A classic Makem story/joke, followed by The Ballad Of William Bloat:
Little Beggerman:
And for anyone who missed it in Tuesday’s post, here again is Brennan on the Moor, which I think is my favorite of the YouTube clips I’ve found so far:
Tommy lost his dear wife Mary some years back. / Being a Trouper, he mourned, then rallied, & bravely Carried on. (Mary Makem, btw, was the actual Author of The Winds Are Singing Freedom” which Tommy so popularized in performance.)
Long long ago Tommy wrote, perhaps penitently & surely presciently, I’m Going Home to Mary:
“For I miss her in the morning, when the lark is in the sky
And I miss her in the noon time, when the world goes rushing by
But most of all I miss her, when the evening time is nigh
But, I’m going, yes I’m going home to Mary.”
And indeed he has at length gone Home to Mary ~ whom we may take as Represented by the young wife Kathleen in the true Signature song of the rambling man from Keady town ~ not “Four Green Fields” but rather The Bard of Armagh, which despite its closing admonition to “forget Phelim Brady”, will cause us Forever to remember Tommy Makem:
Oh list to the lay of a poor Irish harper
And scorn not the strains of his old, withered hands
But remember his fingers, they once could move sharper
To raise up the memory of his dear native land
At a fair or a wake, I could twist my shillelagh
Or trip through a jig with my brogues bound with straw
And all the pretty colleens around me assembled
Loved their bold Phelim Brady, the bard of Armagh
Oh, how I long to muse on the days of my boyhood
But four score and three years have flitted since then
But they bring sweet reflections, as every young joy should
For, the merry hearted boys makes the best of old men
And when sergeant death, in his cold arms shall embrace me
And lull me to sleep with sweet Erin go bragh
By the side of my Kathleen, my young wife then place me
Then forget Phelim Brady, the bard of Armagh.
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August 3rd, 2007 at 3:04:22 am
:)
We will not see his Like again.
Tommy lost his dear wife Mary some years back. / Being a Trouper, he mourned, then rallied, & bravely Carried on. (Mary Makem, btw, was the actual Author of The Winds Are Singing Freedom” which Tommy so popularized in performance.)
Long long ago Tommy wrote, perhaps penitently & surely presciently, I’m Going Home to Mary:
“For I miss her in the morning, when the lark is in the sky
And I miss her in the noon time, when the world goes rushing by
But most of all I miss her, when the evening time is nigh
But, I’m going, yes I’m going home to Mary.”
And indeed he has at length gone Home to Mary ~ whom we may take as Represented by the young wife Kathleen in the true Signature song of the rambling man from Keady town ~ not “Four Green Fields” but rather The Bard of Armagh, which despite its closing admonition to “forget Phelim Brady”, will cause us Forever to remember Tommy Makem: