. Here he is playing a polka with a distinct American flavor, "Tripping to the Well."




Finally, this old-time, rag-time-influenced style of Irish music has been making a comeback in recent years, after being going underground for a while in the folk revival of the 1970's. One of the positive aspects of this comeback (in my opinion) is that musicians are starting to dust off a lot of the old polkas and barndances that were nearly forgotten in the 1970's when a lot of bands pumped out only reels and jigs. A little rhythmic variety never hurt anybody!

Here is one new band, Morga, who can put on a great show (as I saw in Chicago last summer), playing a polka from the Roaring Twenties called "Fitzmaurice's Flight":

English, But Not As You Know It

A couple months ago I read an article on cognitive fitness which encouraged various activities to keep the mind strong and limber: music, exercise, games, acting, and foreign languages, among others.

If you're anything like me, you may lack the time and ability to study a foreign language. But I strongly suspect that many of the same cognitive benefits can come about by working with a different dialect of English. The other day I stumbled upon one: Yola, otherwise known as the Forth and Bargy dialect.

This variant of English was spoken in County Wexford, Ireland. Although it died out in the 19th century, it evolved from Middle English and looks more like the English of Geoffrey Chaucer than modern American English. Those who are interested in the finer workings of pronunciation can find plenty of information online. But for those who simply want to try their hand at reading it, I'd offer the same advice I offer for Chaucer: read it out loud and then just listen to yourself. You might sound like the Swedish Chef from the Muppets, but you may find yourself hearing words that you didn't recognize on the page.

Here's a simple example of Yola, with a modern English translation, that I pulled off Wikipedia:

Ee mýdhe ov Rosslaarè
'Cham góeen to tell thee óa taale at is drúe
Aar is ing Rosslaarè óa mýdhe geoudè an drúe
Shoo wearth ing her haté óa ribbonè at is blúe
An shoo goeth to ee faaythè earchee deie too
Ich meezil bee ing ee faaythè éarchee deie zoo
At ich zee dhicka mýdhe fhó is geoudè an drúe
An ich bee to ishólthè ee mýdhe, ee mýdhe at is drúe
An fhó coome to ee faaythè wi' ribbonè blue
'Chull meezil góe to Rosslaaré earche deie too
to zie thaar ee mydhe wee her ribbonè blúe
An 'chull her estólté vor her ribbonè blúe
ee mýdhe at is lyghtzóm, an well wytheen an drúe
Ich loove ee mýdhe wee ee ribbonè blúe
At coome to ee faaythè éarchee arichè too
Fan 'cham ing ee faaythè éarchee arichè too
To estóthè mýdhe wee ee ribbons blúe

The maiden of Rosslare
I'm going to tell you a tale that is true.
There is in Rosslare a maid good and true.
She wears in her hat a ribbon that is blue
and she goes to the faith every day too.
I myself am in the faith every day so
that I see this maid who is good and true
and I go to meet the maid, the maid that is true
and who comes to the faith with ribbons blue.
I myself will go to Rosslare every day too
to see there the maid with her ribbons blue
And I will meet her for her ribbons blue
the maid that is enlightened and good looking and true.
I love the maid with the ribbons blue
that comes to the faith every morning too
when I'm in the faith every morning too
to meet the maid with the ribbons blue.

If that was too easy, you can find a more challenging text here, along with some modern English.

Those interested in learning a bit more about Yola may enjoy this short video:

St. Patrick's Day

This year in honor of St. Patrick's Day, a few polkas.

Most people would be surprised to learn that the Irish dance polkas, but it's true. In the middle of the 19th century, a polka craze swept through Europe, starting in central Europe and going all over the world--for instance, German settlers brought the style to Texas, where Mexicans adapted it until it became Norteno/Tejano music. Polkas were brought to Ireland at the same time, but until recently the polka craze was generally confined to two small regions within Ireland. The first region was Sliabh Luachra, the hill country along the River Blackwater on the border of Cork and Kerry. In Sliabh Luachra, the style of polka played there is very fast and very syncopated and obviously meant for crossroads dancing. There the fiddle and button accordion were the primary instruments for dance music and still are today. The first clip features two well-known Sliabh Luachra musicians playing a set of polkas: Jackie Daly on accordion and Seamus Creagh on fiddle. Notice how on the first tune Jackie Daly plays an octave lower the second time through.

 

Here is a link to another set of polkas (the video could not be embedded), played by another fine fiddle-accordion duet from Sliabh Luachra: Matt Cranitch and Donal Murphy.

