Joe Heaney (Seosamh Ó hÉanaí)

The Road from Connemara: songs and stories told and sung to Ewan MacColl & Peggy Seeger

Topic TSCD518D and Cló Iar-Chonnachta CICD 143

(Position your cursor over the red asterisks to see the footnotes)

I was not the only one who stepped gingerly around Joe.  Those of you who saw Michael Davitt's excellent television documentary Joe Heaney: Sing the Dark Away (made for RTÉ One in 1996) were made aware of the complexity and abrasivenes of Joe's persona.  He seemed utterly incapable of familial loyalty.  His family he abandoned utterly and left them to fend for themselves in Scotland.  When informed that his wife had died and his son who had had a kidney transplant had developed diabetes and was going blind, he never even made contact with his now parentless family.  Indeed, the dignity and lack of rancour of his son, Jackie Heaney of Clydebank, was one of the most uplifting sequences of the programme.

Although he is remembered by many for his biting tongue, Joe could also be charming, particularly in the presence of the rich and famous.  This I witnessed often enough when he was lionised by visiting and local celebrities.  But he was always aware of the transience of such superficial acclaim and frequently poured acid on the heads of these luminaries before he was finished the pint they had just bought him and their barstool was still warm after their departure.  The American playwright Patrick Carroll knew Joe well in Dublin.  I asked him if his radio play The Scattering was based on Joe's life.  (The main character is an Irish traditional singer who cannot maintain relationships and even though he achieves considerable fame he continues on a course of inevitable self destruction.)  Pat replied, "No, the character is not Joe Heaney."  Then he added, "But if I hadn't known Joe I never could have written the part!"

It is an unfortunate fact that many great artists were and are unlovely people.  And Joe Heaney was a great artist.  It was his very justified belief in his outstanding ability as interpreter and as a conduit of a magnificent tradition which gave him an air of superiority which he handled badly with unfortunate social results.  If he was truculent and resentful, he had much to be resentful for, and he seems to have been his own worst enemy.  But far more important is the certainty that his legacy to the tradition for which he cared so deeply is munificent and will override whatever foibles the fact of being human inflicted upon him.

Joe was born in Áird Thoir, Carna, in the Connemara Gaeltacht in 1919.  This was the same parish of which the great folklorist Seán Ó Súilleabháin was to declare to an international gathering of his colleagues in 1950: "There are more folktales to be gathered in the parish of Carna than there are in the rest of Western Europe!"  It was not an idle boast.  Naturally an area conservative in the retention of its folktales and language would have a strong song tradition.  His parents and relations had many songs and he was even encouraged to sing them in the local National School.  His childhood does not seem to have been particularly happy.  He said of himself: "I was what they call the black sheep of the family...  Because I never did anything right, that's why.  Nothing to please anybody."  On leaving school he won a scholarship to go to teacher college.  He spent two years there before being expelled.  This failure seems to have haunted him for the rest of his life.  The often repeated story that Joe was asked to leave for merely being caught smoking is debunked by the man himself in the MacColl interview with a typical lack of self-pity.

JH - I got a scholarship.
EM - You must be bright.
JH - Well, I wasn't too bad that time.
EM - Better than me.  I never got a scholarship anywhere.
JH - I did.  It was my own fault I left it too.
EM - What did you leave it for?
JH - Just being too lazy, shall we say.

The folk music revival proved both a blessing and a curse to Joe.  He began to be féted by the 'stars' of this revival.  Some, like MacColl and Seeger, Lloyd and Hamish Henderson were earnestly trying to gain a knowledge and appreciation of his art.  And at a more popular level, groups like the Clancy Brothers and the Dubliners were genuinely attracted to him and respected him for what he stood for.  However, well-meant attempts by such groups to introduce him to popular audiences often came to grief.  It has to be remembered that such audiences were there only because the current fad was 'the ballads'.  Their comprehension of sean-nós, or any other form of traditional singing, was zilch.  When faced with anything which was outside their sphere of comprehension, they did as mobs anywhere will do, they attacked.  I have written elsewhere of the humiliation suffered by Joe at the hands of these yahoos.  In the CD booklet Peggy Seeger recalls the disgraceful behaviour of these cretins at one concert.

