The Moorlough Shore
Lord Baker
Paddy’s Lament
Óró, Sé Do Bheatha ‘Bhaile
Nil Sén La
Weila Weila Waile
I’m looking for music to them and can’t find it and I thought some of them might be better known by a different name. I’ve looked on the ABC tune finder but it didn’t work. I’ve also tried learning by ear, but I end up improvising and playing something completely different. If I can help it, I’d rather not buy a whole book of tunes to learn one or two.
the only one I’ve heard of is Paddy’s Lament, and maybe that was Paddy’s (something else). Try searching JC’s using just one word from the title - Moorlough Shore might be Molly of Lough Erne Shore, for example.
Tune names get twisted & mis-spelt frequently. The Gaelic ones may have alternate spellings.
Paddy’s lament is actually called “Paddy’s Lamentation”. I think its traditional, but Mary Black does a real nice version of it and it was partially heard in “Gangs of New York”.
Lyrics are freel available (google search) but a quick search failed to turn up the score in free form - there are several places you can buy it, though.
Weila Weila Waile is also called “The Cruel Mother” Tommy Makem and the Clancys did the only recorded version I ever heard and the lyric can be found in association with their discography. Trillian has a couple of scores, but I’m not sure they’re the same tune.
Weila Weila Waile is also called “The Cruel Mother” Tommy Makem and the Clancys did the only recorded version I ever heard and the lyric can be found in association with their discography.
I’ve heard all the songs recorded, that’s why I wanted to try to learn to play them. Sinéad O’Connor does the first four (I haven’t heard Mary Black’s Paddy’s Lament, Sinéad’s version makes my spine tingle), Clannad did Nil Sén La, and The Dubliners did Weila, Weila, Waile.
The only recording of Lord Baker I’ve heard is a duet with Christy Moore and Sinéad. It lasts 11 minutes and 38 seconds. I love it.
You have reached the second stage of your assimilation.
First is the simple fact of WhOA, than an increasing hunger for the music of the fairies, then busking for free, and on and on until, inevitably: the pipes.
Is “Nil Sen La” the same as “Neil Shay Na Law”? If so, the Cathal McConnell Irish Pennywhistle tutor has the sheet music, as well as the tune on the accompanying disc. You might also find it on the web under its English name, “It’s Not Yet Day.” I’ve always suspected that “Neil Shay Na Law” was a phonetic rendering of something else, and “Nil Sen La” looks like it might be the same thing with a more accurately Irish spelling.
Sounds like a perfect opportunity to learn them by ear, Cran…
I’ve been trying for 3 months and it doesn’t come easily for me, at all. Something just isn’t right. I think I might be playing in the wrong key, who knows? I’ll stick to sheet music, which I can sort of manage.
Is “Nil Sen La” the same as “Neil Shay Na Law”?
I think the spelling would be: Níl Sé 'n Lá.
I have the cd right here in front of me and Clannad has it spelled Níl Sén La or Nil Sén La. You can’t really tell if it’s i or í.
Probably…that looks more Irish than any of the other spellings I’ve found. It does appear to be the same tune…I did a Yahoo search and came up with one spelled “nil sen la” and one spelled “nil se n lai,” both of which are translated as “It’s not yet day” or “It’s not the day”…so it’s likely it’s the same tune as the one in the McConnell book. Couldn’t find the music (printed or recorded) on-line though, even plugging every spelling I could think of, as well as the English name into various search engines and JC’s Tunefinder.
It’s the very first tune in the McConnell book…definitely a bare bones version, but very pretty.
If that sounds right, you’ve got the bare bones of the tune, and can probably go on from there.
That sounds like the same song to me. Thanks.
Re: Óró, Sé Do Bheatha ‘Bhaile, I know it’s about a woman named Grace O’Malley and she was ‘a warrior noblewoman of Ireland who lived at the time of Elizabeth I, and whose ships were a formidable force of the Irish west coast’.
Cran, I was just trying to help you narrow your search. I don’t have much Gaeilge, but “Nil Sén La” doesn’t make sense by its spelling, which isn’t a big deal because the pronunciation would be close but not the same. I’ve cetainly seen misspellings on CDs in English! Just goes to show you can’t believe everything you read. On the other hand, it could be a Donegal regional spelling, which isn’t out of the question. It just ain’t standard.
Ah, it’s just that I’ve been through much the same problems finding names for tunes I’ve known for years . For example, there are a couple of tunes I learned by ear many years ago that I only learned the “real” names for in the past year or so. One was a tune I picked up off the Irish Rovers album “Emmigrate! Emmigrate!” The tune name was never given, as it was used background music for a poem called “The Passing of the Gael,” and for years, that’s what I called it. Last year, when I was deciding to buy an Elfsong, I ran across the same tune on Sandy’s site, called “The Mortin Ban,” but I couldn’t find it anywhere else. Then I bought “Traditional Slow Airs of Ireland,” and found “Mo Mhuirnin Ban” (sorry, can’t do diacritical marks)…so finally, after 25 years, I actually know the name of this nice tune! Then there’s “Harvest Home,” which I only knew as the tune Will Millar played at the end of “Lament for the Molly McGuires”…
The web makes things so much easier (as does the current popularity of Irish music), but still…
I also share Cranberry’s problems, sometimes, with picking up a purely instrumental tune by ear (i.e., if I hit a wrong note, I’ll lose the thread of the tune), unless I’ve got it very firmly in my head. I don’t have that problem with any tune I know words for (even if the words are in a language I don’t understand)…maybe because I’ve spent more of my life as a singer than as an instrumentalist, or maybe it’s just a different way of learning. Cran, if you’re having trouble “losing” notes when you try acquiring new tunes by ear, try this…learn to sing or lilt the tune first (even if you have to make up words or syllables). Sometimes that helps.
Singing, humming, lilting: yes. If there’s a tune that I want, that’s often if not usually how I go about it, particularly tunes in a different key than my flute would play. Get it down to your satisfaction, and then just raise or lower the whole thing in your singing of it to fit your particular whistle when you start going at the fingering.
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Thanks.