Peter Browne, who lectured here recently, played a recording of Seamus Ennis singing a particular tune and then playing it on pipes. The tune was something about a knotted cord(?)
Ring a bell, anyone… and if so, is it available on CD?
Thanks
Two Centuries of Celtic Music has a few tracks of Ennis singing. Simply delightful.
Dionys
Ennis recorded many songs. A knotted cord suggests Casadh an tSugáin. Was the song in English?
Ennis made a fair part of his living collecting songs and tunes for Alan Lomax, the BBC, and later RTÉ. He then recorded himself performing many of these tunes and songs (with his own touch, of course).
djm
djm, it was sung in Gaelic, and I think it was for RTE.
Maybe on one of his CDs? Where’s D’Arcy… he must know?!
that would be Casadh an tSugáin as DJM said.
Pat D’Arcy I’d say has other things on his mind at the minute 
Seamus Ennis did a ton of collecting for the Irish Folklore Commission, RTE, and the BBC. What is oft overlooked about him is that in addition to having a good command of all dialects of Irish spoken at the time (including, I’ve heard it said, the now-extinct dialect spoken around parts of West Clare), he was also quite conversant in Scottish Gaelic, a whole other kettle of fish. I remember once talking with the Irish poet Rody Gorman (who now lives on Skye) and him relating to me with much amazement how he had talked with people from Barra who not only remembered Seamus but had simply thought he was just a Scotsman from the mainland, his accent (in Gaelic) being only slightly different from their own.
To say that the man had a good ear is a profound understatement.
Isn’t " The Knotted Chord" also a reel? And isn’t it a version of Junior Crehan’s jig “The Mist-Covered Mountains”, which in turn comes from a 19th Century Scottish Gaelic song, Chi Mi Na Morbheanna? Is the snake biting it’s tail or is it past my bedtime?
Goodnight.
The Mist Covered Mountain was taken fro m ‘The Mist Covered Mountains of Home’ a waltz Jimmy Shand recorded but the ‘Twisting of the Hayrope’ or Casadh an tSugain has nothing to do with that air.
in the song a young girl asks an unwanted suitor to help her make te Sugan, a rope twisted from hay [makes seats for the Sugan chairs etc] as the rope gets longer and longer he steps back until he backs out of the door, which she shuts on him. And good riddance.
It is often said Ennis was a man of many voices and that his success as a collector was due to the fact he could speak to people in maybe not their own dialect but at least the dialectof the next parish and so won their trust.
there’s also a great story of Ennis as a singer and broadcaster. He had to do a programme on Labhras O Cadhla, who wasa great friend of his. This was in the days all broadcasting went live on air. As the program commenced he realised he had forgotten to bring his fieldrecordings of O Cadhla, he announced the song waited a few seconds and sang it himself and only a few very close friends of himself and O Cadhla ever realised.
[edited for typo fixing]
Great tale, Peter. Thanks for that one. 
djm
Funny this should come up just now.
My mother’s family used to spend their holidays on Barra with Calum Johnston, a noted Gaelic folklorist (and GHB player), and she was telling me the other day about an Irish man who used to come to Barra and visit Calum and play ‘a funny different kind of bagpipe’ and sing songs and tell stories, all in the Gaelic. This would have been round about the mid 60s, I would guess. She doesn’t know his name, but it can only have been the man Seumas himself.
One snippet that I didn’t know was that he also played the GHBs: apparently he once picked up Calum’s set and reeled off a set of marches, ‘just the same as Calum played’. How good my mother’s musical judgment is, I’m not sure, but she can certainly tell the difference between different Scottish playing styles. For most folk, mastering the West Coast ‘blas’ style is a life’s study in itself; to be able to do it as a sideline is something else.
Cheers,
Calum
Ennis’ father was a highly regarded player of the warpipes, Seamus learned the craft from him and is usually regarded by those who heard him play the scottish pipes as as good on the scottish pipes as he was on the irish ones
I never knew that Seamus Ennis played the ‘war pipes’. This is great to know. 20 or so years ago, I took up the GHBs because they were easier on the pocket than UPs. Though the UPs were THE instrument I wanted to play, I learned to play the other instrument and in addition to learning GHB fingering, I found that I was able to utilize UP finger as well. Not that this has anything to do with Ennis singing…pardon the cerebral flatulence. 
Many pipers played both warpipes and Irish pipes. Billy Taylor played and made both warpipes and Irish pipes. In addition to James Ennis, people like Dan Dowd, Matt Kiernan, Leo Purcell played both pipes.
There’s a great photo in some book of Ennis playing the Highland pipes while his son or daughter hitches a piggyback ride.
When Ennis first visited Scotland in the extra grim winter of 1947 he swam in the ocean every day, the people called him “The Mad Irishman.” Good title for a tune, that. He recounts stories like this on the Seamus Ennis Story, which RTE offers or offered as a two cassette package. It’s actually a television documentary sans picture. Some lucky few have the video.
Great photo. Where is it published?
Thanks, Peter, so is this particular ‘sung and then played’ tune available on a CD, is what I want to know?
Anyone have an email for Peter Browne… I’ll ask him?
I haven’t heard recordings of him singing it, dozens though of him playing the tune. You’d get him singing and playing Bean Dubh an Gleanna though. 
Ennis does Casadh an tSugáin (Twisting the Rope) and The Dark Lady of the Glen (Bean Dubh an Gleanna) as well as others on Folktrax FTX 374.
http://www.folktrax.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/
djm
Hi Peter, The jolly little tune Ennis and others sing the song to is different to the one played as an air of the same title, and I wonder whether you’ve ever heard anyone sing the song to that (slow) tune. You know the one; Neilli Mulligan plays it, Tomas O Ceannabhain plays a lovely flute setting of it on O aird go haird; it’s vaguely in C and G on the pipes.
Patrick
I have heard several versions sung to the usual air but how are we going to work out we are talking of same tune and song when eachof us says ‘the usual one’. 