"Joe, being the less well known, was to open.  He was booed off by this despicable crowd after the first two lines of his first song.  It is to our eternal disgrace that we other artists went on after he was forced off, almost in tears."

"(I hired) the Stephen's Green Cinema which held eleven hundred people.  And I had Ewan MacColl and Peggy Seeger over from England then, at great cost to myself.  And they were the main thing.  And Liam Clancy was staying in the house too.  So Liam and Joe got sort of singing together, each one taking turns singing the one song (alternatively?).  And they went down so well that MacColl and Seeger nearly walked out.  They were furious!"

There was only so much of this form of 'appreciation' Joe could take and, shortly after, he decided to emigrate to America permanently.  It has to be said that he did try to find work teaching and demonstrating his art within the school system in Ireland before leaving.  He made some approaches to the Department of Education seeking, as I recall, the sum of £18 a week to tour the schools but his request found no favour with the government officials whom he approached.

He found work in America as a liveried concierge in an up-market apartment block in Manhattan and was able to supplement his income with appearances at folk festivals, concerts and clubs from time to time.  While friendship with the Clancy Brothers and others gained him entrée to the folk scene, academics like Ken Goldstein, Richard Ó Driscoll and later Mick Moloney introduced him to the college circuits.  This resulted in Joe finally achieving his ambition to teach, first in Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut from 1980 until 1982, and then for the Ethnomusicology Department of the University of Washington in Seattle.  He was still working there at the time of his death in 1984.

Mick Moloney championed Joe's cause through publishing recordings and arranging appearances.  Although I do not think he has claimed any credit for it, I am assured that Moloney played a large part in Joe's being awarded The National Endowment for the Arts National Heritage Award for Excellence in the Folk Arts in 1982.  This Joe saw as the pinnacle of his achievement.  Although such recognition must have come as a belated vindication of his value as an artist and was very welcome, Moloney has pointed out that these highlights were spread very thinly over a lot of years.  He also makes the telling point that the majority of Heaney's support came from the non-Irish in the USA.

Towards the end of his life in Seattle Heaney seems to have become something of a recluse, particularly after encroaching ill-health made him abandon alcohol and cigarettes.  His students and neighbours described him as lonely.  It seems that he lived mainly for his teaching.  But at least the groves of Academe were agreeable to him and he was in an environment where he could preach the gospel he had been advocating all his life and know that he had, at last, found a permanent supply of willing listeners.  The university department for which he worked have compiled hundreds of hours of his lectures and recitals recorded by students and others during his tenure.  They say that this resource is the most frequently accessed single collection in their archive.  The Northwest Folklife and University of Washington Ethnomusicology Archives subsequently published a posthumous CD, Say a Song: Joe Heaney in the Pacific Northwest.  These recordings show that Joe, even at the end of his days and suffering from emphysema, continued to be a consummate artist who utilised his remaining resources to their maximum effect and was still a superlative singer.

The CDs under review here come from hours of tape recordings made by Ewan MacColl and Peggy Seeger at their home in Beckenham in 1964.  As the entire interview has been posted on this site for several months most of you will have already read some or all of it.  It and the introduction by Fred McCormick make compulsive reading.  For obvious pressures of space this introduction is much reduced in the CD booklet, so I would ask readers who have not read the entire piece to do so as it is provocative, infuriating, enlightening and consistently thoughtful.  It is however, not what I was asked to review, but it is part of the baggage to be taken on board before approaching the review and I will have to be forgiven for commenting on some aspects of the total interview without which we would not have the material for the CDs.

Fred states that the "interview is not merely a vivid portrayal of its subject; it is also an eloquent demonstration of the philosophy of the interviewers."  And of course the shape of any interview is dictated by the perspectives of the questioner.  Nevertheless, it is asking too much of the data presented here to give us more than an incidental overview of MacColl's philosophy, However revealing such insights may be, it is unfair to extrapolate too much from them.  MacColl did not set about this interview with publication in mind, and it is very much a warts-and-all package which would have been much tightened up and edited if publication had been its objective.  What we have here is more in the form of field notes and it is indeed generous of Peggy Seeger to allow them to be presented in their raw state.

