Sean Nós, Iarla & The Gloaming

[Padraig]

contd.

Two other pieces - Amhran na nGleann Song of the Gleans could be connected to the Black and Tans in the 1920s.

https://twitter.com/rte/status/719264207984861185

and the strange - My Lady Who Has Found the Tomb Unattended - has something to do with the dispersal of the Irish nobility abroad in 1603 - The Flight of the Earls etc. The tomb would never have been unattended in old Ireland.

But Global, let's hope that the Gloaming are more generous with their CD notes than in the past. And I'm sure you yourself have found out more than my meagre offering here.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2YWT4o32wxc&list=OLAK5uy_mEkiIvAoq_RacXI8qrlG92QZGrWKVPMfk

This is one great number. Very atmospheric, with the sheer tragedy leaking from the words and the music. I've tried to get the original poem without success so far. The poem is addressed to Nuala ODonnell - 'A Bhean fuair faill ar an bhfeart' - O Woman ... and laments the fact that the Earls of Ulster were so reduced in status as to have the wife of her relative be the sole mourner in a foreign graveyard. It goes on to mourn the general social and cultural degradation of Ireland as a result of defeat in battle and the granting of the lands to beneficiaries of the Plantation.

For your further information:

https://www.historyireland.com/early-modern-history-1500-1700/dispossession-and-reaction-the-gaelic-literati-and-the-plantation-of-ulster/

[Globaltruth]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2YWT...G92QZGrWKVPMfk

This is one great number. Very atmospheric, with the sheer tragedy leaking from the words and the music. I've tried to get the original poem without success so far. The poem is addressed to Nuala ODonnell - 'A Bhean fuair faill ar an bhfeart' - O Woman ... and laments the fact that the Earls of Ulster were so reduced in status as to have the wife of her relative be the sole mourner in a foreign graveyard. It goes on to mourn the general social and cultural degradation of Ireland as a result of defeat in battle and the granting of the lands to beneficiaries of the Plantation.

For your further information:

https://www.historyireland.com/early...ion-of-ulster/

Thanks Padraig. As a result of your earlier comment re The Flight of the Earls I went off and did some reading and ended up at the very same historyireland.com link that you posted...

[Globaltruth]

The Weight of things - a translation provided by Real World records

Meáchan cheol do ghutha ón tuath sa chathair
Meáchan do bheoldatha ag luí ar do liopaí ag aeráil ghutaí
Meáchan do chumhrachta i seomra na hiarbhreithe
Meáchan do thuirse máthartha á rá liom bheith amuigh go cneasta

The weight of the music of your country voice in the city.
The weight of the lipstick on your lips airing vowels.
The weight of your fragrance in the bedroom after giving birth.
The weight of your maternal weariness asking me kindly to go outside.

[Padraig]

Thanks for that, Global. Every little helps. I am trying to get a hard copy of the poem (My printer is out) so that I can have a go at my own translation - but don't hold your breath.

Searching for a translation online I came across this, which I know you will find interesting in itself as well as adding another few lines in English.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zr1R10AUGMQ

[Globaltruth]

Thanks for that, Global. Every little helps. I am trying to get a hard copy of the poem (My printer is out) so that I can have a go at my own translation - but don't hold your breath.

Searching for a translation online I came across this, which I know you will find interesting in itself as well as adding another few lines in English.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zr1R10AUGMQ

The YouTube above is mandatory viewing for anyone with the faintest interest in song and inspiration.

Here's a review which casts a little more light.

Read the full review at

https://www.folkradio.co.uk/2019/02/the-gloaming-the-gloaming-3/

or the Gloaming 3 extract below

The opening piano is joined by an equally emphatic vocal for Meáchan Rudaí (The Weight Of Things), as Ó Lionáird delivers, like an incantation, an extract from the late Liam Ó Muirthile’s prose poem of the same name. The enveloping, absorbing sound that is a trademark of The Gloaming’s music moves on towards a stately dance with Hayes’ fiddle, which seems to take to the wind as deep bass notes on the piano contrast with the monotone, just as a soaring vocal contrasts with the enchantment of the powerful early litany. Áthas (Joy), takes more of Ó Muirthile’s work in reverent tones that embrace the soul, alongside gentle piano chords, a mournful Hardanger and the softest of guitar. Áthas is taken from Ó Muirthile’s Camino de Santiago pilgrimage poems, which were published in Irish, English, Spanish, and Galego [Galician].



