The Floating Crowbar & The Rambling Pitchfork: The Poetry of Irish Tune Titles (Terence Winch)

 

                                                                            Beginish

Some time ago, I was contemplating this medley of tunes from an album called Stormy Weather by the excellent traditional band Beginish:

I'm Waiting for You

Touch Me If You Dare

The Gooseberry Bush

And I thought: there's almost a narrative contained in the names of these three reels, an abbreviated sexual story whose climax takes place in a gooseberry bush. And, musically, the tunes seems to belong together. It must have been intentional­—Beginish seems like a witty and mischievous collection of people.

"The Moving Cloud," "The Flowing Tide," "Banish Misfortune," "Paddy Gone to France," "The Girl That Broke My Heart," "The Pope's Toe," "We Were Drinking and Kissing the Ladies," "I Have No Money," "Money in Both Pockets," "The Cat's Rambles to the Child's Saucepan"—just a random list off the CDs closest to my keyboard. But there is often a high degree of wit, metaphor, and color in tune titles (and here I am distinguishing between songs, which are sung, and tunes, which are instrumental pieces), along with the suggestion of a story.

Of course, many tune names are more descriptive than evocative—"George Whyte's Favourite," "The Green Fields of America," "The Longford Collector," "Sligo Maid," and thousands more. But as you enter into a tune, going through the process of learning it so that you eventually know it by heart, so that each note and each line of music has an inevitability to it, it starts to seem that the notes are almost like words with their own story to tell. There are shifting moods, funny turns of phrase, surprising developments in the melody line, satisfying resolutions, all found right there in the music. And often the names of tunes seem exactly right for the music they call forth. "The Bucks of Oranmore," a big five-part, get-the-hell-out-my-way reel that everyone knows and that is often the grand finale for any number of group-playing situations, seems to summon up a football-team of Galway linebackers ready to roll right over you. "The Rainy Day," on the other hand, has a moody, overcast feel, while "The Boogie Reel" rocks the house and practically goes airborne in the B part. For me, and I think for many other musicians, tunes speak in their own language, and I increasingly see tunes and poems as very closely related experiences.

It must be said, however, that many musicians, while they may know how to play a thousand tunes, wouldn't be able to tell you the names of a dozen of them. And tune nomenclature can be very inconsistent, confusing, or mistaken. The previously cited "Boogie Reel," e.g., is a composition by John Nolan, the first Irish-American to win the All-Ireland button accordion championship, yet I have at least four versions of the same tune by Irish-born players, all of whom mistakenly call it "The Durrow."  Tellingly, these misnamed versions of "The Boogie Reel" seem a bit lackluster to me, deficient in the dynamism you get with Nolan's (or Billy McComiskey's) recording of it.[Here is a classic recording of John Nolan and Billy McComiskey playing the Nolan tune, followed by Billy's equally brilliant tune, "The Controversial."]  Maybe if those players had the name right, the tune would have taken flight the way it was intended to.

[The version of "The Bucks of Oranmore" and "The Foxhunter's" is by The Abbey Ceili Band.]

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Here’s a tune-title poem, dedicated to my friend Tina Eck, German-born master of Irish music on the flute.

Donkey Music

    for tina eck

Delaney had a donkey, apparently,

just as Devanney had a goat (as, of course,

did Hogan and Paddy McGinty). But I don’t

need to tell you that. You know that the

bird is in the bush and the lambs are on

the green hills. You are more than aware

that the fox is on the prowl, while the maid

stays forever behind the bar. She didn’t

dance at all today. The man of the house

and the woman of the house are within

a mile of Dublin, while my love is in

America and I have money in both pockets.

Touch me if you dare. Maggie’s in the woods

where the lilting banshee rules the night.

Tina Eck, Martin Hayes, Jesse Winch, 2022.

[An earlier version of this post appeared on the Best American Poetry blog on Oct. 31, 2010.]

©Terence Winch  
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