Three Outstanding Lesser-Known Irish Songs To Ring in St. Paddy’s Day
Songs: “Óró Sé do Bheatha Bhaile” by Seo Linn, “Electric Landlady” by Kila, and “Tommy Coen’s Reel/The Shallow” by Martin Hayes
As someone of Irish heritage who went to college in Ireland; studied Irish music and history; and waitressed and bartended in every lousy Irish pub back home in the D.C. area, I can pretty much guess what’s on your St. Paddy’s Day playlist. The theme songs from The Boondock Saints and Riverdance, “Kiss Me I’m Shitfaced” by the Dropkick Murphys, “Home for a Rest” by Spirit of the West, and “Tell Me Ma” by Sham Rock. Maybe if you’re more knowledgeable, you’ll have a Pogues or Flogging Molly track on there (R.I.P. Shane MacGowan, you legend!). And if you were a regular at a “traditional” establishment serving smelly boiled cabbage and blood pudding, you’re probably familiar with older 1960s acts like the Dubliners and the Wolfe Tones because your penny-pinching manager from County Kerry couldn’t be arsed buying more than three CDs.
However, today we’ll look at three other Irish tunes that, while not as famous as “Whiskey in the Jar,” absolutely deserve a listen as you’re getting ready to guzzle green beer down at Shenanigan’s for the afternoon.
“Óró Sé do Bheatha Bhaile” by Seo Linn
This is an Irish classic for a reason: it pairs a gorgeous, resounding melody with plain (yet eerily cryptic) Gaelic lyrics. However, tracking down this song’s age or origin is like grasping at wisps of fog; it serves as a painful reminder of Ireland’s brutalization and oppression at the hands of the British, who tried to harshly stamp out every remnant of the island’s native language and culture for over 800 years. The one thing we definitively know about “Óró Sé do Bheatha Bhaile” is that it’s old. Various fragments of the tune are found in an 1855 songbook under “Ancient Clan March,” and oral history places it back at least a few decades earlier, but the oldest versions reference “Prince Charley” or “Bonnie Prince Charlie”- a nod to the 1745–1746 Jacobite Uprising.
Here’s where it gets a little confusing. Many of the lyrics were lost over time, but the song was resurrected and given new verses in the early twentieth century by nationalist poet Padraig Pearse. Only instead of updating it with modern references, or attempting to preserve the scraps that remained, Pearse set the scene even further back by changing the subject of this rousing march from a mid-1740s Scottish royal heir to the late-1500s Western Irish pirate queen Grainne Mhaol Ni Mhaille (Anglicized to “Grace O’Malley.”) If you’ve never heard of her, look her up- Grainne Mhaol was a notorious badass who led her powerful clan on land and at sea, in politics and at war, from roughly the 1540s until her death in 1603. Seriously, though. This bitch made Ronda Rousey look like June Cleaver.
Pretty much every traditional Irish group has covered this, including the Dubliners and Sinead O’Connor (the latter with a reggae influence), but Seo Linn’s is remarkable for its historical authenticity. Casual listeners can tell there’s something different about the vocals; to a modern ear, they sound flat and nasal and kind of stretched, like the singer’s almost out of his range. These are hallmarks of an ancient singing technique called sean-nos, thought to date back at least seven centuries and oddly sharing many similarities with Arabic and Mediterranean styles. It’s not universally found in Ireland, being mostly confined to pockets in the south and west where historians have speculated that trade and contact with Iberians and North Africans may have taken place. Interestingly, the original Jacobite version may not have been performed like this- as a majority of its Irish supporters were from Ulster up north- but Seo Linn sings it like people in Grainne Mhaol’s day and place would have sung it. Which is extremely technically difficult to pull off, and yet they knocked it out of the park.
