If you’ve followed Irish-Gaelic-Celtic-folk-New Age (whew!) music for a while, you almost certainly know one thing about the group of brothers and sisters performing as Clannad: best-selling, award-winning solo singer-songwriter Enya began her career with them. Indeed, most of their albums sound (to my untrained ear) like Enya albums, with numerous more layers of complexity: vocal, electronic, and instrumental. Like her albums, Clannad’s have gained notice not just for their sound but for their lyrics, almost entirely in Gaelic.
Magical Ring (1982), their first album after Enya’s departure, became a huge international hit. (U2 played “Theme from Harry’s Game,” the album’s first track, at the end of every concert between 1983 and 1987.) But one song in particular stands out as a straight-ahead instrumental, performed by a gentle (all but invisible) flute and a single stringed instrument: a harp.
The song in question, “The Fairy Queen,” was composed by the “blind harper” of Irish music, Turlough Carolan (sometimes “O’Carolan”) who lived in the late 17th and early 18th centuries. There seems some confusion as to whether he ever wrote lyrics for the song; one source I looked at while putting this together said that he was a much better harpist than lyricist, so the words have long been forgotten while the melody has lived on. Another source says:
“The Fairy Queen” celebrated an imaginary battle fought between the Sidhe Deag and Sidhe Mor.
(“Deag” seems to be a typo for “Beag.” The Sidhe Beag and Sidhe Mor — variously spelled, translated literally as Big Fairy Mound or Hill and Little Fairy Mound/Hill — apparently were, in Irish folklore, two neighboring fairy communities. One person’s attempt to track down the lyrics for a precursor to “The Fairy Queen” appears here.)
All of which certainly seems to imply that it once had lyrics.
Still: lyrics about a battle — even to celebrate or commemorate one? This little winged creature of a tune?
[Below, click Play button to begin The Fairy Queen. While audio is playing, volume control appears at left — a row of little vertical bars. This clip is 2:40 long.]
(By the way, “The Fairy Queen” also appears on Rogha: The Best of Clannad (1996), which is where I first heard it.)
Tessa says
I used to like the music of Clannad, especially in their early days. But I’ve never taken to Enya – too airy-fairy for my tastes. Speaking of which (fairies), to me, as a child, the Sidhe Beag were just the Little People and, like most Irish children of the time, I fervently believed in them.
In those days, people in some rural parts of Ireland would dress their little boys in girls’ clothes, because they feared the Little People would steal them away. Into the late 60s and early 70s, it was quite common to see scruffy little boys running around the countryside in dresses.
The Chieftains’ harpist, Derek Bell, released a wonderful album some years ago, called Carolan’s Receipt, which includes Sidhe Beag Sidhe Mor. I still have a copy on vinyl, although I believe it is available on CD.
John says
Tessa: I can’t imagine anyone whose opinions and reflections on Irish music I’d listen to with more confidence. Thanks for the recommendations!
I’ve got a lot more Enya than Clannad in my playlist. Both of them, for me, serve as excellent background music to write to, depending on the scene and who’s in it. I can’t even start to know the words — which is probably why they work this well for me. (But “The Fairy Queen,” when it comes up in the random mix, almost always stops me in the middle of what I’m attending to.)
I’m looking for that Derek Bell rendition, in MP3 form. And looking… and looking… :)
Growing up in Jacksonville, FL, The Missus and a girlfriend had in their neighborhood a fairy ring of mushrooms which they used to monitor, lying in the grass with their heads close to the ground — but apparently just kept missing the action. Fairies are tricky that way.
Nance says
We went through a period at my house where I played Celtic music in the background all the time. Something about the rhythms works well with my heartbeat and those minor keys hook my brain waves and alpha them out.
We found the more martial beats perfect for house-cleaning and…odd, this…Christmas Tree trimming. When my daughter went away to college, she took several of the Celtic CD’s with her. She found they were perfect sound track for writing long research papers.
I’ve often thought the Celts really understood war better than the rest of us. They knew it was all about destiny and doom and the unbearable lightness of being…they knew that they were “feast for a crow” (Sting)
Tessa says
I think it was G. K. Chesterton who wrote “For the great Gaels of Ireland / Are the men that God made mad, / For all their wars are merry / And all their songs are sad.”
Miriam says
Celtic music is the stuff I wrap myself in when I’m edgy and cranky and don’t want to deal with the world anymore. This song is gorgeous.
(Love that quote too, Tessa.)
John says
Nance: Celtic is the default soundtrack when I’m writing from the point of view of a particular one of my characters. She didn’t know about its practical applications for Christmas-tree trimming, though, so she thanks you for the tip!
We’ve been watching the HBO Game of Thrones mini-series — a treatment of a series of medieval-fantasy novels by George R.R. Martin. (Yesterday’s NYT Book Review covered the books+TV series together, in a piece called “George RR Martin and the Rise of Fantasy.”)
In it, a wild, tribal nation of horsemen called the Dothraki live across a narrow sea from the more conventionally kings-nobles-knights-peasants featured as “main characters.” While the latter sort of casually dismiss the Dothraki as being of little consequence — they’re “uncivilized,” plus they have no (current) means of transport across the water — they also clearly fear them. Alien brutes they may be, but they’re brutes you probably don’t want to find yourself aligned against in combat.
I am pretty sure that we romanticize the ancient Celts, like we do much of (pre-)history. I’m about as sure that I’d actually be scared out of my bejabbers if I ever had to so much as communicate with one in real life.
John says
That’s a great quote, Tessa. The more I read it, the more horrifically tragic it seems to me.
John says
Miriam: I wonder if the Celtic music you prefer at such times is the mild, zone-you-out stuff, or the drumming-thunder variety???
Þráinn Guðbjörnsson says
I want this to be played at my funeral.