Comments

Yeats related tunes and songs.

I have been asked to put together a collection of tunes and songs with a WB Yeats connection. Has anyone here on the yellow board any suggestions? Thanks in advance.

# Posted on February 26th 2009 by John McCartin

Re: Yeats related tunes and songs.

The Stolen Child (poem by Yeats) as performed by The Waterboys (album: Fisherman's Blues).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jg-oJKYIinQ

# Posted on February 26th 2009 by Henk Bos

Re: Yeats related tunes and songs.

here's one

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jg-oJKYIinQ

cheers, pipewatcher

# Posted on February 26th 2009 by pipewatcher

Re: Yeats related tunes and songs.

near miss

# Posted on February 26th 2009 by pipewatcher

Re: Yeats related tunes and songs.

Ha!

Beat you by seconds!

# Posted on February 26th 2009 by Henk Bos

Re: Yeats related tunes and songs.

great minnds, eh Henk Bos

# Posted on February 26th 2009 by pipewatcher

Re: Yeats related tunes and songs.

http://www.yeatssociety.org/ydiscog.html

seems pretty elaborate.

# Posted on February 26th 2009 by Henk Bos

Re: Yeats related tunes and songs.

that should hold someone's attention for a while

# Posted on February 26th 2009 by pipewatcher

Re: Yeats related tunes and songs.

Down by the Sally Gardens,
the words are by Yeats, tune trad.

http://www.ireland-information.com/irishmusic/downbythesallygardens.shtml

# Posted on February 26th 2009 by cathycook

Re: Yeats related tunes and songs.

How's it going John

There's a reel called the wild swans at coole. It's on a liz and yvonne kane album. It's in tune section on this site

Good luck
Colm

# Posted on February 26th 2009 by colmh

Re: Yeats related tunes and songs.

The Lake Isle Of Innisfree was sung by Judy Collins in the 60s or 70s. I remember the single - rather nice.

I think The Song Of Wandering Aengus has been set to music, too.

Down By The Sally Gardens was sung to perfection by Maire Brennan with Clannad.

# Posted on February 26th 2009 by nicholas

Re: Yeats related tunes and songs.

I think 'swans at coole' is an air by Maire Bhreathnach. But aside from that, what sort of connections? I mean you could pick any 'Sligo' tune and say it is connected but it wouldn't really be. You could say 'Easter Snow' is connected because Yeats wrote a well know poem on the Easter rising etc...

# Posted on February 26th 2009 by the wounded hussar

Re: Yeats related tunes and songs.

beg your pardon - there's a reel and air of the same name

# Posted on February 26th 2009 by the wounded hussar

Re: Yeats related tunes and songs.

The Munster Grass hornpipe gets its name from a Yeats poem or a line from a poem anyway

# Posted on February 26th 2009 by MC2

Re: Yeats related tunes and songs.

There's a lot of references in Ed Reavy's compositions. The title of the reel "Never Was Piping So Gay" comes from Yeats' poem Host of the Air - O'Driscoll awakens from a dream in which his wife Bridget was taken by the Host, and can still hear the strange unearthly sound of piping in the distant air - "And never was piping so sad, And never was piping so gay." Reavy's reel "O'Leary's Ireland" refers to Yeats' "September 1913": "Romantic Ireland's dead and gone, It's with O'Leary in the grave" The reel "The Highest Hill In Sligo" refers to Under Ben Bulben. Then there's the reel "The Wild Swans at Coole". Then there's the two hornpipes Munster Grass and Connemara Skies, coming from the Yeats line "full of Munster grass and Connemara skies"

# Posted on February 26th 2009 by RichardB

Re: Yeats related tunes and songs.

The O`Neill family of Moy,Co.Tyrone did just that in 1975, with Charlie and Paddy on fiddles and Marie singing and playing harp.I have an L.P. of it somewhere

# Posted on February 26th 2009 by cos

Re: Yeats related tunes and songs.

