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Singing Traditions of a Bilingual Parish in North-West Ireland

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 February 2019

Hugh Shields
Hugh Shields*
Affiliation:
Trinity College, University of Dublin, Dublin, Ireland
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Extract

In the summer of 1968 I recorded 91 songs and song fragments from the local oral tradition of a district in Donegal, the North-West county of Ireland. The district happens to be roughly co-terminous with the ecclesiastical and old civil parish of Glencolumbkille, which contains the larger part of the South-West Donegal gaeltacht (native Irish-speaking area). Since the number of monoglot Irish speakers here is now negligible, the parish is bilingual wherever Irish is spoken. The 91 items I recorded were in the proportion 34 Irish, 58 English: one song being sung in the two languages.

Type
Articles
Information
Yearbook of the International Folk Music Council , Volume 3 , 1971 , pp. 109 - 119
Copyright
Copyright © 1972 By the International Folk Music Council 

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References

Footnotes

1. Copies of the recordings are in the Ulster Folk Museum, Cultra, co. Down, numbered 68/20–35; I refer to them as UFM 20–35, and to the singers by numbers shown on the map.Google Scholar

2. See map; the parish corresponds to the modern District Electoral Divisions of Glencolumbkille, Kilgoly and Malinbeg.Google Scholar

3. ‘Tá sé ina luighe anois, ‘s níl oiread béarla i Mín na Croise is chuirfeas ina shuidhe é'; see Irish sword VII (1965–6), 196 ff. and 338; Illustrated handbook of S.–W. Donegal (Dublin 1872), p. 110.Google Scholar

4. See Ulster dialects, ed. G. B. Adams, (Ulster Folk Museum 1964), p. 34.Google Scholar

5. See H. Wagner Gaeilge Theilinn (Dublin 1959), par. 299; M. Traynor The English dialect of Donegal (Dublin 1953), p. 5 'alumnach'. Google Scholar

6. Census of Ireland, 1911, Co. Donegal, p. 25–7, 157.Google Scholar

7. Op. cit. and Comisiún na gaeltachta, 1926, Report. Google Scholar

8. UFM 30 ‘The Carrick courtship', singer no. 20.Google Scholar

9. For the story, Béaloideas XXXI (1963) 65; full text of the song, É. Ó Muirgheasa Dhá chéad de cheoltaibh Uladh (Dublin 1934), p. 47.Google Scholar

10. The business of the recently formed and forward-looking co-operative of Glencolumbkille is inevitably conducted largely through English.Google Scholar

11. UFM 21 ‘Tá an t-earrach go dian', singer 22; full text, É. Ó Muirgheasa Céad de cheoltaibh Uladh (Dublin 1915), p. 1.Google Scholar

12. For example ‘Dá bhfeicfeá an dubh-dhílis', UFM 21, singer 23.Google Scholar

13. For example ‘Pill a rún ó', UFM 23, singer 17; for the story, Ó Muirgheasa Céad de Cheoltaibh p. 186–90.Google Scholar

14. ‘Cuir na ba'; UFM 32, singer 9 (reaping song?); ‘Seo ba', UFM 34, singer 8 (frag. lullaby); ‘Tuirne Mháire', UFM 35, singer 19 (song based on a spinning song).Google Scholar

15. ‘The eviction of Father McGroarty', UFM 33, singer 11.Google Scholar

16. For an ornamented Connemara version: Topic disc Joe Heaney, 12 T 91 (London 1963) ‘An tighearna Randal'. Google Scholar

17. UFM 22 (in Irish), UFM 24 (in English), singer 2.Google Scholar

18. See map.Google Scholar

19. See air and opening text-line of a Scots version of this ballad in B. H. Bronson Traditional tunes of the Child ballads HI (Princeton 1966), 100 (no. 56); also melodies of Johnie Cock nos. 10–15, ib. p. 8 ff (all Scots) and of Edward (Child no. 13) in Journal of the English Folk Dance and Song Society VII (1955), 128 (Irish).Google Scholar

20. Singer 27, recorded in 1949. I am grateful to the Director of the Folklore Commission for permission to use the recording.Google Scholar

21. Besides the three songs mentioned, I recorded four others with this melody in Glencolumbkille: ‘Éirigh is cuir ort do chuid éadaí', UFM 23, singer 17; ‘Connlach glas an fhómhair', UFM 33, singer 26; ‘Going to Mass last Sunday', UFM 21, singer 23; the ‘Shamrock shore', UFM 25, singer 4.Google Scholar

22. Respectively UFM 26, singer 21; UFM 26, singer 22. Corrections in the text are from the latter; the former sang ‘S go gcoinneodh siad and ghaoth (?) tuaidh. Google Scholar

23. UFM 20, singer 4, who sang in line 7 char-ms where'er enarmed (?)Google Scholar