Hello
I am learning the tune “white potatoes” with vocals of Liam O Maonlai and Paddy Moloney on pipes. recorded on “long journey home” .
Moloney writes in the booklet that the original poem is thirty-three verses long as on the cd there are only three verses.
Great tune.
Is there somebody who knows all the verses
Carel
Is this the one Carel?
Alas that they should depart from us now.
Such company they were! Such cause for dancing!
We had sport with them while we were allowed.
1846 was the date, and not without reason
Shall it be remembered until the end of time
Scarcity, poverty, mouths without feeding
There never has been so desperate a scourge.
What will buy a shroud for those to be buried?
Tobacco, pipes, or a coffin of wood?
May the Good Lord protect us, if we were to die now,
And of course it would be a relief if we could.
No patrick
the three verses are:
a thousand farewells to the white potatoes
for as long as we had them, a pleasant hoard
affable, innocent, coming into our company
as they laughed with us at the head of the board
they were help to the nurse, to the man and the child
to the weak and the strong, to the young and the old
but the cause of my sorrow, my grief, my affliction
them rolling away, without frost, without cold
what will buy a shroud for those to be burried?
tobacco, pipes or a coffin of wood?
if we are to die high-king protect us
and, of course, it would be a release if we could
in 1846, on seeing the deathof his neighbors O’Callanan, a small tenant-farmer, wrote a traditional Irish lament, a “keen”, to be sung or recited at a funeral. However he mourns not for those who died but for the potato itself, which was the source of all life then in teh west of Ireland.
Moloney continues:
I was unable to trace the music for his words and decided to compose a special tune.
the original poem is thirty-three verses long.
oh, pardon me
I see your third verse is the same as my third verse
so now we have 5