Much of the questioning is insightful, some is incredibly pompous and other areas are just plain daft.  Were he a student of mine I would have told him to try again.  Far too many of the queries are leading questions which render the replies useless.  Even if the informant would have given the same answer one cannot be sure of its veracity because the questioner supplied the answer in the question itself.  It is the nature of the questioner/respondent relationship that the latter will try to give the former the answer they expect.

EM - Now, everybody doesn't decorate, Joe, in your part of the world, do they? Not to anything like the same extent that you do? ...

And ... (Discussing differences between music hall and traditional singing):
EM - You don't believe there is any connection between the two types of music.  (Correctly, the transcriber inserts no question mark at the end of the sentence, for it is more like a statement.)
JH - No I don't, for one minute I don't believe it.
EM - For instance, the kind of singing that Dominic (Behan) does, do you think that's closer to that kind of ...
JH - Definitely its within one percent of a music hall thing.  That's my honest opinion.
EM - There's no folk style there?
JH - No, not a bit.  That's in my opinion though.  I have nothing in the world against him at all ...
EM - Nothing except he's a lousy singer - (laughs)
JH - Well, its not for me to say.

Questioning on the nature of macaronic song elicits answers which are contradictory and confused.  Similarly, the passages where MacColl tries to get Joe to verbalise his thoughts on his art are unsatisfactory, mainly because neither had the vocabulary which allowed them to communicate mutually.  What MacColl is at here is seeking clarification of Joe's thought processes as a conscious artist, not some sort of noble savage whose singing ability "just growed" because of an accident of birth.  That Joe and others like him were virtuoso performers not only because of their inherited tradition but also because of individual creativity and personal effort was a proposition propounded by MacColl on The Song Carriers.  It was a comparatively novel concept in relation to folk performers at the time and its truth is not fully recognised even yet.

McCormick rightly comments that "Joe is no historian.  His manner is not one of academic detachment, or of objectivity.  Neither is his knowledge very reliable.  However in an interview like this, objectivity and accuracy are not commodities we should be looking for."  He goes on to point out that the importance of the interview are Joe's perceptions.  Granted, but I would add a further caveat; in some cases where Joe was not sure of an answer he came out with some ferocious ould blather which I am sure he did not believe himself, but it was alright on the night.  Thankfully McCormick and Éamonn Ó Bróithe have done a commendable job in footnoting, clarifying and rectifying errors and obscurities in the text of the interview and on the CD notes.

When interviewing a storyteller or singer I make it a habit to always ask the informant where they got each story or song.  This becomes so routine that in most case the informant will soon add in this information at the end of each piece themselves.  Such information is obviously important in establishing the sources and dissemination of the informant's repertoire.  Unfortunately it is a question which MacColl asks all too infrequently.  This is particularly regrettable in the light of Heaney's statement that he never learned a song from a book.  Frankly, I don't believe him.  Certainly the majority of his repertoire was learned from his Carna childhood and absorbed from such important singers as his uncle, that phenomenal repository of song, Colm Ó Caoidheáin.  But I am sure a man of Joe's intelligence would refresh his memory and add to his repertoire from printed and other sources.  I am also quite confident that he added material he heard from the Clancy Brothers, The Dubliners, Séamus Ennis and their cohorts.  He willingly gave them songs from his repertoire, so why should he not adopt some of their songs, either directly or from their recordings?  The answer to Joe's disclaiming any but oral sources is his alertness to the elitist attitude (which has not left us yet) which places more importance on songs acquired orally and relegated songs learned from print or recordings to a lesser station.  I am not sure if Joe would have always give direct answers to such questions on sources, but it is a great pity that MacColl did not ask them when he had the chance.

On then to the CDs themselves.  They are handsomely presented in a black double disc (VotP) box.  The photograph reproduced on the cover is a hand-tinted portrait of a youthful Joe holding his hands in the vaguely pugilistic manner which he would strike while singing.  Another copy used hang in O'Donoghue's pub and he once said that he looked like "the middleweight sean-nós champion of Carna" in it.  The accompanying booklet comes to 60 pages and contains an affectionate introductory essay by Liam Mac Con Iomaire, one of the great contemporary proselytisers of the art of sean-nós singing.  Peggy Seeger contributes some memories of the man and the actual making of the recordings.  Fred McCormick's prologue is a much condensed version of the text which appears on the MT page and which I have already commented on.  The songs are transcribed by Dan Quinn (English) and Éamonn Ó Bróithe (Gaelic).  It has to be said that the transcriptions are impeccable and that McCormick, as editor, puts his practice where is mouth is.

