Category: Song of the Month

Introduced by Robbie O’Connell

Our choice for March is a classic traditional Irish love song, “The Bonnie Blue-Eyed Lassie,” presented here by Robbie O’Connell.

Irish traditional singer Elizabeth Cronin, also known as Bess, was born in 1879 and died in 1956. She lived in Ballyvourney, County Cork and was recorded by several song collectors in the late 1940s and early 1950s, including Seamus Ennis, Alan Lomax, Jean Ritchie and Diane Hamilton. She sang in both English and Irish and had almost two hundred songs.

In 2000, her grandson Dáibhí O’Cróinín published a collection of her songs that included two CDs of her singing. Several of her songs were recorded by folk revival singers such as Mick Moloney, Steeleye Span and Christie Moore. The field recordings can also be found in the Cecil Sharp House in London.

One of her better-known songs is often called “The Top of a Mountain” or “Bonnie Blue-eyed Nancy.”

Here is a version of this song performed by Robbie O’Connell and students at the Institute of Musical Traditions.

Lyrics

How can I live on the top of a mountain,
Without gold in my pocket or money for to count it?
I’ll leave the money go, all for to please her fancy;
For I’ll marry none but the bonny blue-eyed lassie.

The bonny blue-eyed lassie, with her fair hair so tender,
Her red rosy cheeks and her waist so neat and slender.
I’d roll her in my arms and fondly I’d embrace her,
But how can I love her, ah!, when my people hate her.

Some people say she is very low in station,
While more of them say she is the cause of my ruination.
But let them all say what they will, to her I will prove constant still.
Until the day that I’ll die she’s my charming girl, believe me.

Brightly swims the swan in the broad streams of Youghal,
And loudly sings the nightingale, all for to behold her.
In the cold frost and snow the moon shines deeply,
But deeper by far between me and my true love.

Robbie O’Connell, born and raised in Waterford, Ireland, is a singer, songwriter, and teacher now living in Rhode Island. In addition to performing and recording Robbie leads tours of Ireland that include traditional music sessions every night.

Introduced by Lorraine Lee Hammond

February’s song is a traditional children’s song that is fun to sing and easily turned into a game or simple theatre production. Good entertainment for a wintry afternoon. Perhaps you know a version already. I learned this one from Oscar Degreenia when I was a child in West Cornwall, Connecticut. I give his verses here, but I have changed them many times through the years. I encourage you to do the same. This song is a great vehicle for banter and improvisation – friend to friend, parent to child, sibling to sibling. A simple song of bribery!

Oscar DeGreenia (the song’s composer) and his sister Almeda Bray singing “Paper of Pins:”

Oscar was born in Sheffield, Vermont in 1878. He worked as a farmhand in the region until he moved to Cornwall, Connecticut in 1932 with his wife Etta and Etta’s father and brother. They came to work as tenant farmers on the long established Gold farm on Cream Hill. Later Oscar and Etta moved to West Cornwall, and Oscar worked as a farmhand with my father on our little farm on Sharon Mountain. Oscar had learned his songs from his mother Zoya LaClair when he was growing up in the Northeast Kingdom of Vermont. We have included a field recording made by Helen Hartness Flanders in West Cornwall in 1949. Oscar is singing with his sister Almeda Bray of Derby, Vermont. A Google search will bring you many other versions of the song.

Lyrics

I’ll give to you a paper of pins, and that’s the way my love begins,
If you will marry me, me, miss, if you will marry me.

I’ll not accept your paper of pins if that’s the way your love begins,
For I’ll not marry you, you, you, I’ll not marry you.

I’ll give to you a paper and needles to mend your clothes whenever you need ‘em,
If you will marry me, me, miss, if you will marry me.

I’ll not accept your paper and needles to mend my clothes whenever I need ‘em,
For I’ll not marry you, you, you, I’ll not marry you.

I’ll give to you a little lap dog to go with you when go abroad,
If you will marry me, me, miss, if you will marry me.

I’ll not accept your little lap dog to go with me when I go abroad,
For I’ll not marry you, you, you, I’ll not marry you.

I’ll give to you a dress of red trimmed all round with golden thread,
If you will marry me, me, miss, if you will marry me.

I’ll not accept your dress of red trimmed all round with golden thread,
For I’ll not marry you, you, you, I’ll not marry you.

I’ll give to you a coach and six, coats as black as any pitch,
If you will marry me, me, miss, if you will marry me.

I’ll not accept your coach and six, coats as black as any pitch,
For I’ll not marry you, you, you, I’ll not marry you.

I’ll give to you the keys to my chest that you may have gold when you request,
If you will marry me, me, miss, if you will marry me.

I will accept the keys to your chest, that I may have gold at my request,
And I will marry you, you, you, and I will marry you.

You won’t accept the key to my chest, you won’t have gold at your request.
For I won’t marry you, you, you, for I won’t marry you.

“Paper of Pins” is likely derived from the English folk song “The Bells of Canterbury.” Cecil Sharp names it “The Keys of Heaven” in his Folksongs of Somerset collection, third volume, published in 1906. In this version, the one being courted refuses even the treasure chest, succumbing instead to an embroidered silken gown:

O Sir, I will accept of you
A broidered silken gownd,
With nine yards a-drooping
And training on the ground :
Then I will be your joy, your sweet and only dear,
And walk along with you, anywhere.

Sharp commented, “From what the old singers have told me, I gather that the ballad was generally sung by a man and woman, with much dramatic action.” He collected his version from Mrs. Susan Williams, of Haselbury-Plucknett, and Mrs. Harriet Young, of West Chinnock, in Somerset.

Lorraine Lee Hammond is a member of the CDSS Board and a lifetime folk singer, performer and teacher. She and her husband Bennett Hammond live in Brookline, Massachusetts.

By Brendan Taaffe
Introduced by Lorraine Hammond

We kick off our Year of Song with “May It Fill Your Soul,” a new composition from singer and instrumentalist Brendan Taaffe of Vermont.

Composer notes for “May It Fill Your Soul:”

This song was won in the silent raffle at Harmony of Song and Dance 2014. In writing it, I wanted to create a song that reflected some aspects of the different traditions that bring the CDSS community together. Each part of the song on its own is relatively simple but together they create (hopefully) an intricate and interesting tapestry.

Please treat the score as a map to the territory rather than a strict guide. I can easily imagine other lines and improvisations that would fit on top of these four parts and, most obviously, the sopranos could change the words of their line as the song goes on.

Some suggestions: “And our love goes on and on… our hope/ this song/ etc.”

As a final note, I suspect the song will tune better in Bb minor, but seemed like an unkind key for most music readers.

— B.T.