The other region where polkas were played was in the northwest around Sligo. There the style is slower and less syncopated and a bit more graceful. There the fiddle is also popular, but the flute is more common than the accordion. The following video features Matt Molloy, from Ballaghadereen on the Roscommon-Mayo border, playing flute and on fiddle John Carty, who was born in London but whose family hails from Sligo. The second tune they play is called "The Killavil Postman"; Killavil is the village in Sligo where the famous fiddler Michael Coleman was born. The set of polka begins at about 3:30, with "The Killavil Postman"
 starting at about 4:38.

 

Irish Catholicism

I recently came across a series of blog posts written by a priest who lives and works in England but whose family hails from Ireland. Occasioned by a visit to his family across the Irish Sea, the series is a set of personal reflections on the roots of the sexual abuse scandal in Ireland and the wider crisis afflicting the Church there (or being inflicted by the Church on herself). The series starts with 500 (and continues with parts b, c, d, e, f, g, and h).

The series consists mostly of anecdotes rather than systematic inquiry, but it does touch on some of the history of the Church in Ireland and its effect on modern Irish religiosity. Interestingly enough, many of the anecdotes reflect stories I've heard from my own family.

Besides any personal interest it has for me, this series should also be of interest to American readers because of the great influence that the Irish have had on the Church in America. That influence is obviously waning as fewer Irish immigrate and more Hispanics cross the Rio Grande, but it endures nonetheless, especially in cities in the North. From stories about strict, ruler-wielding nuns and priests with no sense for liturgy to grandmothers mumbling the rosary during Mass and eccentric old men attending the wakes of complete strangers, Irish immigrants are often silently assigned the role of the bogeyman in a history of the American Church. Equally characteristic of the Irish, however, was their fierce determination to stay true to the faith in the midst of largely hostile Protestants and even to build up this country's network of parochial schools from nothing. For good and for bad, the Irish legacy cannot be ignored.

Reviving Languages in the Classroom

In much discourse today, "tradition" looms in our minds as a monolith, imposing and utterly unmovable. But traditions are actually much more fragile than we often think, and even the best-intentioned attempts to preserve them can alter them radically.

A good example to illustrate this point is language. Language is the means by which we interact with people, without which no other tradition would be possible. Language obviously does not live by itself; it must be taught to each child that comes into the world, and must be cultivated by adults. Most people, though, never consciously thought, as they grew up themselves, about what language they were learning, nor do they consciously decide what language they will teach to their children. Children simply take their language in with their mother's milk--which is why the Germans call their native tongue their Muttersprache. Yet there are times when individuals and communities must make a conscious choice to hand down the language they have spoken for generations. This usually happens when another language has become dominant in the area, whether through demographic change or some socio-political reason. How many extinct languages in the world today are nearing extinction, supplanted by other languages?

Sometimes, the language will not die but will linger on its deathbed until it can be revived. Today languages are usually revived by means of classroom instruction. But traditions, such as a language, cannot really be revived in a school without changing the tradition itself. The moment formal instruction is needed to maintain the basic elements of a tradition, that tradition has changed significantly: the tradition is neither entirely old, nor entirely new, but a tertium quid. The drive to preserve the tradition, while it can save the tradition from extinction, never preserves the tradition entirely intact.

One example of such a language that nearly died out before being revived in the classroom, but has undergone great changes because of its revival, is Irish. By 1900 the Irish language was largely confined to poor rural areas in the west, such as the Dingle Peninsula in Kerry, Connemara and the Aran Island in Galway, parts of Mayo, and northwest Donegal (see the parts in green on the map to the right). These regions are known today as the Gaeltacht; Irish is still the ordinary means of communication in daily life there and is spoken on local radio and television. After gaining independence from Ireland, the new government made Irish an official language and introduced it as a mandatory subject in the schools. The language has even made something of a comeback in the towns and even in Dublin itself, often among the highly-educated. Because of these official efforts, Irish is enjoying something of a renaissance.

But, a strange thing has happened to the language, according to Brian Ó Broin: he has fears that there will be a "schism" between rural Gaeltacht residents and urban speakers, between those who grew up with the language and those who originally learned it in school. When members of the two groups meet, they actually prefer to speak in English because they cannot easily understand each other's Irish. As Ó Broin explains, Irish has many subtly different sounds, especially guttural sounds, that are very hard for a native English speaker to distinguish. And all these subtle differences are important:

Irish has a fairly sophisticated morphological system. That is to say, words can change form in several ways. The noun cainteoir, for instance, can mutate to gcainteoir, cainteora, chainteora, cainteoirí, and gcainteoirí, depending on its grammatical function. As we saw earlier, if the pronunciation of these mutations alters or fails, the entire grammatical system of the language becomes endangered.