"Ballad of the Foxhunter" as done by Cherish the Ladies, sung to a version of Foxhunters slip jig.

# Posted on February 26th 2009 by TomB-R

Re: Yeats related tunes and songs.

"Song of the wandering Aengus", as performed by Christy Moore, "Ride On" album.

# Posted on February 26th 2009 by jlocky

Re: Yeats related tunes and songs.

When you're done with this project, you might read Frank O'Connor's description of a song-writing collaboration between Yeates and George Russel. It can be found in "My Father's Son," if memory serves. All the best.

# Posted on February 26th 2009 by Atahualpa Quigley

Re: Yeats related tunes and songs.

Yeats spelled his name with only one e, Mr. Quigley.

# Posted on February 26th 2009 by Atahualpa Quigley

Re: Yeats related tunes and songs.

Sean Doyle does a beautiful song called The Fiddler of Dooney on his CD The Light and the Half-Light.

# Posted on February 26th 2009 by bud sargent

Re: Yeats related tunes and songs.

Sean Tyrrell has done arrangements of Wandering Aengus (on 'The Orchard' CD) and The Stolen Child (on 'Belladonna').

# Posted on February 26th 2009 by DaveL35

Re: Yeats related tunes and songs.

Sarkozy's wife, Carla Bruni, did an album of songs set to poems by Yeats and by Emily Dickinson.

Romantically, Carla's taste appears to run toward midgets. But, poetically, the chick has great taste.

Speaking of Yeats, his 1920 poem "The Second Coming" eerily describes 2009, I doth intuit. Joni Mitchell (another chick with great taste) set that very poem to music several years ago.

# Posted on February 26th 2009 by NEW Pure Drop® Ear Canal Oil

Re: Yeats related tunes and songs.

Is '' Sean O'Dwyer Of The Glen ''

Not one ??? -- jim,,,

http://www.thesession.org/tunes/display/6554

# Posted on February 26th 2009 by FIDDLE4

Re: Yeats related tunes and songs.

I'm a big fan of 'Song of Wandering Aengus'.

But Yeats didn't 'write' Salley Gardens, he plagarised it from 'You Rambling Boys of Pleasure'.

# Posted on February 27th 2009 by bc_box_player

Re: Yeats related tunes and songs.

Carla Bruni is a lovely chick but she sings like a sozzled cat with laryngitis.

# Posted on February 27th 2009 by nicholas

Re: Yeats related tunes and songs.

Nicholas--

When Sarkozy cozies Carla, I'm guessing she's forgiven for her poor set of pipes.

# Posted on February 27th 2009 by NEW Pure Drop® Ear Canal Oil

Re: Yeats related tunes and songs.

That's a great new verb - to 'cozy' someone... :-)

# Posted on February 27th 2009 by bc_box_player

Re: Yeats related tunes and songs.

bc_box_player (bloody underscores should be banned!) is right, as I understand it. Yeats is supposed to have written it down after half-remembering Rambling Boys of Pleasure after he'd heard it one day (I won't add any more apocryphal details). He made a half-decent song out of a very decent one. Rambling Boys of Pleasure is one of my favourite post-first-Planxty-manifestation songs by Andy Irvine. It's on the album "After The Break" by Planxty. I vaguely remember Polly Bolton doing a version that combined both songs. A nice idea but it didn't quite do it for me.

# Posted on February 28th 2009 by Steve Shaw

Re: Yeats related tunes and songs.

There is a live recording of The Stolen Child on the Waterboys' MySpace page, with the spoken words by Mike Scott as well as the singing and the flute (of Richard Naiff) more prominent in the mix (you have to select it on the jukebox at the following link).

http://www.myspace.com/mikescottwiterboys

The Waterboys' "Dream Harder" (1993) album has a song "Love and Death" which is also Yeats' words and Mike Scott's music, I think.

# Posted on February 28th 2009 by lottiemaus