“Electric Landlady” by Kila
Kila is arguably Ireland’s foremost traditional group today, and picking which of their songs to showcase is like choosing a favorite Ben and Jerry’s flavor: they’re just all fucking awesome, okay? Helmed by singer-and-multi-instrumentalist brothers Rossa Ó Snodaigh, Rónán Ó Snodaigh, and Colm Ó Snodaigh, Kila has released over ten albums combining their trademark blend of Gaelic lyrics and Irish instruments (tin whistle, bodhran, fiddle) with a distinctly rock underpinning (check out the bass thumping away under those layers of Celtic melodies! And of course you can’t miss the nod to Jimi Hendrix’s “Electric Ladyland.”) They’re probably one of the few folk acts to keep an electric guitar on hand in addition to Uileann pipes and hammered dulcimer, which just goes to show you how innovative and versatile they are. Traditional music can often get mired and calcified in, well, tradition, but every Kila composition is a revelation- instruments sync up for a duet, then one fades back into a harmony, then a brilliant percussion fill bridges the gap between one melody and another.
Since their inception in the 1980s, Kila has played almost forty major festivals internationally, but they’ve never experienced the mainstream success of fellow acts like the Cranberries, Sinead O’Connor, or Afro Celt Sound System. That’s because “innovative” and “versatile” often doesn’t translate into commercial sales, and I’m sure record label executives were positively stumped when it came to marketing Kila: “Well, imagine if, like, you could play prog rock but with all these really old Irish tunes and instruments and language, and make it sound really good.” No amount of bong hits could provide the creativity needed to define them. Luckily, Kila managed to earn their long-overdue recognition in the film industry, penning brilliant soundtracks for the Oscar-nominated animated features The Book of Kells and Song of the Sea.
“Tommy Coen’s Reel/The Shallow” by Martin Hayes
There’s no instrument more frequently associated with Gaelic traditional folk than the fiddle, and it’s been a staple of Irish music for a very, very long time. A very early predecessor was first described at a seventh-century fair and is thought to be similar to the Welsh crwth, a similar instrument documented as far back as 609 A.D. in the British Isles; however, the first conclusive archeological evidence showing the addition of a bow comes from 11th-century Dublin. It was certainly well-established by 1674, when an English observer noted that “in every field a fiddle, and the lasses footing it till they were all of a foam.” However, these more primitive prototypes bore little resemblance to the fiddles of today, which were gradually upgraded and standardized beginning in the early 1700s. There’s been some debate about whether traditional Irish jigs and reels shaped the creation of the fiddle or if it was the other way around, but ultimately it’s an instrument ideally suited to perform the unique flourishes and ornamentation representative of the genre.
And few play it better than maestro Martin Hayes, a prodigy from County Clare who won the first of his six All-Ireland Fiddle titles at age 13. He’s been described by famed contemporary Liz Carroll as belonging to “that very narrow set of performers from any musical genre- not just Irish- whose every note is perfect.” Hayes’ extensive catalog provides a taste of pure, unadulterated Celtic trad fiddle with its characteristic beautiful slurring and pristine execution of rolls, trebles, and cuts. “Tommy Coen’s Reel/The Shallow” is from his debut album, but he’s released other stellar works with guitarist Dennis Cahill and as part of a supergroup called The Gloaming. As music teachers enjoy repeating, “practice makes perfect,” and this song feels like the culmination of 1400 years of rehearsal.
For some bizarre reason- and I suspect that the English have something to do with this- Irish music doesn’t always get the respect it deserves, written off as a series of bawdy drinking songs about brawling at wakes or pining for lasses across the sea. “I can play ‘The Rocky Road to Dublin’” doesn’t carry the same gravity as “I can play Beethoven’s ‘Fur Elise’” (although as a pianist, I can vouch that the former’s devilishly tricky 9/8 time signature and the latter’s simple octave harmonic chords place them on equal footing.) In addition to being significantly more complex than enthusiasts of Chopin and Liszt are willing to admit, the different components of Celtic trad are even harder to sync together in a group. In college, I waitressed at an “authentic” pub whose bar band (called Brendan’s Voyage, after the early-medieval Irish saint who supposedly rowed his curragh across the Atlantic to the New World) was so cacophonously cringe-inducing that we nicknamed them “Check Please.”
So throw on those green plastic shamrock bead necklaces, get ready for a day of drinking lite beer flavored with food coloring, and most importantly- don’t forget to check out these fantastic Irish songs! Slainte.