One example that Ó Broin gives is that urban speakers did not "mark any masculine nouns that were in the plural or genitive." In this example, the urban speakers' failure to pronounce certain sounds correctly has led to a drastically simplified system for the declension of masculine nouns. What is being born is a new pidgin Irish spoken primarily by urban speakers, as opposed to the older, more complex form spoken in the countryside.

All this is interesting in itself (at least to amateur linguists), as an example of a language experiencing major changes in real time. It is also interesting, though, as an example of the unwitting harm preservationism can do to what it seeks to preserve. There is much reason for rejoicing at the successful revival of Irish through classroom learning, but Irish's shift from being the language of the poor to being a marker of middle-class education shows that much is lost even as a tradition is saved.

Peter Hart, Historian

I tend to think of my fellow historians as falling into one of two categories: living and dead. My own advisor is living, as are the sort of people I run into at conferences. There are other historians, such as the great golden calf smasher, A. J. P. Taylor, who are deceased and hopefully resting in peace. After a long and profitable career, a historian may gently slip from the former category to the latter. My current rabbi, M. R. D. Foot, was born in 1919 and has produced more books that I have time to read, much less could ever write. Some day he will pass from this life, and though his passing will be mourned, his rest will be well-deserved and unsurprising.

Today, however, I had the unfortunate experience to discover that a young historian, Peter Hart, passed away in July at the much too early age of 46. His work on the Irish Revolution has been of great help to me; just yesterday I was reading The IRA and Its Enemies. One can only hope that his forthcoming work, Guerrilla Days in the UK: Revolution in Ireland and Britain, will still be published.

History is a discipline which rewards longevity. It takes years simply to acquire a PhD, the union card to participate in the dialogue. Even then, archival research and sufficient background material for a major contribution can take decades to collect. Hart's career was already impressive and showed great promise for better still to come. His death is a profound loss for the field. May he rest in peace.

Still Remembering John Paul II

Below is the text of an email upon which I recently happened, regarding John Paul II's 1979 visit to Ireland and his address to the youth in Galway. Though more than a year old, the email still captures my sentiments:

I first saw this post a few days ago, but I returned to it again today, to listen to the clip and read a couple of the links. As I heard the crowd cheering for the Holy Father - not politely, but wildly - I started to cry. I miss that man, a lot. When attending my first World Youth Day in Rome, I remember telling people I was going to visit the pope, since he had invited me (and all the young people of the world) to come hang out at his place. It was a joke, of course, but there was a truth to it I didn't fully realize at the time. John Paul was a man whose love for humanity - and in particular for the youth - was palpable, even when he was but a speck on a distant stage. Even as we watched his health fail over the years, until he could barely move or speak when last I saw him in 2004. Even then, he was every inch a pope, and a genuine friend to millions of people he had never met. As I listened to the thunder of the crowd in Ireland, I remembered what it was like to live on the same planet with such a man. It truly was an ennobling thing. And I cried. Tears of joy and of loss. Big fat tears that splashed on the desk. And on the crowd cheered, knowing that they were loved, by God and by this Polish pope who had come to their little island.

Blessed be God! John Paul the Great, pray for us!

Read the blog post about John Paul's visit to Ireland here, or simply go here to hear his homily to the youth in Galway on 30 September. The whole thing is worth listening to, but if you want to skip straight to the climax mentioned above, simply push forward to about 41:00.

Of Scotland and Its Heritage

I was recently reading about Alasdair Mac Colla (c. 1610–1647) a Scotch-Irish solider from Clan Donald. One of the largest clans in Scotland, the Norse-Gaelic MacDonalds at this time held territory in Scotland, the Hebrides and Ulster. Notably, the MacDonalds were also Catholic, unlike their arch-rivals, the Campbells, who were Presbyterian. Alasdair Mac Colla and the MacDonalds fought alongside the Royalists and the Irish Confederation in a series of conflicts including the English Civil War, known collectively as the Wars of Three Kingdoms (ie, England, Scotland and Ireland).