Where song forms part of The Gloaming’s music the source, and inspiration, is often Irish poetry – both ancient and contemporary. The delivery of that poetry is also intricately linked to the musical traditions. During the great Seán Ó Ríordáin’s poem Reo, Martin Hayes softly opens a jig, as if proffering a world of possibilities, but the song isn’t quite ready until the power of the vocal increases. The gently stepping rhythm is taken up by Bartlett’s piano, and the jig and grows bolder. These boundaries between the changes in pace are barely perceived, but the change itself seems to course through your veins.



Tune sets often leave no doubt about their intentions, from the outset. The Old Road to Garry is a trio of reels that form a delightful piano/fiddle duet, joined by an eager Hardanger. The Lobster is a more extensive set, where the band display their mastery at building on a theme, and The Boy In The Gap is a gorgeous theme to build on. Hardanger opens Sheehan’s Jigs, taking the melody on a light breeze until Hardanger and fiddle harmonize like siblings.



The Pink House proves that a tune set needn’t call you to the dance floor. A gently presented march that ambles along hypnotically until Bartlett explores new avenues in the set’s Four Note Jig, and gentle harmonies from guitar and Hardanger wind slowly towards a peaceful, resigned conclusion. The mighty Doctor O’Neill opens in darkness, with piano weaving among lighter strings in an exploration that rejects temporal boundaries and epitomises The Gloaming’s approach. Taking as much from jazz as it does from tradition; pace, melody and harmony shift and swirl, rise and fall, until piano finds joy in the sweetest of overtones that guide the strings to the rousing crescendo.



The Gloaming 3 does seem to find its soul in shadow, and there’s more than a touch of pathos in the piano and melancholy in the Hardanger that open My Lady Who Has Found the Tomb Unattended. The 17th-century poetry of Eoghan Ruadh Mac an Bhaird explores the contrasts between the solitude of grief in exile and the communal grief offered by the keening women (mná caointe). Ó Lionáird’s vocal is coloured by sorrow, and perhaps even a sense of wonder, as it seems to take on the role of storyteller and abandon a degree or two of his usual precision in favour of theatre before taking the song on a departing wind. Amhrán na nGleann (The Song of The Glens) closes the album with challenging tones, in a song Ialra has sung since his childhood. There’s clearly still room for exploration, though, in an all but unaccompanied vocal that soars over an ethereal droning and plucking of strings.



The music of The Gloaming connects to the soul like no other, and The Gloaming 3 is an even wider exploration of the possibilities that music presents. The peerless understanding of the tradition that Martin Hayes, Dennis Cahill and Caoimhín Ó Raghallaigh bring, unite with the ancient and contemporary voices that seem to emerge directly from Iarla Ó Lionáird’s soul, all underpinned by the elemental constancy of Thomas Bartlett’s piano, and his ubiquitous presence as producer. The Gloaming 3 is a bold, beguiling, magnificent album.

So, now Padraig, our homework will revolve around Liam Ó Muirthile, Seán Ó Ríordáin, and Eoghan Ruadh Mac an Bhaird I think....

[Padraig]

So, now Padraig, our homework will revolve around Liam Ó Muirthile, Seán Ó Ríordáin, and Eoghan Ruadh Mac an Bhaird I think....

Yes Sir. It will be on your desk...soon ish or so.

Meanwhile, I was intending to post this OMuirthile piece re Athas. It might also be of considerable general interest.

https://www.theculturium.com/liam-o-muirthile-camino-de-santiago-danta-poems-poemas/

[Globaltruth]

A further translation of The Weight of Things, this time by Gabriel Rosenstock

Mo mheáchan i do bhaclainn sa phictiúr dínn beirt i Fitzgerald’s Park, agus mise in aois a trí. Ár meáchan araon. Ár gcómheáchan. Meáchan do hata anuas ar do gháirí. Mo mheáchan is tú dom iompar ar feadh naoi mí. Meáchan suí agus luí agus éirí. Do mheáchan féin nár ardaíos riamh ó thalamh ach chun tú a chur i dtalamh. Do mheáchan beo. Do mheáchan marbh. Meáchan na bhfocal ag éirí is ag titim eadrainn mar a bheadh sciatháin scuaine ealaí. Trom-mheáchan urnaí. Cleitemheáchan daidh-didil-dí. Meáchanlár fáinne fí na gcuimhní.


