17-03-2020
Episode 1: Raised on Songs & Stories
Kiss me I’m Irish? St. Patrick’s Day? Why is St. Patrick’s Day/Week/Month celebrated with shenanigans all over the world? Where did St. Patrick really come from (Hint, it wasn’t Ireland). And where do we come from? How did we really get to such a day of meaning so deep, that the Irish and almost everyone else too, celebrate it so boisterously? Not just for a day or weekend, but now, for the whole month of March?
What’s the true, authentic Story?
Our very first podcast shall tackle these burning issues, and really, what are shenanigans? Why do the Irish dislike the clover but love the shamrock and why they are different, and of course, no celebration is worth its Irish Sea salt, without music. So, since everyone is Irish on St. Patrick’s Day, Sing Irish Men and Women, sing, with us!
Hosted by Ohio Irish American News Publisher & Editor John O’Brien, Jr. Raised on Songs, Stories and Shenanigans is brought to you by the Ohio Irish American News and WHK The Answer. It airs every other Friday, at 5, on whkradio.com and OhioIANews.com, but is available for download, whenever you wish.
Songs, Stories & Shenanigans
The Invitationby Batt BurnsUsed with permission of Batt Burns
Pull up your sugan chairs, my friends
Close out the green half door
And gather around the peat turf fire
As we did in days of yore.
I am glad you rambled in tonight,
For the house was quiet and still.
Herself was carding sheep wool, while I, my pipe did fill.
There wasn’t a word between us,
you’d swear a row was on.
But memories were with us, of our children now all gone.
To America and England, those lands across the foam
Will they ever laugh and joke again,
in our cozy Irish home?
You’ve waked us from our reverie. Maybe it’s just as well.
Before those memories saddened us,
and a tear or two were shed.
Your happy faces cheer us up.
You’ve surely brought some news.
And from my store of yarns,
sure you all can pick and choose.
Look to the blazing flame there, do you see what I can see,
Dark heroes, fairy castles, warriors fighting to be free?
There’s leprechauns and fairy folks,
Oisin and Finn Mac Cool
I can see them all so plainly there,
from my little fireplace stool.
Come back into the past with me as I speak of olden days
When life was much more simple,
and we all had purer ways.
Oh there were no lounge bars or discos.
TV we did not know.
Yet we had fun and sport a plenty, in the Kerry of long ago.
I was born and raised in Cleveland, Ohio. 1st Generation. So my roots go much deeper in Ireland, than they do in the U.S. I never thought much about it, until I went to Ireland. I remember the air, and the peace I felt, sitting on a stone wall, waiting for the train to Dublin and singing Kenny Roger’s songs with my sister Cathy. For me, a whole new valley of thought opened up. The missing connection, the only time in my life I have not felt deep-core restlessness, of not belonging, was when I was in Ireland. That feeling was not repeated until seventeen years later - when I went back.
In an abandoned and disappearing churchyard I saw wind-rubbed tombstones that carried the same names as I know well today; George, Hubert, Desmond (who died in 1698), O’Brien’s all. Phillip O’Brien, my cousin, is the 11th generation to mind the hills and cows, milk the milk and sheer the sheep at Atteagh Mills.Atteagh Mills, near the town of Athlone, is in the Co. Roscommon, in south central Ireland. South Central LA it is not. It is farm country. His nephew is the 11th generation to mind the cows and sheep at Atteagh Mills. The “New House” is 266 years old, older than this country, and the old house? Well, it is just old, dating back to the 1600s. We have roots there. I have never “walked the land” with my father, as so many memoirs deem essential. Yet, I look out and see our ghosts, I hear their music, and that peace once again settles down, through my toes. I am rooted. Yet, only in my memory does the taste of belonging remain.
The feeling of Ireland, nurtured by dances at West Side IA, bands, Sunday morning 78’s, then 8-tracks, before mass, and then Gaelic Football games and gatherings; Immersion at 3,000 miles. My father left Ireland soon after playing for the 1951 All-Ireland winning Roscommon U-21 Gaelic Football team. He was not the oldest son. The first time he returned was for his mother’s funeral, 38 years later. Through the roots of my past, I sometimes feel, that I never left.
Since the Beginning of Man,
The Hours between the Coming of Night
and the Coming of Sleep
have belonged to the Tellers of Tales
and the Makers of Music
I grew up in a house immersed in Irish culture. Growing up, the things I remember most are the frequent guests that we had stay overnight, when they were playing in Cleveland. Bridie Gallagher, Dermot O’Brien, Glen Curtin, Noel Henry, Makem and the Clancys, Barleycorn as well: so many names, so many memories. When I woke to the smell of bacon on a Sunday morning, I knew dad had brought the band home from the dance the night before, and the breakfast table was going to be full of stories from the road. It was a great way to grow up.
As I got older, I started finding my own songs and singers that I loved. The albums and 8-Tracks that I heard became my own songs. One day my dad walked into my bedroom and said, “Johnny, we’re starting a festival, you’re doing the parking”. And he walked out. I was 16.
The first few years, I worked the parking lot, parking cars and soaking up the sun, and the sun burn. When I graduated from college, I started doing the food, and moved onward from there.
Because of the festival, dances and Sunday morning breakfasts, I became immersed in the music and, like many, I was deeply impacted by the message of Tommy Makem and how preserving and promoting the culture was so important, before it all fades away, and is lost, forever. Being able to meet, talk to, and form friendships with so many performers who had impact on the music, and on me, really influenced my thinking.
