Someone asked me if I knew it. I dind’t. So I looked it up on ABC tunefinder. What the hell is it? It’s in 4/4 and looks kind of freeform. I listened to the midi (which admittedly is not going to be a good example of performance) and it sounded like a jazz piano solo.
Is it really an air? Or is it some sort of modern Irish thing? Is there a good recording of it?
Thanks.
It was written by Finbar Furey, and recorded by the Fureys and others. It may have been [u]the first solo piece to be recorded on the low whistle[/u].
Try http://www.thestore24.com/Music/Album.aspx?A_ID=R+++515627&P_ID=P++++38947
Here are some words:
The Lonesome Boatman
In the middle of the sleeping lake
The Lonesome boatman dwells,
Around him rise the bracken hills
The dreamy glens and dells.
The skies are red and rolling
Tinted in the twilight’s velvet hue
The ragged scarecrow peers in relief
To where the crackling crows have flown.
The lonesome boatman doesn’t move
His clothes are old and worn
Oh, lonesome boatman reveal to me why,
Why you look forlorn.
Is it life’s sorrows
Or a forgotten memory that you have found
Or do you listen to the wind
For the boatmen you’ve seen drown?
Oh, lonesome boatman, there’s a gleaming star
High above your head.
The waters glisten in the dusk
Are they tears that you have shed?
Oh, lonesome boatman, the birds are here,
The morning shadows fall.
Oh, friends, why must you be
But a dying shadow on my lonely cell wall.
I have a recording of the Fureys playing this,and while introducing it,Finbar Furey says that he wrote the tune many years ago but coiuld never find words to fit the melody,so he wrote a poem called silent annie which he recites before going into the tune.
Thanks Mike. The link doesn’t work though.
There are two versions of it at the end of The Low Whistle Book which, even if you’re infernally written-music dependent like me, are hard to read because the print is too small.
Still, I’ve managed, and it’s fun to play. But it does not hew to a standard form, so unless you like winging it maybe it’s good to have listened to a Finbar Furey recording.
To me, it has a strong Spaghetti-Western feel to it. You think Finbar could have written it after seeing “A Fistful of Dollars”? 
Funny. They both work for me. The one to the music is Public Radio MusicSource, and it’s on “Essential Fureys”.
Does anyone have an MP3 of ‘Boatman’? The CD that comes with Low Whistle cuts off about halfway through the book.
There’s a copy on the way to you now Father.
Slan,
D.
Thanks to dubhlinn I’m all set up.
And thanks to everyone who posted.
James McNally (of the AfroCelts) has also recorded a version of the Lonesome Boatman on his Everybreath album, with an electronica beat behind it (so definitely not for the puredroppers out there…), giving it an even more modern sound to Finbar’s melody.
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B000006NMV/qid%3D1069629585/sr%3D11-1/ref%3Dsr_11_1/102-3950137-1368965
Thanks! This is one of those tunes that I’d heard a lot about, but never heard.
Hi, Im wondering if someone could help me. Im a music student and I’ve used ‘The Lonesome Boatman’ for a project. Im a traditional music player and I always thought it was a traditional Irish air. I’ve just realised that Finbar Furey wrote it! Is there any chance that it’s still a public domain piece?
[hannibal lechter voice]Hello Clarice[/hannibal lechter voice]
I’ve always wanted to say that.
Email Finbar, and ask for permission. Can’t imagine he’d say no.