Topic, I assume, rather than McCormick the individual, continues the lamentable practice of absorbing the notes on the songs into the prefacing essays rather than keeping them where they are readily accessible and relevant, as headnotes.  They have made a few exceptions for some unstated reason and allowed a few of Ó Bróithe's erudite comments a place beneath the song text.

I repeat, "these recordings were not made for publication" and take cognisance of McCormick's warning about the sound quality.  They were probably made on a Uher Report, a good machine, but no Nagra III.  Thankfully, it has to be said that the sound quality is not bad at all.  And the re-mastering has certainly brought it, (in most cases) beyond the standard one would expect of domestic recordings.  I seem to detect a very slight break-up of signal at the upper end of some sustained notes which may be in the transfer rather than the original.  The fact that these are essentially field recordings need not worry the listener (for whom such an appellation may sometimes bring to mind an excuse for thoughtless recording and sloppy editing).

McCormick states "In a lifetime of majestic singing, Joe Heaney was never in better form than here"  It is true that Joe was at the height of his powers when these recordings were made.  This is not open to argument.  But as for the MacColl recordings being the finest representation of his art, I would have to differ somewhat.  They are slightly eclipsed by the Topic LP Joe Heaney: Irish Traditional Songs in Gaelic and English made only a year previously which is, for me, one of the finest recordings of traditional singing ever made.  Anywhere.

There is always an artistic tension created when a virtuoso singer like Joe is in a performance situation like a concert, recital, or recording studio.  Rather than being intimidated, they rise to the occasion.  Intimate interview situations seldom create the same fusion, for, in order to access the information the interviewer seeks, it is necessary to strive to put the subject at ease.  In doing so one runs the risk of blunting the edge of the situation when it includes performance.  This happens in several cases on these recordings.  However, it is important to put this in context; nowhere does Joe quite rise to the superlative heights he achieves on, say, Caoineadh na dTrí Muire on the Topic LP, but there is not a single track on either CD which is less than fine, and most are excellent.

Whereas we must be extremely grateful to MacColl and Seeger for having the initiative to do these interviews it has to be said that their lack of knowledge of the Irish language results in an imbalance regarding Joe's repertoire.  His first language was Irish and consequently the majority of his songs were in that tongue.  But only thirteen of the thirty nine items reproduced on the CDs are in Irish.  There seems to be another side effect of this situation reflected in these recordings; in some of the 'big songs' like Curachaí na Trá Báine and Eanach Cuain Joe uses rising and falling volume in order to emphasise points.  I have no recollection of him doing this to any great extent on recordings made before or after these sessions.  I can only speculate that he was trying to communicate through dynamics to his two listeners whom he knew could not comprehend the language he was singing in.

Such is the importance of this production I consider it only fair to give it the attention it merits and comment on every track.

CD One

• 1 - My Bonny Boy is Young  Right from the start the singer is presented as a master of mood and narrative.  There is a world of difference between a singer who sings to him or herself and one who takes the text as being full of meaning which must be conveyed to the listener in a reflective manner.  This reading of Long A-Growing is a model of the storytelling singer's art.

• 2 - The West of Ireland  In this piece of 'actuality' Joe posits the theory that there was so much song in Carna because people came there for the fishing during the great famine when there was no food elsewhere.  These visitors brought their songs and left them there.  Much of Joe's history are forays into folk belief which may or may not have secure foundations.

• 3 - Skibbereen  A piece of nationalistic melodrama with evictions, dying mothers and famine.  No wonder it is sung throughout Ireland!  Fred opines that:

  It is questionable though whether Skibbereen could have been part of his [Joe's] Carna inheritance, for it was far more popular with showbands and ballad groups than with Irish country singers.  Famine songs generally did not survive among rural Irish singers, and Joe seems to be the only such individual who has ever been recorded singing this one.

