Here’s an excerpt:
The concert hall at the Sydney Opera House holds 2,700 people. This blog was viewed about 14,000 times in 2013. If it were a concert at Sydney Opera House, it would take about 5 sold-out performances for that many people to see it.
A church in Ballymoney Parish.
This might be my favorite track from Maranna McCloskey‘s album At Last. It’s another lively but cautionary tale, and the arrangement is dead on. I’ve also seen these same lyrics, with an additional verse at the beginning, as Meeting/Courting is a Pleasure or Lovely Molly.
Going to Mass Last Sunday, my love she passed me by
I knew her mind was altered by the roving of her eye
I knew her mind was altered to a lad of higher degree
For it’s Molly, lovely Molly, your looks have wounded me.
Oh! Woe unto you Molly, you have proved to me unkind
For you plucked the bonny briar and left the sweet red rose behind
But the briar it will wither, and the day it will come soon
When the lovely blushing red rose will flourish and will bloom.
An Ulster song, most likely, which invokes the “lennan-shee” (Irish/Gaeilge: leanán-sí or fairy lover) tradition. The Fairy Lover songs/tales all told of fairies who steal love and leave. The video is from a live performance by Irish singer/songwriter Lisa Hannigan who recorded the songs with The Chieftains.
My Lagan Love
(lyrics by Joseph Campbell, aka Seosamh MacCathmhaoil)
1) Where Lagan stream sings lullaby
There blows a lily fair
The twilight gleam is in her eye
The night is on her hair
And like a love-sick lennan-shee
She has my heart in thrall
Nor life I owe nor liberty
For love is lord of all.
2) Her father sails a running-barge
‘Twixt Leamh-beag and The Druim;
And on the lonely river-marge
She clears his hearth for him.
When she was only fairy-high
Her gentle mother died;
But dew-Love keeps her memory
Green on the Lagan side.
Song of the Isles 