Mac Colla was a man of great violence, and involved in atrocities against the Campbells, but though it does not excuse his actions, it would at least seem he was on the right side. Moreover, he is credited with inventing the 'highland charge,' a nifty tactic whereby Scottish armies, facing English opponents, would fire a volley, then throw down their muskets (and often hit the ground while the English fired a return volley), and then charge the English position with claymores and dirks while the poor English chaps were trying to reload their muskets for a second volley. It was a devastating tactic, particularly prior to the use of the bayonet, and it won the Scots a string of victories for roughly a century.

Duntulm Castle, a ruined MacDonald castle located on the Isle of Skye.

Well, such a dashing figure got me wondering, even hoping, if I might not be related to the fellow. And there is just a grain of possibility. You see, my great-great-great-grandfather, Alonzo Timothy Johnson Sr. was of Scottish ancestry (or so my grandmother told me, God rest her). A quick search of the Scottish clans, however, will reveal that there is no Clan Johnson. There is, however, a sept - a family division - named Johnson, belonging to Clan MacDonald of Ardnamurchan. You see, the MacDonalds are so large and sprawling that there are several branches of them. The MacDonalds of Ardnamurchan are descended from John (Iain) Sprangach MacDonald (d.1340), the third son of Angus Mor MacDonald (d.1292), the 4th chief of the Clan Donald. On his account, they are thus sometimes known as the MacIaians or MacIans (which simply means "son of John"). Some time when Alasdair Mac Colla was a boy, the MacIaians lost their lands through the duplicity of the Campbells, and thus the clan declined in significance. The Johnsons, one particular sept of the MacIaians, threw themselves upon the mercy of the the broader MacDonald community and Clan Gunn, another Norse-Gaelic clan in Scotland's western isles. So it is just possible that my ancestors, if not including Alasdair Mac Colla, at least knew him.

This is, however, a stretch. For one thing, MacDonald of Ardnamurchan is not the only clan to include a sept named Johnson; both Gunn and MacDonald of Glencoe have one as well. But there is another problem: what if my Scottish ancestors changed the spelling of their name at some point? What it if it was once "Johnstone," not "Johnson"? Because that, you see, is quite a different story.

Clan Johnstone is a lowland clan located on the Scottish-English border. For some time they resisted English incursions - and won the friendship of William Wallace for it. All the border clans were a wild bunch, bandit-types who enjoyed having blood feuds with one another. In the case of Clan Johnstone, the primary objects of these feuds were Clan Maxwell, put in its place in 1593, and Clan Moffat, more or less destroyed in 1557. However, like the MacDonalds, the Johnstones supported the Royalists in the English Civil War.

So which one is it? Did my family come from the Lowlands of southern Scotland, or the Isles of the West? Are my sworn enemies the Campbells or the Maxwells? Should I be wearing the tartan of the MacDonalds of the Isles (above left) or of the Johnstones (below right)? Well, funny you should ask about tartans...

The most authoritative work on Scottish tartans is the Vestiarium Scoticum, published in 1842. The only problem is that the Vestiarium is probably a fraud. The story goes that the tartans depicted in the Vestiarium are the ancient patterns used by the clans since time immemorial. The manuscript that helped produce this document passed through the hands of Bonnie Prince Charlie, and had now allowed his grandsons, John Sobieski Stuart and Charles Edward Stuart, to share this authoritative knowledge with the world. However, the "Stuart brothers" were exposed as John Carter Allen and Charles Manning Allen and their tartans as bogus. But by the time that had happened, a funny thing had occurred: the Vestiarium Scoticum had caught on. Today, many of the clans still use the tartans given them by the Vestiarium, in spite of considerable evidence that these are not the ancient tartans of their clans.

Does this matter? Should Scots be outraged? Probably not. Let me submit two reasons for that. First, things like tartans are signs, and should not be confused with the things they signify. So long as it is understood that a particular tartan - or flag, or coat of arms, or song, or holiday - indicates a given clan, its history and its values, the sign itself is of little importance. Second, it seems to me that the stories surrounding the adoption of symbols become part of a heritage themselves. For good or ill, the Vestiarium is now part of Scottish lore, one of those strange quirks of history. To throw it out would be to get ride of part of the story.

So is my family from Clan Johnstone or MacDonald of Ardnamurchan? I am going to answer, "both". This is not to say that I believe this to be the case, in a biological sense. Rather, I accept stories and histories of each as my own. And the very means by which I came to that conclusion - and the fact that I did, when I am sure many others would not - says something about me as well. Call me crazy, but I intend to regale my children and my children's children with stories of Alasdair Mac Colla and the Highland charge.