Talk:Carrickfergus (song)

message: This song has a 'middle-eight'. Folk songs don't have middle-eights, which suggests to me that it was more likely a product of the nineteenth music hall. I suppose the original tune might be older.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 79.78.215.221 (talk) 21:52, 26 October 2012 (UTC)
thread_title: [Untitled]

message: The history of this song is pretty tangled stuff.
The resemblance of the English lyrics to the traditional Waly Waly (more commonly known now as The Water is Wide) is unmissable, and Waly Waly may predate Cathal Buí Mac Giolla Conna.
More interestingly, the song Waly Waly appears to originate in the Scottish ballad Jamie Douglas, and one known variant of the song starts "I was a woman of renown" -- very close indeed to "Do Bhí Bean Uasal".  Perhaps the poet merely adapted the Scots song, then?  In that case, any English verses that do not match any known Irish version, but match something from the ballad were not "additions" per se, but rather "reinstatements".
One way or the other, it is difficult to justify any definitive statements on something so hard to pin down.
Prof Wrong (talk) 23:49, 4 January 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Irish "original"? 

message: I go round in circles here.
It is evident to me that neither the words nor the music of the English language folksong Carrickfergus (as played in folk clubs in England since at least the mid 1960s) owe anything to Sean O'Se/Sean O'Riada. Dominic Behan recorded in 1961 and published in 1965 a version of Carrickfergus with the tune we all know and love plus words which, he said, were recounted to him by the famously inebriate actor Peter O'Toole. He said however that verse 2 was his own. It is not perhaps unreasonable to assume that verse 2 is based on what O'Toole said/sung but he was incoherent at the time and so had to be "edited". This Behan version is - with minor amendments to the wording by the Clancy Brothers - the one used in all the "big name" recordings.
Sean O'Se has recorded an unbelievably beautiful and moving version of Carrickfergus with Sean O'Riada (date unknown but I believe late 1960s at the earliest) and there are many, including family members, who claim that one or the other wrote it. When I came across this version some years ago it took me back to the smoky boozy folk clubs of the 60s where I had first heard the song. But what was this "Do bhí bean uasail...." stuff? Some references suggest that it is Irish (Erse) for "I wish I was in..." which is patently nonsense since it means "There was a noblewoman...." and none of the Irish words have any connection whatsoever with the well known English verses of Carrickfergus. The last verse of the Irish O'Se version has a few quotes from the English version of Carrickfergus but this is just too unlikely to be true. I am willing to bet anything that the Irish source of "Do bhí bean uasail...." contains no reference to Carrickfergus, nor indeed any of the last verse of the O'Se/O'Riada version.
I tend to agree with John Moulden's view - expressed over a decade ago! - that O'Se/O'Riada were just getting two for the price of one: attaching some traditional Irish words (with a modified or new last verse) to a well known tune that happened to fit and already had some haunting verses in English.
I know I come to this discussion a decade late, but what is 10 years in the lists of truth?
125.254.76.23 (talk) 14:21, 16 March 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Origins 

message: I find it hard to believe that after three and a half stanzas, the lyrics of Do bhí bean uasal turn suddenly from Irish to English. Is a faulty copypaste or something? --Thrissel (talk) 12:56, 9 August 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  "Irish" lyrics 

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thread_title:  External links modified 

message: * 
 considers this insufficient credit for Cedric Smith.  I have twice reverted the addition of a separate list entry for him, and likewise the insertion of his name in the composer slot(!) for the song on Elemental; persuade me I was wrong to do so. —Tamfang (talk) 20:08, 3 April 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  Cedric Smith!!!!