The weight of me in your arms.
A photo of the two of us in Fitzgerald’s Park.
Three years of age I was.
The weight of the pair of us.
Our weight together.
The weight of your hat shading your laughter.
My weight as you bore me for nine months.
The weight of sitting, getting up, lying down.
Your weight that I never lifted from the ground – before burying you in the ground.
Your living weight.
Your dead weight.
The weight of words rising and falling between us, the wingbeat of swans.
The heavy weight of prayers. The feather weight of lilting. The middle weight of memory, ancient spiral.

There is a book of his poems from 2012, containing this poem both in Gaelic and English, Liam Ó Muirthile, An Fuíoll Feá – Rogha Dánta/Wood Cuttings – New and Selected Poems, Baile Átha Cliath, Cois Life, 2013, 557 pages & CD, ISBN 978-1-907 494-35-2, €20; all translated by Gabriel Rosenstock

https://journals.openedition.org/etudesirlandaises/3851

Out of stock everywhere I've looked, but I'll try a few Irish sites, there is a copy on Abebooks, weighing in at a mighty 155 quid...signed. Think I'll have to pass on this one..

[johncorrigan]

A further translation of The Weight of Things, this time by Gabriel Rosenstock


There is a book of his poems from 2012, containing this poem both in Gaelic and English, Liam Ó Muirthile, An Fuíoll Feá – Rogha Dánta/Wood Cuttings – New and Selected Poems, Baile Átha Cliath, Cois Life, 2013, 557 pages & CD, ISBN 978-1-907 494-35-2, €20; all translated by Gabriel Rosenstock

https://journals.openedition.org/etudesirlandaises/3851

Thank You very much, GT. This wonderful song has just become even more beautiful thanks to your post.

[Globaltruth]

https://serious.org.uk/events/caoimh...2g8vGedybLIV60 The album will be worth a listen .

[Globaltruth]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/w3ct0s19

An interview on BBC World Service with Isobel Allende and Edna O'Brien.
The interview with Edna O'Brien is bookended with a classic Gloaming track.
Telling you that is really just try and hook you in to listen to Edna O'Brien
She not only talks about her trip to Nigeria, but is a much broader discursion.

[Padraig]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/w3ct0s19

An interview on BBC World Service with Isobel Allende and Edna O'Brien.
The interview with Edna O'Brien is bookended with a classic Gloaming track.
Telling you that is really just try and hook you in to listen to Edna O'Brien
She not only talks about her trip to Nigeria, but is a much broader discursion.

Thanks for that G. Will get on to it soon.

Here is another reference for you, if you have not already seen it -

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/apr/12/scholars-hit-back-over-new-yorker-hatchet-job-on-edna-obrien

[Padraig]

Thanks for that G. Will get on to it soon.

It is always worth listening to Edna O'Brien. She has mellowed a little bit in her middle age, but she has added to the growing demand everywhere for big changes.

Here is The Sailor's Bonnet in a short version.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KGSBYzqBc5E

[Globaltruth]

In the lowest of low-keys, Iarla has been working on a new album, "From the Ocean Floor", which was released in late October
This time he is singing the music of Linda Buckley and playing with the Crash Ensemble.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bQ1Upcv_Yzw

Here's a good review:

https://www.rte.ie/culture/2020/0928/1167937-reviewed-linda-buckley-from-oceans-floor/

[it is on Spotify]

[Globaltruth]

In the lowest of low-keys, Iarla has been working on a new album, "From the Ocean Floor", which was released in late October
This time he is singing the music of Linda Buckley and playing with the Crash Ensemble.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bQ1Upcv_Yzw

Here's a good review:

https://www.rte.ie/culture/2020/0928/1167937-reviewed-linda-buckley-from-oceans-floor/

[it is on Spotify]

Had a chance to listen. Bit of a curates egg


Safe to say the atmospheric keening of young Iarla made the egg taste fine

[johncorrigan]

According to Cerys this morning, there's a live stream of Martin Hayes' new project 'Common Ground' from the Concert Hall in Dublin on Tuesday night. Haven't found a link yet, but here's Martin talking about 'Common Ground'.

http://www.martinhayes.com/martin-hayes-the-common-ground-ensemble