Lowlands sleeve notes
1. An Nighean Dubh/ the Dark Haired Girl
I knew this Scots song from a recording by Clannad, and was humming it once
in the company of Johnny Cunningham when he drew my attention to Alan Stivell's
version. Here's another version, which gives a nod to both.
2. Johnny Coughlin (aka Johnny Gallagher)
I'm grateful to John Faulkner for giving me this song in the
early hours of the last night of The Irish Folk Festival tour of Germany and
Switzerland, on which we both performed, in 199. He learned from a book of
Newfoundland songs collected by the noted Canadian folklorist Edith Fowke. It
can be found on John's album for Green Linnet, Kind Providence.
3. The Hare's Lament
Steamboat is a popular English tune, but it, like so many, has traveled and can
be found in Kerr's Merry Melodies. Our version was learned from the playing of the
Yorkshire ironstone worker George Tremain, who was the melodeon player for the
North Skelton Sword Dancers.
4. Sian agus Beannacht/ Goodbye and Farewell
Steamboat is a popular English tune, but it, like so many, has traveled and can
be found in Kerr's Merry Melodies. Our version was learned from the playing of the
Yorkshire ironstone worker George Tremain, who was the melodeon player for the
North Skelton Sword Dancers.
5. The Snows They Melt the Soonest
Steamboat is a popular English tune, but it, like so many, has traveled and can
be found in Kerr's Merry Melodies. Our version was learned from the playing of the
Yorkshire ironstone worker George Tremain, who was the melodeon player for the
North Skelton Sword Dancers.
6. Nansai Og Obarlain/ Young Nancy Oberlin
This set of tunes was included on the band's first album, "No Reels" in 1977
and Dave Hunt adapted a dance for it, which we now know as "The Old Swan Gallop".
It's changed a bit since then and shows the way the band has developed.
"Winster Gallop" is one of the traditional Morris tunes from Winster in
Derbyshire, which was noted down by Cecil Sharp in his famous meeting with the
team in 1908. The "Four-Hand Reel" with its off number of bars in the A-music,
was a tune played by Herbert Smith in 1952 to Peter Kennedy. smith was a sexton
from Blakeney in Norfolk.
7. Lord Baker
When my cousin Jo was in Mali, a local man asked her where she was from. When she
said "Ireland", he remarked "oh, then we are cousins". She didn't get the
opportunity to ask him what he meant, but I know from working with Mamadou that we
share common musical territories. The song comes from the singing of Irish traveller
John Reilly, who was recorded in Dublin the year I was born by Tom Munnelly.
Christy Moore recorded the song for the Planxty album Words and Music. This
version comprises my favourite lyrics from three of the many versions and a
few new ones.
8. Dark Horse on the Wind (Liam Weldon)
The first known appearance in print of one of the most popular of all tunes, the
Flowers of Edinburgh, was originally published in 1742 as "My Love's Bonny When She
which suggests a possible meaning of the name.
9. Lowlands of Holland
Norma Waterson found the beautiful, unusual melody for this song in an old English
collection of songs entitles "Pedlar's Pack". I've added some lyrics from another
version.
10. Bonny Greenwoodside
I've added a verse to this song, a Scottish variant to child Ballad #20 "The Cruel
Mother". Other versions are "Fine Flowers in the Valley", and "The
Well Below the Valley".
11. To Fair London Town
Co. Clare singer Tom Lenihan told the collector Tom Munnelly that this song was
handed down from his great-grandfather "from the time they used to eat one another
on the oceans". Munnelly adds that in some versions of the song, the girl
"encounters a pair of heathens and slays one of them before arriving at the start
of our ballad". The song is on the box set "The Mount Callan Garland", named for
the Clare 'mountain' by which Tom lived, which in times gone by was strewn with
garlands of flowers each year at the festival of Lughnasa.
12. The Moorlough Shore
George Green played melodeon for the Little Downham Molly dancers and
photographs taken by WH Palmer on Plough Monday 1932 and reproduced
"Mr Dolly" originated by the Southampton based border morris team Red Stag.
Last updated on 14/10/2010