Various Artists – Fire Draw Near (An Anthology of Traditional Irish Song and Music)
River Lea – 8 October 2021
Released on River Lea Records (a division of Rough Trade), Fire Draw Near – An Anthology of Traditional Irish Song and Music is an important and commendable collection of Irish songs and tunes.
Curated by Ian Lynch, perhaps best known as a founding member and vocalist with Dublin band Lankum, the selection covers recordings from almost the last seventy years. It is, in many ways, a passion project for Ian. Over the last few months, Ian has hosted a monthly podcast and radio show, also titled Fire Draw Near, which explores Irish traditional music and for which he conducts considerable research. The anthology is a result of that project.
With an MLitt in Irish Folklore and having lectured at University College Dublin on traditional music and song, Ian is the ideal ambassador for these songs and tunes. The album comes with extensive sleeve notes, meticulously researched by Ian, which provides a valuable insight into both the selection of tracks and individual performers.
Ian’s knowledge and passion has meant he has been able to cherry-pick some favourites and one-off tracks for this significant collection. There are a number of rare treats here, as Ian notes: “This LP is a collection of thirteen rare, strange and wonderful gems from the Irish tradition. Recorded in various parts of the country over a period of over 60 years between 1947 and 2013. They show us a strong, multi-faceted and vibrant musical tradition in the country; one that still exists in the present day. The settings are varied – bars, living rooms, campsites, recording studios – as are the backgrounds of those who perform. The music of the Travellers, who tended to the flame of tradition while the rest of society began to lose interest is well-represented, as are styles ranging from sean-nós singing in Connemara, Donegal fiddle-playing, uilleann piping from Dublin and English language singing of ballads both bawdy and beautiful from across Ireland.”
The collection opens with a tune from The Raineys; Paddy ‘Big Rainey’, his brother Stephen ‘Spare Parts’, and Paddy’s wife, Bridie. The Raineys were a Traveller family who would busk the fairs and markets of Connemara. Their interpretation of the traditional song ‘Woman of the House’ was recorded in Freeney’s Pub, in Letterfrack, Connemara in 1956 by Tony Knowland, a visiting professor.
While ‘Woman of the House’ is a short little tune, just under a minute and a half, it’s a thoroughly cracking introduction, the sound of the pub crowd and general hubbub of voices adding to the atmosphere. Both brothers played fiddle, and Knowland noted that Paddy’s bow was strung “not with horse-hair but what looked like carpet-thread, fastened to the heel through a cotton-reel nailed on it”. It may have been recorded 65 years ago, but its energy and enthusiasm feel so immediate and so fresh it could easily have been recorded today.
The Traveller tradition features heavily on Fire Draw Near. Mary Doran, a Traveller from Waterford, features with ‘When I Was In Horseback’, recorded at a Travellers’ camp outside Belfast in August 1952.
Mary’s song is an abridged version of ‘The Unfortunate Rake’ with her rendition focusing on the tragic, emotional climax of the song, the Rake’s funeral.
It is a pure, unaccompanied song. Mary’s raw, emotional voice draws us in with a nuance and tone which seems older than her youthful years. Recorded by collector Peter Kennedy, his original notes recorded that, after the men had “drunk their fill and fallen off to sleep, Mary Doran, Winnie Ryan & Lal Smith, 21, 22 & 23yrs old, with their babes-in-arms, grasp the microphone in turns and croon their oldest love songs in a highly decorative style.”
Fellow Traveller Johnny Doran also features with his fiery set of reels ‘Colonel Fraser/My Love is in America/Rakish Paddy/The Bunch of Keys’ recorded at University College Dublin in 1947. It is a rare recording, in fact, the only one of Johnny in existence. A short time after the recording, Johnny was paralysed in an accident and died a few short years later.
Doran was known as the ‘cream of all the pipers’, and you can hear he was a singular talent. Developing his skill whilst busking, it is tragic that only this recording of his playing exists. Still, it also makes you wonder how many other incredible performers made their way playing at fairs and races yet were never recorded.
The collection is very much a personal one for Ian. What is at the heart of tradition? For Ian, it is “family and community; it’s something about the embodiment of a different state of mind and it’s something about nourishing the soul during the dark parts of the year. It’s something about aunties and uncles, parents and grandparents, neighbours and friends.”
The passing down of the songs is essential too, and this anthology is an important tool in that handing over of the torch. Hopefully, listeners will adopt these songs into their own repertoire. As Ian notes, when growing up, “Everyone has their song to sing and you’re so young that you’ve never heard most of them before. People sing along to the bits they know and laugh and smile and make jokes when they don’t. The later the night becomes the better the songs get and the faster the repartee becomes. Your older cousins teach you dirty words and you’re surprised to hear your Nana tell even dirtier jokes. You laugh until you cry and then cry until you laugh again.”
