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Supplementary Syllables in Anglo-Irish Folk Singing

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

Frequent use of supplementary syllables distinguishes the singing from the speech of many Irish folk singers. These syllables are formed in the meaningful text by recourse to various procedures which have their basis in the spoken language; but the lengthening of speech in song greatly enlarges their scope. It is true that the extra syllables are weakly stressed ones; nevertheless, their number can be so great that their presence becomes quite obtrusive. They obtruded forcefully on the ear of an Anglo-Irish poet of the nineteenth century, William Allingham, as he listened to a fair-day ballad-seller singing a long Anglo-Irish song; and he took the opportunity to amuse his Victorian public by printing one of its stanzas in mock phonetic spelling:

This pay-air discoo-ooeyoor-cèrced with sich foo-oocy-oorce o’ ray-ayizin,

Ther may-aynin they ay-apee-ayx-esprayss'd so-hoo-o-o clearrrr,

That fau-hor to lae—ssen too-oo ther caw-aw-he-on-vairsay-ay-ashin,

My ehe-ee-in-clinay-aheeay-ashin was for too-oo-hoo-hoo

draw-aw-haw-ee-aw-a-neerrrrr.

after which he gave the orthographical text as follows:

This pair discoursed with such force of raysoning,

Their meaning they expressed so clear,

That for to listen to their conversation,

My inclination was for to draw near

Type
Articles
Information
Yearbook of the International Folk Music Council , Volume 5 , 1973 , pp. 62 - 71
Copyright
Copyright © 1974 By the International Folk Music Council 

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References

Footnotes

1. ‘Irish ballad singers and Irish street ballads,’ first published in Household Words, Jan. 10, 1852 (No. 94), reprinted with an index by H. Shields in Ceol: a journal of Irish music III i (1967), see p. 4.Google Scholar

2. Russian protyazhnie pesni (long-drawn out songs) intercalate non-metrical exclamations to stretch out the melody: see Beliaev, Viktor M. in Yearbook of the International Folk Music Council I (1969), 165–175. In French folk song liquids (r, l) after a vowel may be followed by an which has no equivalent in speech. Romanian octosyllabic songs add a syllable after the final stress of the line if the text contains none, see Bartok, B., Rumanian Folk Music II, The Hague 1967, 4. Ghanaian songs achieve rhythmic effects by the insertion of extra-textual long vowels, see Nketia, J. H. K., Folk songs of Ghana, (Legon, 1963), pp. 25, 26, 91.Google Scholar

3. Some comments are made in De Noraidh, L., Ceol ónMumhain, Dublin 1965, pp. 13–14, and Seóirse Bodley, ‘Technique and structure in sean-nós singing’ in Yearbook of the Folk Music Society of Ireland I (1972) pp. zzz. See also Bodley's notation in S. Ó Duibhginn, Dónall Óg Taighde ar an amhrá. Dublin 1960, pp. 124–9.Google Scholar

4. Journal of the Folk Song Society III (No. 12, 1908), 147–242. A selection of Grainger's recordings has been published on the disc Unto Brigg fair, Leader 4050, London, 1972, with an introduction by Bob Thomson.Google Scholar

5. Sharp, C. J., English Folk Song: Some Conclusions (London, 1907), p. 109; Abrahams, R. D. and Foss, G., Anglo-American Folksong Style, (Englewood Cliffs, 1968), p. 149; Breandán Breathnach, Folk Music and Dances of Ireland, (Dublin, 1971), p. 105.Google Scholar

6. See Adams, G. B., ‘The last language census in N. Ireland’ in Ulster dialects. An introductory symposium (ed. Adams), Holywood, co. Down, 1964, pp. 112–3, 131. Illustrations used below were recorded at various times: copies of most of the recordings are deposited at the Ulster Folk Museum, Holywood, co. Down, numbered 68/8–17 and 69/1–26. Informants are indicated by their initials, in brackets after the examples: Tom Anderson and his wife (Mrs. A.) and married daughter (AA, now living in Scotland), Eddie Butcher, his brothers Robert (RB), John (JB) and James (JB3), his nephews John (JB2) and Robert (RB2), his niece Mary Ellen Butcher, Bill Quigley, Charles Somers, Hugh Somers, John Fleming.Google Scholar

7. Jespersen, O., Lehrbuch der Phonetik, (Leipzig and Berlin, 1913), p. 191; Jones, D., Outline of English Phonetics, (Cambridge, 1956) (first publ. 1918), pp. 55–7; cf. P. Passy, Sounds of the French Language, (Oxford, 1948) (first publ. in French 1907), p. 39.Google Scholar

8. Stetson, R. H., Motor Phonetics, (The Hague, 1928), quoted with approval by Trubetzkoy, N. S., Principles of Phonology, (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1969) (German ed. 1939), p. 209; de Saussure, F., Cours de linguistique générale, (Paris, 1916), reed. 1965, pp. 77–95; M. Grammont, Traité de phonétique, (Paris, 1933), pp. 97–104; A. Sommerfelt, ‘Sur l'importance générale de la syllabe’ in his Diachronic and synchronic aspects of language, (The Hague, 1962), pp. 149–154.Google Scholar

9. More recent theory tends to draw on both; see Malmberg, B., Phonetics, (New York, 1963), pp. 64–9 and ‘The phonetic basis for syllable division’ in Readings in Acoustic Phonetics, (Cambridge, Mass., and London, 1967), pp. 293–300 (first publ. 1955); Trubetzkoy, op. cit., pp. 170ff.; B. Hála, La sílaba, su naturaleza, su origen y sus transformaciones, (Madrid, 1966) (ed. in Czech, 1956); A. Rosetti, Sur la théorie de la syllabe, (The Hague, 1963) (2nd. ed.).Google Scholar

10. Abercrombie, D., Elements of general phonetics, (Edinburgh, 1967), p. 34.Google Scholar

11. For the informants see n. 6. Phonetic notations adopt the conventions of the International Phonetic Association, in particular the phonological symbols of Gregg, R. J., ‘Scotch-Irish urban speech in Ulster,’ in Ulster dialects, pp. 165, 175. Syllable boundaries within words are indicated by a stop. The subscript sign denotes syllabic function in phonemes usually consonantal. Subscript , , denote voicing and devoicing respectively. ‘C’ and ‘V denote the syllabic elements consonant and vowel. Repetition of a ‘crest phoneme’ symbol within a syllable indicates that the syllable extends over two notes of music.Google Scholar

12. But not before a vowel initial of a sound group. If it did, we should expect it to be followed by a glottal stop (see below) and thus not prevocalic. Even the sequence V, , V is made possible by intercalated consonants: sea on //; see below, So 1 took the shilling. Google Scholar

13. Henry, P. L., An Aglo-Irish Dialect of N. Roscommon, (Dublin, 1957), pp. 69–70, discusses the influence of these Irish syllables on Anglo-Irish.Google Scholar

14. This is what Grainger meant by the spellings pri-den-cis for princes, Sta-dend for Stand etc.; see op. cit. pp. 200–2.Google Scholar

15. , deluding, arises differently: spoken > sung .+sung+.>Google Scholar

16. Op. cit., II 4–5, 32.Google Scholar

17. Loc. cit. Google Scholar