I’ve encountered at least two melodic versions of it, both very different from each other. One version is the song as done by Deanta (and reportedly, although I don’t know, close to Paddy Tunney’s version), and the other I’ve only heard played on the uilleann pipes. Michael Cooney plays a setting of this particular version, which I heard yesterday, and which I recognised as the first version I learned. Recently I’d assumed my first version learned was a bad one due to my exposure to Deanta’s version, but now I see otherwise.
Does anyone have any links or other info to sung versions of the tune such as Cooney plays it?
Andy Irvine does a brilliant job of this song with Planxty: it is the last track on the Cold Blow and the Rainy Night album.
Mick O’Brien plays a very similar version to this (and to the Michael Cooney version) on the “Live Recordings from the Willliam Kennedy Piping Festival” CD by the Armagh pipers Club
Andy Irvine’s version with “Planxty” is still my favourite. Edinburgh flute-player and Northumbrian-piper Jimmy Young recorded a version on pipes on the very first “House Band” recording. English guitarist Martin Simpson does a great instrumental version on slide-guitar on a couple of his recordings. It was also recorded as a slow air on concertina by Michael O’Raghallaigh on his CD “Inside Out”, which was released last year
Thanks. Believe it or not, I’ve never owned a copy of Cold Blow and a Rainy Night! I need to check it out; looked for clips on the web of Irvine singing it, but the clips were partial and so I couldn’t really make comparisons.
Any other sources for the as-played-by-Cooney version? Sung, preferably.
If I find anyone with CDs of Hush or Up Against the Flatirons I’ll let you know.
The first version I learned is, basically, the same as the one on Cold Blow and a Rainy Night. That’s the one I do when piping, and I learned it a while back off of St. Paul’s own Tom Dahill (thx, Tom!). Great tune. The other I play backup to for a singer. Also a great tune, but not so pipe-friendly, I think.
I had trouble with the first try, but on closing the first download, and then starting a new one, it came in quickly and played immediately in RealPlayer. … for about 2/3 of the tune.
Very nice! BTW, at least that that I was able to listen to.
Ah… third time’s the charm… I downloaded the file to my hard-drive this time and then played it and though it was slow to download, it played all the way through… loverly!
I haven’t heard Cooney’s version, but Cherish the Ladies have a nice version of a song by that name on Woman of the House. You can hear a clip of the song at Amazon, but mind your keyboards; Heidi Talbot’s voice may make you drool.
Yeah, that’s the second version I learned. Like I said, I don’t play that one so much as accompany it - at this time - but I’m thinking flute should be as fine a medium as any for it. No reason not to play it; I my airs.
Here’s a verse unused (for no particular reason I know of other than an arbitrary, if somewhat failed, attempt at brevity) by the singer I back up:
“On the prairie and plain sure the wheat waves all golden
The maple gives sugar to sweeten your tay.
You won’t want for corn cob way out in Saskatchewan
When you’re in the green fields of Americay.”
But I recall now that his version, as he learned it, didn’t include this verse. Me being not all that far removed from the lore of the North American rural life, the “corn cob” bit makes me snicker, set as it is amid the simple beauty of the rest of the verse’s images.
Its all propaganda! Sugar maples don’t grow in Saskatchewan, and as for corn I have a friend who lives in New York, who was surprised and dismayed that he could not get fresh corn on the cob in small town Saskatchewan in spring when he came to visit.
I think the maples bit was less poetic license than a quantum shift to the east. Sort of like the poet has trouble focusing. Could be the pain of those scratchy corncobs; things are so much better now that we have toilet tissue, after all.
SteveJ (or Brother Steve’s) one time (or maybe current) bandmate Sine McKenna had a terrific song written by a stots-gaelic immigrant to Manitoba, in which (s)he warns future immigrants that all is not as promised: There’s no peat and they can’t get warm, etc.
It’s in Gaelic, of course. I’m not sure where she got it.
A bit of googling doesn’t turn up either lyrics or a translation.
The person I learned the song from says that by “corn cob” they actually mean any kind of grain in the ear (“corn” meaning “grain” just about anywhere but in the Americas). So it’s not precisely “maize” that they’re speaking about.
If you listen to all the verses, they cover a lot of Canadian ground. One minute they’re singing about “the high Rocky Mountains” and “Douglas in grandeur on the banks of Columbia” and the next they’re talking about wheat in Saskatchewan." I tend to think of it as an Irish version of “Olyanna.”
Paddy Tunney, by the way, pronounces “Saskatchewan” “SASK-uh-CHEW-un,” which always makes me giggle. It’s hard to make scan otherwise…when I sing it, it comes out more like “suh-SKACH-wun,” because I just can’t figure out how to fit that third syllable in there! Too bad he didn’t pick Ontario instead!
It’s a fun song to sing, though…modulates all over the place!
Paddy’s closer than you are, IMO. Four syllables for sure.
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The british relative who comes to stay, says they’d like to see Niagara falls, a racoon, a moose, and maybe take a side trip to the rockies was a standard joke of my (ontario) childhood.
Not really. Not unless you emphasize the “CHEW.” I’ve never heard it any way but “suh-SKATCH-uh-wan.” Paddy pronounces it “SASK-uh-CHEW-un” (with a strong emphasis on syllables one and three).
Yes, it’s four syllables, but syllable three is a schwa, and the emphasis is on the second syllable. The only way to pronounce it anywhere near correctly in the context of the song and also to make it scan is to swallow that schwa’d syllable.
my airs.