Light On Dark Water

From The Lark In the Morning

In that recent discussion about Dylan, which led into a discussion of folk music, Daniel Nichols described his youthful discovery in a library of a recording of authentic Scottish folk music, and his immediate enthusiasm for it. That reminded me of an album I bought in the late '60s  called The Lark In the Morning, a recording from the 1950s of amateur and semi-professional Irish musicians. It was one of several recordings of actual folk music that I found more or less accidentally back then. I listened to it a few times and liked it, but was much more taken with other things, such as Appalachian music and the ballads of Ewan MacColl and A.L. Lloyd, and didn't listen to it very much. I can't remember the last time I did; probably it was in the early 1970s.  But I've hung onto it, like I've hung onto hundreds of other LPs. And this conversation prompted me to dig it out and listen to it again.

It turned out to be great. Here is one of the best things  on it, Paddy Tunney singing "Róisín Dubh" ("Little Black Rose"):

 

There's a translation of the lyrics here. The album itself apparently has a reputation of which I was unaware: it even has a Wikipedia page, and has been re-issued on CD, though it appears to be out of print again now.

Maclin Horton

9 responses to “From The Lark In the Morning”

  1. Louise

    Lovely. 🙂

    Reply
  2. Robert Gotcher

    The whole album is on Spotify.

    Reply
  3. Mac

    I see it’s on Rdio, too. The credits are all messed up–they make it look like it’s all Makem/Clancy, which it’s not.

    Reply
  4. Craig

    Metadata in rdio is often messed up. I have tried searching for classical music on services like that — a nightmare.
    Paddy Tunney is just great.

    Reply
  5. Mac

    I gave up completely on getting classical music from eMusic because of that. It was just too hard to find things. I remember finding the individual “discs” of a set of Bruckner symphonies under a couple of variants of the composer’s name, under the conductor’s name, and under the orchestra’s name. And I had downloaded half of a set of Mozart’s piano sonatas before I discovered that they weren’t even identified correctly. Just not worth the trouble.

    Reply
  6. Diane Marie Kamer

    Oooh, ooh!! This is great. My family are huge fans of traditional Celtic music. Have you heard Mary O’Hara’s rendition of Roisin Dubh? It is on an old album, recently re-released as a CD, called Mary O’Hara’s Ireland.
    My favorite song on the album is Bridget O’Malley. Hers is my favorite rendition.
    She was / is an interesting character. Gave up music to become a nun. Then left the convent to marry a priest. They work among the poor somewhere in the Third World — forget where.
    We love Appalachian music, too. And Scottish music. And shape-note. And all sorts of other stuff. Including Dylan. (That was a fascinating article, BTW.)
    What would life be like without music?

    Reply
  7. Mac

    Hard to imagine, is what. My hearing is not what it used to be, and I have tinnitis, so if I live to be pretty old it seems possible that I’ll outlive my ability to enjoy music, which would be a penance indeed.
    I haven’t heard of Mary O’Hara. Interesting story. I’m actually not especially a fan of Celtic music in general, at least of the more polished kind, but I really like what I’ve heard of the closer-to-the-roots stuff.

    Reply
  8. Robert Gotcher

    “My hearing is not what it used to be, and I have tinnitis, so if I live to be pretty old it seems possible that I’ll outlive my ability to enjoy music, which would be a penance indeed.” Ditto. I have to ask people to repeat a lot more. And I can’t hear above 11,000 Hz. Some of kids can hear up to at least 18,000, and some up to 20,000. Not that hearing that high is essential to enjoying music, but I’m sure I miss at least some enriching overtones. It would be the dB measurement that is most important, and I haven’t had that tested recently.

    Reply
  9. Mac

    It must be 15 years ago, at least, that I had my hearing tested. That means I would have been around 50. I think it was done in conjunction with visiting a doctor to ask about my tinnitis (which of course I learned is not fixable). Even then, my hearing rolled off a lot past 10k or so. Apparently that’s pretty normal, especially for men. No doubt it’s gotten worse since then.
    Somewhere on the web a few years ago I found a test that lets you find out just how high you can hear. I was actually pleasantly surprised, though I don’t remember the numbers now.
    Sure do wish I could get rid of this ringing, though.

    Reply

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