Hey,
Does anyone know if the melody to “She Moved Through the Fair” goes by another name? I’m not seeing it in any of my books of old airs, and I’m wondering if it goes by another title in Irish.
Best,
Joe
It’s not really one of the old ballads, if you consider Padraic Colum’s words anyway. There are other versions of the song, perhaps older, like the lovely Áine Uí Cheallaigh’s ‘Out of the Window’, that I have posted here for a few days. This recording from a CD/concert we did a decade and a half ago to raise funds for the Clare Cancer Centre.
One of the posters there states as if a fact that the phrase “lack of kind” meant lack of worldly goods and then cited the phrase “payment in kind” to illustrate. In my opinion, that makes two mistakes in one: firstly, I have always understood, and it seems to be taken as the most likely interpretation, that “kind” here means what it’s always meant in British English, ie family. The implication is that he doesn’t have family, or at least not worth counting, meaning that he comes from lowly stock. Secondly, the phrase “payment in kind” doesn’t come from the use of “kind” in the same meaning at all, but rather it means payment not by money but in some similar form to the good or service rendered.
Anyway, that aside, carry on …
I guess I kind of understand. It was just intended to be a kind offer of a source of additional information—I don’t want to be bound by the kind of comments found on the Session.
So in British English a “generous family” would be a kind kind? 
And, yes, I’m just kind of carrying on…
Best wishes.
Steve
I know Steve, and kind of you it was to do so 
.
Sometimes these things are a bit like a reflex; I find it almost impossible to pass an upside down Union Flag for instance without letting loose in an instant rant. An extraneous apostrophe in the neutral, possessive pronoun will do it too. But of course you wouldn’t be taking ownership for others’ comments, I know that.
I wonder how much additional info on the air is actually out there??
… I’m off to Google …
Mind you, it might not be “British” English … Is it known definitively which verses Colum wrote? Is it a reference to the same thing which we would talk about this side of the Irish Sea, or did the word mean something different in the Ireland of the time?
As usual with these things, I end up with way more questions than I start with …
All – Thanks for the context. That rendition of “Out the Window” is lovely. And duly noted on the Union Jack. (I, for one, get steamed up over Oxford commas.) Best, Joe
Hmmm, I always thought that the words said “lack of kine”, i.e. not enough cattle to be a prospective husband. But I’ve never seen the words written out, that’s just what I hear on the (admittedly few) recordings I have.
If you’re just looking for dots/abc, there are dozens of versions on JC’s abc tunefinder.
I don’t see that suggested anywhere. “Kine” is certainly one form of the word that is sung in many renditions of this song. But I’ve always taken that to be the usual poetic modification of the word “kin” - again, meaning family. It’s reasonably common in poems in English - it seems to me, particularly when sung - for that sort of modification to occur, for the sake of rhyme.
A dictionary (COED) indicates that kind and kin are from the same root and uses ‘class’ in the defintion as a near synonym (in the way that dictionariies infuriatingly do when you are trying to find out what either word means).
So “lack of kind” → “lack of class” → of low social status is a simple reading. I think I have read somewhere that ‘kin’ was originally more ‘people like us’ than ‘family’.
The first LP I ever bought has Anne Briggs singing it and I still like that version best.
lack of kine — people like us
I thought the same, and it makes more sense to me than “kind.” Must be the recovering lawyer in me.
About the melody, as a Highland piper it’s notable as being in that small class of Irish tunes that fit on the Highland pipes better than on the uilleann pipes, due to requiring the Flat 7th below the tonic.
On the Highland pipes the tonic is the “six finger note”. On the uilleann pipes, to get that low note, you have to play the tune up a 5th, using the “two finger note” as the tonic.
Likewise The March Of The King Of Laois sounds cool on the Highland pipes due to being able to play those low notes, which in D on the uilleann pipes have to be substituted with their octave.
Another example of such substitution is Rakish Paddy.
About the word “kind” I would have to look it up, but what first comes to mind is kin/kinder (cf Gaelic “clan”).
What I find fascinating is the kin/knee thing, obviously related to “gen” as in generation and genuflect (the image of a baby on the parent’s knee comes to mind).
OK I just looked it up, how interesting! The PIE root /GEN/ gave birth (!) to progeny, kin, akin, kind, genital, congenital, indigenous, genius, genealogy, genteel, etc and with the vowel in between the k/g and the n missing pregnant, knee, and kneel.
If it was “lack of kine” → ‘no cattle’ or “lack of kind” → ‘being from a different place/ethnic group/social class/culture’ it seems that whoever miss-heard one for the other was familar with one or both of the usages that are not now current. Do they occur in other songs ?