Trollheart

With the return of my History of Ireland journal imminent, I thought I'd check out an old Irish traditional ballad next.


Title: “The Mountains of Mourne”
Format: Album track/classic ballad
Written by: Percy French
Performed by: Finbar Furey
Genre: Traditional/Folk
Taken from: Chasing Moonlight: Love Songs of Ireland
Year (Performer): 2003
Year (Composer): 1895
Acclaim: One of the best-known of Irish ballads

People say we Irish are “a nation of begrudgers”. I don’t disagree. If we’re not complaining about the weather or the government, we’re eyeing the foreign nationals and migrants warily, while still regularly attending Sunday mass. We are, really, a nation of hypocrites. And nowhere is this clearer than in the plight of the immigrant, especially in the eighteenth and nineteenth century. Granted, life in Ireland back then was tough: we lived under the English yoke, as second or even third-class citizens, almost as slaves in many cases, and with nobody to speak for us. To some, the idea of getting the hell out of Ireland was the most logical thing, and if they had the money and the resources that was exactly what they did.

Now that’s all very well and good, as far as it goes. But the problem is that we constantly think that the grass is greener, even when we’ve seen the particular grass in question and discovered we’re wrong. In other words, an Irishman or woman (but usually man, at this time) living in poverty or under the oppressive heel of England would yearn for freedom, for a new life, for a chance to make something of himself, for the opportunity to gain respect and standing, none of which he could hope to achieve at home. So they’d set sail, for America or Canada or England (yeah, go figure: to the very country ruled by the king or queen who oppressed them, virtually into the lion’s den as it were!) and seek their fortune.

But once there, they discovered that the streets were not paved with gold, that while Lady Liberty may indeed have held her torch high and welcomed them, once they were past Ellis Island she literally turned her back on them, and with a sort of shrug metaphorically declared “Oh yeah, send me your huddled masses yearning to breathe free. No problem. Just don’t expect me to do anything for them!” Now they were on their own, and despite the stories read in the letters sent home, and the novels and the travellers’ tales, life was no easier in New York than it was in Dublin, and the landlords of Whitechapel were just as scheming and ruthless as those in Mayo. Jobs weren’t just waiting there to be taken, and the cheery, smiling faces written of were in fact scowling, suspicious ones that turned away, or advised you in colourful terms to return whence you came.

And as cold, hard reality came crashing down on them like the coldest snows of an Offaly winter, the poor Irish immigrants began thinking of home, and wondered if it had been that bad after all? Had they exchanged one bad situation for another? Had they made things worse? At least at home, they were known: they had friends, family, perhaps even jobs, if badly-paid ones. They had somewhere to live. Here, in Boston or Toronto or Manchester, they were, literally, strangers in a strange land, outcasts and exiles, even if it had been voluntary exile. Things may not have been so rosy in the garden of Erin, but they had stepped into another just as tangled and overgrown and filled with rotting vegetation, and additionally far from home.

In short, they realised they had made a mistake. They had gambled and lost, believed the hype and found it was not true. They had expected a new start, an easier life, fame and fortune, but probably ended up scratching out a meagre living in a land where everyone hated them, or found their way to the cold embrace of the workhouse.

Which is why so many Irish traditional songs sing of emigrants who wish they had never emigrated, and want to come home. Suddenly, the green green fields of Ireland seem a much more inviting and welcome place than the cold hard streets of Spitalifields, and the remembered faces of friends, the cheery Irish brogue and the pint down the pub all seem like memories of a life left behind, slowly fading. While some immigrants did of course make it and become very rich and famous, they were in the minority and during the Famine, almost all of those who crossed the ocean had an even harder time of it at their destination (assuming they survived the trip aboard the “coffin ships”) seen as worse than refugees, almost as lepers cast out of their own country.

Written in 1856, “The Mountains of Mourne” speaks from the point of view of one such emigrant, who in a letter tells his wife about all the wonderful things he sees - “People all working by day and by night” - no doubt a strange sight to an Irishman where, at least for those in rural areas, the day began early but ended before nightfall. He talks about fashions, about the people he meets and above all his desire to return home. It’s hard to say whether you can take it literally when he says “There’s gangs of them digging for gold in the streets/At least when I asked them that’s what I was told/So I just took a hand at this digging for this gold” but of course he is disappointed and finds none. You’d have to assume that’s a metaphor; hard to imagine anyone being stupid enough to literally dig for gold in the streets, much less being allowed to. Probably likely they were workmen of some sort pulling his chain. But it does illustrate the fanciful stories people were willing to place credence in, and that often spurred their exodus to this or that promised land, only to find the promises broken, the gold tarnished, and their dreams as broken as their pockets by the time the truth hit.

Interesting too, to note the changed attitude towards the oppressor, when the narrator of the song sings of the King and says, rather shame-facedly to his wife, “God forgive me I cheered with the rest” when he saw him “from the top of a bus”. I had first-hand experience of the unreliability of memory, as I had always been convinced when he met the Irish policeman in the streets the line he sang was “He stopped all the traffic with a wave of his hand”, but it’s street, not traffic. A small thing, yes, but that line had always stuck with me from the song, and it’s odd to find I was wrong about that small detail.

Why have I chosen Finbar Furey’s version? I just wanted a well-known balladeer like Paddy Reilly or Johnny McEvoy, but he’s the closest. He’s well known in Irish trad circles, so I thought, yeah he’ll do. I mean, Don MacClean covered it, but I wanted an Irish singer. It’s probably pretty much the same no matter who sings it; that’s the nice thing about trad ballads. They really don’t change that much over the years, or even centuries.

And, unbothered by the passage of time, the Mountains of Mourne still sweep down to the sea...

Things I like about this:

The lyric
The tune
The images conjured up
Its timelessness

Things I do not like about this:
Nothing really

Rating:

__________________
Trollheart: Signature-free since April 2018

The Batlord

I thought you said the Irish weren't racist nationalists?

__________________