'The Sleeping Tune' was composed by Scottish bagpipe visionary Gordon Duncan (1964 - 2005). My arrangement is indebted to Beppe Gambetta & Tony McManus' beautiful adaptation for guitar.

'Beannachd Leat' (Scots Gaelic for 'blessings be with you' or 'farewell'; 1:41 onward) is an original set of variations composed in tribute to Duncan.

I’ll never forget the first time I heard ‘Lakes’ – a clip of an otherworldly live performance by Paul Brady (accompanied by Andy Irvine) first broadcast on RTÉ in 1977 – or indeed the second time, Christy Moore somehow mining new depths...

Though the exact authorship of this Irish American ballad is uncertain, “foreign money” gaining “no credit” might well indicate its roots in the US Civil War: the acceptance/rejection of Confederacy and Union bank notes having been a matter of regional discretion.

By way of contribution to Irish History Month, here’s ‘The Dying Rebel’...

Some sources suggest that this ballad is set during the Easter Rising of 1916 and is a generalised lament, while others claim its origins lie in the Irish War of Independence (1919 – 21) and that the rebel in question was Seán Treacy (Ó Treasaigh). One of the leaders of the Third Tipperary Brigade of the IRA, Treacy was killed just off O’Connell Street, Dublin in a shootout with British troops during an aborted British Secret Service surveillance operation in October 1920.

What we do know for certain is that the ballad sheet found its way to New York where it came into the possession of Joseph Maguire, a Fermanagh man who contributed a series of articles - ‘Old Irish Ballads’ - to The Advocate newspaper. In June 1939, Maguire published three verses and a chorus of ‘The Dying Rebel’ under the alternate title ‘The Harp and Shamrock, Green, White and Gold’ in which Tipperary and Dublin are lyrically specified.

Depending on the version, you might hear that the dying man’s home was as far south as ‘dear Cork city’ or far north as ‘Belfast city’. Béal Feirste is home to the arguably definitive recording of this ballad. Released in December 1970, The Flying Column’s classic ‘Folk Music Time in Ireland’ is driven by the transcendent vocals of Kathleen (Largey) Thompson (née McCready). A committed - and by all accounts selfless - member of Cumann na mBan (The Irishwomen’s Council), the Green Cross and the National Graves, the foremost rebel chanteuse of her generation passed away in February 1979 after a protracted battle with cancer.

Wherever you may or may not stand on the complex political and spiritual spectra of Irish history, the universalist dictum of historian Charles C. Seifert (commonly misattributed to his mentee, Marcus Garvey) surely rings true: a song ‘without the knowledge of its history is like a tree without roots’.

Éirinn go Brách
Ireland Forever

BBC Radio Leeds, March 2023

'Kelly the Boy from Killanne' (1911)
Patrick Joseph McCall (1861 - 1919)

'The Teetotaler's Reel'
Traditional: an early version of the tune appears in the mid-19th century music manuscript collection of County Cork uilleann piper James Goodman (musicologist)

Tom Campbell: Irish Tenor Banjo
Conor MacMahon: Whistle & Uilleann Pipes