  Wrong!  Wrong!  And wrong again!  Sorry Fred, I'm afraid your prejudice is showing.  OK, so it is a piece of bathos, and I agree that it is a bloody nuisance when the peasants sing the songs they like instead of the fine traditional songs that we in our wisdom know are far better for them.  Skibbereen is definitely popular with the showbands (or whatever they are called nowadays), but it is also extremely widespread in the field and I have recorded it from Irish rural singers in every corner of the country.  As it was the Irish-speaking populace who were hardest hit by the famine, I suggest you look among their repertoire to find songs on the subject.  You could start with Cormac Ó Gráda's An Drochshaol: Béaloideas agus Amhráin.  (The Famine: Folklore and Songs)

  Once again Joe has got his history mangled and in his version he telescopes rebels of 1798 and Fenians of mid 19c.  It is interesting that, as much of Joe's historical perceptions centre on perfidious Albion and 800 years of oppression by her, he could be singularly fair-minded in some cases.  In verse 4 of Skibbereen he sings of the landlord and the sheriff setting the cottage roof afire "with their demon yellow spleen."  In most cases this is sung as "with their demon English spleen."  I asked Joe why he chose "yellow".  He told me.  "The English have always been good to me and I'm not going to insult them just for the sake of it."  Its a funny old world.

• 4 - Bean Pháidín (Paudeen's Wife).  Like Cúnnla  and Cailleach and Airgid this song's simple repetitive form makes it easy to remember and even non-Irish speakers can pick up the refrain at least.  It would be among the 'Top 10' of popular songs in Irish today.  In spite of its jaunty air it is quite a caustic song in which the narrator calls down bitter maledictions on the woman who married her love.

• 5 - Amhrán na hEascainne (The Song of the Eel).  This version of Lord Randal is one of the small handful of international ballads which crossed the language barrier into the Irish language.  So well known is Heaney's singing of it that it is probably superfluous to comment.  Nevertheless, the adjective 'magisterial; will not leave my mind.  On this track in particular the signal distortion which I referred to is present, but it really is very slight.

• 6 - As I Roved Out  This is the eponymous song used for the BBC radio series, a version of Seventeen Come Sunday.  Joe probably got it from Sarah Makem by way of the Clancy Brothers.  His singing of it is almost as good as Mrs Makem's, and that's saying something! (sound clip)

• 7 - An Draighneán Donn (The Brown Blackthorn).  This is a fascinating performance.  I know of no other macaronic version of An Draighneán Donn.  Joe prefaces his singing with the údar an amhrán (the story behind the song) which is the Hind Horn legend.  The song itself has long had a parallel English-language version which is sung to its own (related but distinct) tune.  Here Heaney re-unites the texts in alternating verses.  His choice of tune is the one usually associated with the English-language text rather than the tune found more frequently in Connemara.  I would be very curious to know if Joe continued to sing An Draighneán Donn in this manner?

• 8 - Caroline and Her Young Sailor Bold  A slightly confused version sung to the air of Rosin the Bow.

• 9 - Fishing in Connemara  More 'actuality'.  Some advice on how to set lobster pots.  You never know when it will come in handy!

• 10 - Currachaí na Trá Báine (The Currachs of White Strand).  Beautifully sung.  This poignant lament was written in the 1860s by Bríd Ni Mháille, a sister of the three brothers who were drowned tragically while returning from Galway.  The circumstances of the drowning are still the subject of fierce controversy in Connemara.  In the interview preface we are told that some material relating to this has been excluded from publication for matters of confidentiality.  The CD notes also tell us that the writer is "somewhat circumspect regarding the details ...  in case the publication of such might give offence to somebody."  We then (inadvertently?) get the whole gory story!!!  Whatever about Topic Records, I am sure that the Irish publisher of the CDs, Micheál Ó Conghaile and Cló Íar Chonnachta, who are based in Connemara, are going to get it in the back of the neck at local level for this.

• 11 - Singing in Connemara  We have all encountered shy singers who pull down their caps and sing in a shy manner, but Heaney's description here of singers retreating into a corner to sing as a norm just sounds to me as if he was bullshitting MacColl.

