{"id":8255,"date":"2011-08-10T06:44:14","date_gmt":"2011-08-10T10:44:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/?p=8255"},"modified":"2011-08-10T06:44:14","modified_gmt":"2011-08-10T10:44:14","slug":"midweek-music-break-clannad-the-fairy-queen","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/2011\/08\/midweek-music-break-clannad-the-fairy-queen\/","title":{"rendered":"Midweek Music Break: Clannad, “The Fairy Queen”"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"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<\/a>: 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.<\/p>\n

Magical Ring<\/em>\u00a0(1982), their first album after Enya’s departure, became a huge international hit. (U2 played “Theme from Harry’s Game<\/a>,” 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.<\/p>\n

The song in question, “The Fairy Queen,” was composed by the “blind harper” of Irish music, Turlough Carolan<\/a> (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<\/a> says:<\/p>\n

“The Fairy Queen” celebrated an imaginary battle fought between the Sidhe Deag and Sidhe Mor.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(“Deag” seems to be a typo for “Beag.” The Sidhe Beag and Sidhe Mor — variously spelled, translated literally as Big Fairy Mound<\/em>\u00a0or Hill<\/em>\u00a0and Little Fairy Mound\/Hill<\/em> — 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<\/a>.)<\/p>\n

All of which certainly seems to imply that it once had lyrics.<\/p>\n

Still: lyrics about a battle<\/em>\u00a0—\u00a0even to celebrate or commemorate one?\u00a0This<\/em>\u00a0little winged creature of a tune?<\/p>\n

[Below, click Play button to begin <\/em>The Fairy Queen. While audio is playing, volume control appears at left — a row of little vertical bars. This clip is 2:40 long.]<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

[audio:thefairyqueen_clannad.mp3|titles=’The Fairy Queen’|artists=Clannad]<\/div>\n

(By the way, “The Fairy Queen” also appears on\u00a0Rogha: The Best of Clannad<\/em>\u00a0(1996), which is where I first heard it.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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: […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","h5ap_radio_sources":[],"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"activitypub_content_warning":"","activitypub_content_visibility":"","activitypub_max_image_attachments":3,"activitypub_interaction_policy_quote":"anyone","activitypub_status":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[2252,74],"tags":[2504,2505,2506,2507],"class_list":{"0":"post-8255","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-midweek-music-break","7":"category-music","8":"tag-clannad","9":"tag-the-fairy-queen","10":"tag-turlough-carolan","11":"tag-harp","12":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6kZSG-299","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8255","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8255"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8255\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8255"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8255"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8255"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}