My memories of the first festival are still very strong and I have so many cherished memories from the ensuing years, all related to the festival performers, many, like Tommy, now gone home. The volunteers and amazing, legendary afters parties and sessions are treasured. In my mind, they shall live in infamy.
I was hooked on the music and still, to this day, learn as many songs as I can; Songs in my head, songs always on my tongue, songs I love to sing, songs that tell stories. We call them Folk Songs. Many have negative connotations of that term. They don’t realize folk songs are the heart of rock n roll, of blues, jazz, gospel, country, and even rap.
For as Sean O’Casey said, in his Rose & Crown:
Oh, and the folk-song, the folk-song, the gay and melancholy strains of the Irish folk-song, on fiddle, on harp, and on fife. And no folk-art is there but is born in the disregard of gain, and in the desire to add a newer beauty and a steadier charm to God’s well-turned-out gifts to man.
In recent years, maybe as my strident side mellows and I meet people from all over the world in this writing life, I am more struck by the similarities in people than the differences. Every culture has its own niches, its’ cool things that touch your soul, but the similarities, especially of emotion and defining values, are remarkable, and unmistakable.
William Butler Yeats said:
Folk-art is indeed, the oldest of the aristocracies of thought, and because it refuses what is passing and trivial, the merely clever and pretty, as certainly as the vulgar and insincere, and because it has gathered unto itself the simplest and most unforgettable thoughts of the generations, it is the soil where all art is rooted.
Tommy Makem is the Godfather of Irish music. He wrote more than 400 songs, the anthem, Four Green Fields, of course, as well as Gentle Annie, Winds of Morning, The Winds Are Singing Freedom and so many other iconic songs, songs that are sung wherever the Irish gather around the world. They are the stories of our people, and today those songs are sung by Gaelic Storm, We Banjo 3, Lunasa, Runa and just about every popular Irish band performing today.
Our stories define us; our culture is a story-driven one, an oral tradition passed on generation to generation. We pass the stories on so our roots, our history, our very identity stays vibrant and alive – you see it around you here and now - it is our connection to our past, AND our present.
My story is not the only one I am trying to tell. Tommy wrote Four Green Fields one day while driving down to Newry, in the Co. Down. He saw a woman coming down from the fields with the cows, to cross the road. They were both stopped at a British checkpoint.
Tommy watched her as he, and she, waited to go thru. He could see the, Hassle, as the woman just wanted to get on across the road, to get on with her life. He wrote the first two verses then, and the final one later, when he got to Newry.
Four Green Fields is a song full of symbols, in its simplicity. The Four Green Fields symbolically refer to the 4 Provinces of Ireland: Leinster, Munster, Ulster & Connaught, which hold the 32 counties, most similar to our states. The symbolic “fine, old woman” represents Ireland herself.
What did I have? said the fine old woman
What did I have? this proud old woman did say
I had four green fields, each one was a jewel
But strangers came and tried to take them from me
I had fine strong sons, they fought to save my jewels
They fought and died, and that was my grief, said she
Today, the oral tradition is more readily available than ever. Only now, it is electric! Name the poem, story or song, and you can often find it on the internet. This is an amazing this for our culture, and brings us full circle, because we can see more than just our viewpoint. There are three sides to every story – your side, my side, and the truth: now we can hear more than one side of the story. We can see the similar hurts, struggles, anger, joy and goals from a perspective never before available to us, and we can make our own decision, based upon a person, and their character, not their religion, or the place they were born; whether you were born in Boston, in Belfast, or in Bethlehem.
We can never forget, but if we ever want to move on, and we must move on, or be left far behind, we must see the similarities and common ground between people of a different perspective, no less relevant to them.
You and I, we were raised on songs and stories, we are Irish, that will never change. We must always be aware of from where we came, and how we got to where we are today. Don’t look back, we are not going that way is not an all-encompassing statement – it is simply a way to focus on our future.
No matter the internet’s ready providence of what it calls fact, we cannot forget the story, We cannot forget our past, our traditions and the events and people that define us today. We just can’t let the things that defines our past, also be what defines our future.
Tolerance implies no lack of commitment to one’s own beliefs. Rather, it condemns the oppression or persecution of others. - John F. Kennedy
He also said:
“Mankind must put an end to war, before war puts an end to Mankind.”
Old soldiers never die, but young ones do. No matter from which side of the river that runs thru us we come, we are shaped by those with us, and those opposite. When we strip away the mantles that we wear, we see men and women, not orange and green. When we see Christians, not Catholic or Protestant, we see the hand of God.
I’ve run out of time. I hope you’ve enjoyed our very first podcast.
I hope the poems and verse today shows how our similarities, tho often hidden, tie us together, more than the difference tear us apart. It is St Patrick’s Day, a day of great celebration and reunion, unseen anywhere else in America. I hope you have a great day of fun, respect, and reunion.There are many more songs and stories; I hope we will write new ones- of joy, of unification. We are closer to a One Ireland, than we have ever been in 800 years. We’ll save them for next time, March 27th, when we meet again, and move from our past, to our present day, and future.For a list of those events to come, Pick up your copy of the Ohio Irish American News at any one of 211 locations in and around Ohio. The list and archived interactive copies are at www.ohioianews.com.
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See you at the Parade and again on March 27th, right here.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