Nora Cleary’s ‘The Codfish’ is a perfect example of the Nana telling a dirty joke. Nora was in her early 50s when she recorded this in The Hand, Miltown Malbay, Co. Clare in July 1976, but it sounds much older. It’s an old song, first appearing in print in 1643 as ‘The Sea Crabb’. It’s a bawdy tale too; the earliest text sees the wife pregnant and craving crab. As Ian notes, it ends with a description of the creature hanging from the wife’s nether parts, before it reaches out and grabs the rescuing husband’s nose: “Alas’, quoth the good man, ‘that ever I came hither, He has joined my wife’s tayle and my nose together.”
It’s also hard not to smile at John Reilly Jr.’s ‘The Jolly Tinker’, recorded at Co. Roscommon in 1971. As the sleeve notes tell us, Reilly was in his twenties and living in a bow tent in a bog in Cloongrehan, Cootehall, Co. Roscommon when he was recorded by the collector Tom Munnelly. It’s a fun song, Reilly opens with a laugh, and you can hear the smile on his face as he sings. And it’s infectious.
With thirteen tracks on the anthology, there is much to savour here, but Joe Holmes’ version of ‘The Dark-Eyed Gypsy’ is a sweet highlight. Recorded in the north of Ireland in 1975, it captures the fiddler, lilter and singer on a solo song, just his voice, but what an evocative voice it was. Then in his late 50s (he died in 1978), you can hear a life hard-lived in his voice. Occasionally the vocals falter, occasionally they waver, but the seam of youth is still there. The glint still shines.
The anthology closes with a tune, ‘The Cat That Kittled in Jamie’s Wig’ performed by the fiddler Francie Byrne. Recorded in Kilcar in August 1983, it’s a short little strathspey, but another recording of a master fiddler who is, perhaps, somewhat overlooked today. As a side note, Ian notes that at the time of writing the sleeve notes (December 2020), Francie’s widow Kitty had just passed away at the age of 107. She was believed to be the second oldest person in Ireland.
In his notes, Ian looks back to his childhood and his first introduction to the tradition: “These are some of my best and earliest memories and although it took me years to realise it, my subsequent mining of the seam of tradition has been a quest to rediscover the raw material of those magical nights. That strange undiluted something in the air. I still can’t do the feeling justice with words. Instead I’ve listened hard and tried to experience it again. The tracks I’ve selected for this album are the closest I’ve come. Wild but never out of control, simple in structure but endlessly complex, sometimes dark but always comforting. I can feel the same unhinged energy of those nights in the music of The Raineys and Johnny Doran; the same devilish humour in the mischievous singing of Nora Cleary and John Reilly Jr.; the same tones of distilled emotion in the singing of Mary Doran and Grace Toland. It’s music that‘s spoken directly to my soul. I hope that you experience a bit of this for yourself.”
For anyone that’s new or already has an interest in traditional music and song, Fire Draw Near – An Anthology of Traditional Irish Song and Music is an essential and worthy release, but, above that, it is also a thoroughly enjoyable, irresistible and inspiring set of songs and tunes.
In addition, there are several performers on here that I wasn’t familiar with, and a sign of the anthology’s success is that it leaves you wanting more. I’ll certainly be checking out Ian’s podcast and will be searching out for more recordings by many of the performers on Fire Draw Near. The legacy lives on.
Pre-Order Fire Draw Near: https://ffm.to/firedrawnear
Tracks from the album feature on our latest show: Folk Show: Episode 103
Fire Draw Near Album tracklisting:
- The Raineys – Woman Of The House
- Mary Doran – When I Was In Horseback
- Tom Lenihan – Paddy’s Panacea
- Tommy Reck – The Kilfrush / The Trip To Durrow
- Frank Harte – The Finding Of Moses
- Nora Cleary – The Codfish
- Joe Heaney – Amhrán na hEascainne
- John Reilly Jr – The Jolly Tinker
- Grace Toland – Flora
- Johnny Doran – Colonel Fraser, My Love Is In America, Rakish Paddy
- Luke Cheevers – Ulysses
- Joe Holmes – The Dark Eyed Gypsy
- Francie Byrne – The Cat That Kittled In Jamie’s Wig
Find out more about Ian’s ‘Fire Draw Near’ Podcast: https://campsite.bio/firedrawnear
Album compiled and researched by Ian Lynch.
Compilation produced by Tim Chipping.
Artwork by Huargo.