• 12 - The Jug of Punch  Another standard of the 'sixties popularised by the McPeakes and Clancys.  It does not seem to turn up among the earlier recordings of Heaney.

• 13 - The Ferocious O'Flahertys  A bit of local history or legend concerning the O'Flaherty clan and their methods of extracting tribute.

• 14 - The Widow from Mayo (aka Flowery Sweet Mayo)  In the interview Joe explains to MacColl that this is a song about a widow seeing her daughter off at the local railway station following the 1798 rising and having been evicted by Captain Boycott.  It would take a brave historian to unscramble that lot!

  Emigration songs such as this are frequently more substantial than the sum of their parts.  Nowadays such songs may seem mawkish and sentimental to a younger generation.  But, to people of Joe's generation, emigration had far deeper resonances.  Enforced partings from loved ones were for very long periods, if not forever.  Heaney was singing this at a time when disenfranchised Irish people were everywhere on the streets of Britain and North America, with little hope of returning home permanently.  Songs such as this touched a deep chord in the hearts of Irish people, at home or abroad, who found these songs extremely moving.  He sings this song with all the conviction of someone who knows what he is singing about.  The air is one usually associated with The Faithful Sailor Boy.

• 15 - The Harp Without the Crown (aka The Gals o' Dublin Town)  I was delighted to hear this fragment.  Although I know the song from Stan Hugill's Shanties from the Seven Seas I had never heard it sung before.  It is so attractive I cannot understand why it is not better known. (sound clip)

  Fred remarks "There is probably not much substance ... in Joe's contention that The Harp Without the Crown is a fragment from the Fenian uprising of 1867."  Actually, Joe makes no such comment anywhere on the uprising itself.  As for connecting it with the Fenians; the song text states explicitly that the vessel was "Commanded by a Fenian bold hailing from Dublin town".  What more proof do you need?  He also added that the boat was "coming to England to do some damage".  This would certainly tie it in with the Fenian uprising in Joe's mind.  I would think it contemporaneous with Erin's Lovely Lea, sharing both nautical and Fenian links.

• 16 - Seoithín Seo  Joe prefaces this lullaby by saying: "This is supposed to be the one that was sung for Christ when he was on earth, when he was rocked by St Joseph."  This belief has attached itself to a number of lullabies in Irish tradition.  I have to plead ignorance of the author of the verses, but they appear to be a little on the literary side, and so I would guess they are not terribly old.

  Any photograph of Joe will show his ruggednes.  His handsomely craggy features show weathering by physical labour and a reckless youth.  It is fascinating to contrast this with the exquisite tenderness with which he sings this song for a sleeping child.

• 17 - Advice to young singers  Heaney tells us that in order to learn about song to sing you must listen, listen, listen.  You cannot get better advice than that.

• 18 - The Valley of Knockanure

• 19 - The Valley of Knockanure (Tale)  One of the best known ballads from the War of Independence concerning an engagement in Kerry.  Joe compliments it with a story of the event in which the participants Dalton and Walsh are romantically portrayed as heroes who "were willing to die to save the village."

• 20 - Whiskey Ó Roudeldum-Row  In many years collecting in the Irish field I have been able to disprove the belief that there is a large body of bawdy song in English which has been missed, ignored or avoided by collectors.  The actual body of such song is pretty small.  The same belief holds for song in Irish, but there does seem to be some evidence for a tolerance for bawdy verse greater than that found among English singers of the last generation or so.  Still, the documentation is sparse enough.  Rare indeed are such pieces as Whiskey Ó Roudeldum-Row; a piece of, no prisoners taken, in your face, bawdry.  It is a series of ribald (rather than erotic) surrealistic images; Hieronymus Bosch meets Larry Flint.

• 21 - Barbary Ellen  One of the reasons suggested for the comparative lack of older balladry Gaelic singers in Ireland is that the highly melismatic tunes they prefer impede the narrative.  Ornamentation slows down the movement of the story which must get from A to B.  This contrasts with most songs in Irish which are lyrical in form and the journey rather than the arrival is what matters to the singer.  Nevertheless, most Gaelic singers of Joe's stature would have one or two ballads like Barbara Ellen, Captain Wedderburn or The Dark Eyed Gypsy.  It is most instructive to observe Joe's highly ornamental opening to his singing here; then, as the song proceeds and the tension increases, the grace notes gradually slough off and we arrive at the last verse with a much leaner version of the tune.  Masterful ballad singing. (sound clip)

CD Two

• 1 - The Two Greyhounds (The Bogs of Shanaheever).  Slightly garbled in text and tune.  Joe's story about having to course haresat night because of oppressive landlords sounds a bit far-fetched.

