Barry Douglas Celtic AIRS

Barry Douglas Celtic AIRS with Eimear McGeown Irish flute • WHISTLE Catriona McKay Scottish harp Chris Stout Shetland fiddle Barry Douglas Eugene Langan Celtic Airs 1 Ballyvaughan Pier / The RuneScape Jig / Secret Circle Reel* 6:03 Melody composed by Eimear McGeown 2 Brendan’s Air* 4:36 Melody composed by Brendan Monaghan 3 The Foggy Dew 3:10 Traditional Irish melody 4 Fear a’ Bhata* 3:24 (The Boatman) Traditional Irish / Scottish melody 5 The Fields of Athenry 4:08 Melody composed by Pete St John 3 6 Planxty Irwin* 2:26 Melody composed by Turlough O’Carolan (1670 – 1738) 7 The Minstrel Boy 5:52 Traditional Irish melody 8 Róisín Dubh* 4:07 (Black-haired Rose) Traditional Irish melody 9 Molly Malone 3:13 Traditional Irish melody 10 Buachaill ón Éirne* 3:45 (A boy from Erne-side) Traditional Irish melody 4 11 On Raglan Road* 3:42 Traditional Irish melody 12 The Star of the County Down 2:06 Traditional melody 13 Master McGrath 2:56 Traditional Irish melody 14 The Lark in the Clear Air 3:41 Traditional Irish melody 15 Mná na hÉireann*† 5:44 (The Women of Ireland) Melody composed by Seán Ó Riada (1931 – 1971) 5 16 Barry’s Reels† 4:31 ‘Tune for Barry’, melody composed by Catriona McKay ‘Sair Fecht’, melody composed by Chris Stout 17 Unst Bridal March† 4:31 Traditional melody from the Shetland Islands 18 Óró ’sé do bheatha abhaile*† 3:08 (You are welcome home) Traditional Irish melody TT 72:26 All piano arrangements by Barry Douglas Barry Douglas piano with Eimear McGeown Irish flute • whistle* Catriona McKay Scottish harp† Chris Stout Shetland fiddle† 6 Darragh Kane Darragh Eimear McGeown, Barry Douglas, Jonathan Cooper, the producer and engineer, Chris Stout, and Catriona McKay during the recording sessions Eimear McGeownEimear Niall Celtic Airs Introduction classes and playing in concerts. She spent a Bíonn cúig insint ar gach scéal agus dhá lot of time going for walks and sitting by the ghabháil déag ar gach amhrán. Pier overlooking the Atlantic Ocean, and the ‘There may be five versions of every story melody came to her while there. but there are twelve interpretations of each During a session improvising music for a song.’ The old Irish proverb reflects not so video game called RuneScape, a tune came to much a devotion to mathematical exactitude her, which she decided to make into a jig. She as an acknowledgement that each artist and named it The RuneScape Jig. musician makes his or her own of material The television series The Secret Circle that has been handed down from generation inspired the melody of the third tune, Secret to generation. Here Barry Douglas makes Circle Reel. Eimear McGeown originally his own of much that has been handed composed it as a slow, haunting melody but down and weaves a magic web with that old decided to turn it into a faster version, a reel weft entwined with a new woof of material in 4 / 4 time, to allow the three pieces to join composed by his musical companions Eimear together: all are in the same key but each McGeown, on Irish flute and whistle, and Chris changes time signature to increase the tempo. Stout, Shetland fiddle, and Catriona McKay, Scottish harp. The result is a beautiful, wistful Brendan’s Air celebration of melodic riches. Listen and be In the way of the tradition, Eimear McGeown entranced. learned this haunting tune by ear from a former teacher, Barry Kerr. He in turn had Ballyvaughan Pier / The RuneScape Jig / learned the air from the man who composed Secret Circle Reel it, Brendan Monaghan. That is how it came to Eimear McGeown composed Ballyvaughan bear the striking title ‘Brendan’s Air’. Pier, the first tune in the medley of three tunes recorded here, while at a week-long Irish music The Foggy Dew festival in County Clare, teaching master- Canon Charles O’Neill from County Down 9 wrote The Foggy Dew, commemorating the be Colonel John Irwin of Tanrego House, County events of the Easter Rising 1916, using an Sligo. Words in Irish to the tune survive, as older tune well known through the traditional does a metrical English translation: song ‘The Moorlough Shore’, about unrequited We will make our way without delay love. To see a Noble, brave and gay, The gallant Colonel near the sea, Fear a’ Bhata Him I mean to treat of; ‘The Sea-divided Gael’ was the characterisation With mirth and joy he fills his glasses, of the shared heritage of Ireland and Scotland, Delights to cheer both lads and lasses, given by the late Alan Bruford of the School This is John I will answer, of Scottish Studies in Edinburgh. That shared The brave Irish Englander. heritage is evidenced in the song ‘Fear