• 2 - The Old Woman of Wexford  Probably learned from Séamus Ennis or the Clancy Bros.  At any rate it does not appear in Clár Amhrán Bhaile na hInse, Ríonach Ní Fhlathartaigh (Uí Ógáin)'s exhaustive index of songs collected by the Folklore Commission in Ballinahinch, Joe's part of Connemara.

• 3 - The Banks of Claudy  The air Joe uses here, Amhrán Mhuinse, I have not encountered elsewhere associated with this disguised lover ballad.  To my ears it is not particularly suited to this song.  Unlike Barbary Ellen the ornamental line gets in the way of the comparative urgency of the narrative requirements.

• 4 - Éamonn an Chnoic (Ned of the Hill)  This is one of the 'big' Munster songs.  This description usually applies to the sweep of the melody rather than the content of the lyrics although these are frequently grandiose in themselves.  McCormick says that this song "is not widely known in Connemara".  Actually it is widely known throughout Ireland as it was taught in most national schools in the Republic.  I would accept Ó Bróithe's suggestion that "Joe may well have learned it at school".  Once again, do I hear some slight distortion on some lines?

• 5 - My Boy Willie  The widespread ballad (Laws K 12) where the maid despairs on hearing of the death of her sailor boy.  Joe's interpretation is thoughtful and exceptionally well told.

• 6 - Patsy McCann  A bit of burlesque foolishness with the well known chorus, 'Patsy McCann will you marry my daughter'.  All songs are the product of their time and it is often unfair to project the mores of contemporary times onto the past.  Even so, one does not have to be over politically correct to feel a little uneasy about the efforts of Patsy McCann, "the man who owned the daughter", to marry her off.

• 7 - Úna Bhán  Joe gives the story, along with the song of the two tragic lovers above whose grave the trees twine on Lough Key near Boyle.  Because of the sweep of its air it is a difficult song to sing and has suffered greatly from singers who have abandoned the delicate text in order to impress listeners with operatic performance.  Joe is at his best here and brings out every nuance of the lament with a sensitivity and artistry seldom heard. (sound clip)

• 8 - Cailleach an Airgid (The Hag With the Money)  Another chanson du malmari in which the female narrator laments that her former lover, Tom Mhichíl Mhóir, has abandoned her and wed a woman, who could be his grandmother, for the sake of her money.  This was one of the most popular songs of the revival and its popularity was due in no small way to Joe's singing.

• 9 - The Lonely Woods of Upton  A maudlin ballad relating to an incident in the War of Independence' when three members of the IRA lost their lives in an engagement at Upton Junction, County Cork, on February 15th, 1921.  The songwriter lifted his verse from an earlier song On the Shores of Havana, relating to the Spanish American War.  He in turn took his inspiration from On the Banks of the Wabash written by Paul Dresser and Theodore Dreiser in 1899.

• 10 - O'Brien from Tipperary  "My father often said it was the best song he ever sang" said Joe.  Certainly Joe shared his high opinion of it, for he comments "That song has everything.  It has loyalty, sadness, tension, love and a happy ending".  Séamus Ennis recorded this from Joe as early as 1942.  His singing of it, then and now, omits a crucial verse:

  In the Philadelphia regiment I mean to let you know,
  O'Brien many a battle fought against the southern foe,
  The Major's daughter fell in love with him, as you may plainly see
  And her father then he did resolve to prove his destiny.

  We lack the motive for the Major's animosity in the text .  However, Joe tells us in his preface that O'Brien "... fell in love with the Major's daughter and the Major didn't like it."  As with songs in Irish, here the motivation for the action may be understood by narrative, the údar, which is external to the actual text.

• 11 - Érin, Grá Mo Chro  A sentimental emigrant's lament sung in English.  I have encountered this song in practically every county in Ireland even though it seldom appears in print.

• 12 - Cúnnla  A vaguely bawdy night visiting song in which the amorous Cúnnla gets ever closer to his lover.  A discreet veil is drawn over whatever transpires after he gets close enough to tickle her toes.  This is another song in Irish which has a continuing popularity which may be attributed to Joe's influence.  It certainly figures in the repertoire of practically every folk group in Ireland.  The version sung here is macaronic.  Did Joe compose the alternating English verses to suit a wider audience?

• 13 - Tennis Right (Captain Coulston).  The name of the ship is, of course 'The Tenant's Right' which would place the action of this song in the latter part of the 19c and the Plan of Campaign on behalf of Irish tenant farmers.  The story is slight, the emigrants overcome some pirates who attack them at sea and the vanquished pirates are brought as prisoners to America.  Joe's version includes the lines:

  The number of our passengers were a hundred and fifty two
  And they were all teetotallers excepting one or two.

  Unfortunately he omits the continuation, one of my favourite couplets:

  The lemonade was passed around to nourish us at sea
  And our Father Matthew medals we wore unto Americay.

  Joe says he got this song from a Tom Pheats, who also sang Morrissey and the Russian Sailor.  Indeed his air for Coulston is exactly the same as the celebrated bravura performance of Morrissey by Johnny McDonagh recorded by Brian George in Carna about 1950.

• 14 - Eanach Cuain  The famous lament for those drowned on a boat trip on Lough Corrib composed by Antoine Raiftearaí (1779-1835).  The singer is totally in command of his material here and the song fits him like an old glove.  The use of dynamics, as in reducing the singing to almost a whisper for dramatic effect, is to this reviewer somewhat obtrusive here, but may, as I pointed out above, have been the result of the recording situation.

• 15 - Beidh Aonach Amárach i gContae an Chláir  (There is a Fair Tomorrow in the County Clare).  This lively little ditty is still sung in schools throughout the country, and the schoolroom would also appear to be Joe's source.  By modern standards it may seem a bit weird to hear a girl professing a preference for shoemaker rather than an army officer when she is not yet ten years old!  Joe's pitch here is perhaps a trifle too low.

• 16 - The Glen of Aherlow (Patrick Sheehan)  These verses in which an Irishman is reduced to penury after having been wounded with the British army in the Crimea is based on an actual incident which inspired the poet Charles Kickham (1828-82) to write this anti-recruitment song.  When Kickham published the song in 1857 he suggested it could be sung to "any lamentation air".  The popular version actually has its own specific tune nowadays.  Interestingly Joe does not use it in this version which he got from his father.  Once again the air used is from the Gaelic tradition, in this case Mná Deasa Baile Locha Riach (The Loughrea Lasses).

• 17 - Slán agus Beannacht le Buaireamh an tSaoil (Farewell to the Worries of Life).  This really is Joe at his best. (sound clip)  This beautiful macaronic pastorelle delights in playing with richness of vocabulary in both languages.  It appears in the repertoire of a number of singers, but to this reviewer none of them have quite captured its magic with the flair which Heaney brings to it.

• 18 - The Old Man Rocking the Cradle  I wonder where Joe got this?  There were a number of versions being sung around folk clubs at the time of this recording.  Hazarding a guess, I would think it likely he got it from Séamus Ennis (who got it from Johnny Doherty).  Whatever his source, he has made the song his own.  The pensive delivery conjures up a vivid word picture of a side of cuckoldry which is light years away from the ribald ballads often associated with the subject.  The contemplative mood with which CD 1 opens also concludes this great collection.

So there you have it.  Is it a complete picture of Joe Heaney?  My own feeling is that it cannot be so if it excludes his masterpiece, Caoineadh na dTrí Mhuire (which he mentions in the interview but is not asked to sing).  It is also a little perverse in omitting his most popular song, The Rocks of Bawn, which he did sing in the course of the interview.  But overall this is a splendid achievement.  MacColl and Seeger have our gratitude for their foresight, and we must be thankful to McCormick and his team for seeing it through.  Coupling this with the release of The Songs of Elizabeth Cronin, one can only say that 2000 has been a very good year indeed for Irish traditional singing.

Tom Munnelly - 15.11.00

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