a’ Bhata’ (The Boatman), about the deserted The Minstrel Boy young woman who is recorded in Gaelic- Thomas Moore (1779 – 1852) is celebrated speaking Scotland and also on Rathlin Island, as the Bard of Erin. His lyrics to adaptations off the County Antrim coast. of traditional airs (collected and published by Edward Bunting: A General Collection The Fields of Athenry of the Ancient Irish Music, 1796) made an In the 1970s, Pete St John composed the music international celebrity of the Dubliner, and and lyrics for the song The Fields of Athenry, some continue to captivate to this day – none which harks back to the dark days of the Great more so than The Minstrel Boy, an adaptation Irish Famine (1847) in County Galway. Most of an earlier tune, ‘The Moreen’. The song has improbably, its chief fame now is as a sporting been used widely in ceremonials in many anthem for rugby and soccer teams in Ireland countries apart from Ireland, from the funeral and Britain. of Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother in the United Kingdom, in 2002, to the opening of Planxty Irwin the Ground Zero Memorial in New York, in 2011. Carolan (Turlough O’Carolan, 1670 – 1738), the celebrated blind harpist, composed many airs Róisín Dubh and lyrics in honour of his patrons. The man Allegorical references to the sovereignty honoured in the tune Planxty Irwin appears to of Ireland as a beautiful young woman are 10 common in eighteenth-century Irish- of Lough Erne (sometimes a young man of language literature. Sometimes ‘Róisín the O’Neill clan) makes his claim for a young Dubh’ (Black-haired Rose), a very old song, woman, saying that he is well off and is not is believed to belong to that category of looking for any dowry. literature, but its origins are more likely to point to a love-sick young man (in some On Raglan Road versions a cleric) bemoaning his fate at the Patrick Kavanagh (1904 – 1967) most probably hands of his dark-haired Rose. Seán Ó Riada’s had the tune ‘Fáinne Geal an Lae’ (The dawning orchestral arrangement of this tune, as part of the day) in mind when he composed his of the score for the film Mise Éire (1959), is famous On Raglan Road – an ode to his failed the reason, in large measure, for its current courtship of Hilda Moriarty. The Gaelic song popularity. was published in Edward Walsh’s Popular Irish Songs (1847). In it, too, the poet’s encounter Molly Malone with a beautiful young woman ends in failure. The song ‘Molly Malone’ is synonymous with Dublin and is often heard at sporting events. The Star of the County Down Despite many efforts to trace her history The Donegal man Cathal McGarvey in the dim and distant past, the mysterious (1866 – 1927) penned The Star of the County fishmonger who died of a fever is most likely Down, his paean to Rosie McCann from the to have had her birth in the music hall in the banks of the Bann, using a very well-known nineteenth century. melody. The Gaelic song ‘Coinleach Glas an Fhómhair’ (The fresh autumn stubble) is sung Buachaill ón Éirne to it and it is closely associated with the Child The beautiful lake country of counties ballad ‘Dives and Lazarus’ (Francis James Cavan and Fermanagh has inspired many Child: The English and Scottish Popular Ballads, song makers in both the Irish and English No. 56). It was also the inspiration for Ralph languages. The melody of ‘Buachaill ón Vaughan Williams’s Five Variants of ‘Dives and Éirne’ (A boy from Erne-side) is most often Lazarus’. associated with a song sung widely in regions across Ulster, where Irish was once Master McGrath spoken. Here the young man from the shores Master McGrath (1866 – 1873), owned by 11 Charles Brownlow, Lord Lurgan, was a recording of the concert went on to become champion Irish greyhound famed for winning one of the cornerstones in the renaissance the Waterloo Cup for hare coursing on three of Irish traditional music and the song occasions. The dog was born in Waterford became widely disseminated through many but its remains were buried in Lurgan, County recordings of the melody by international Armagh. The song in its honour uses a well- artists. Its poignant power is immediately known tune also played as a jig by the famed obvious here. Donegal fiddle player John Doherty. Barry’s Reels The Lark in the Clear Air Chris Stout and Catriona McKay join Barry For many years the beautiful melody The Lark Douglas with virtuosic brio in two reels in the Clear Air, played by Geraldine and Eily composed in his honour, ‘Tune for Barry’ and O’Grady, was the signature tune of a much- ‘Sair Fecht’.

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