Ye rambling boys of pleasure

Old Planxty song. (G C G Am Em D) ad infinitum

wee-

another interesting one..... I dig the crazy filter, very nice tune....

23skidoo said:

wee-

another interesting one..... I dig the crazy filter, very nice tune....

Click to expand...

Glad you liked it the original is by Andy Irvine and he plays it on the
Irish bouzouki. Give it a listen it is a fine tune. and it may be similar to
"The Sally Gardens"

good stuff, thanks for the link..... hadn't heard him before.

I play lots of bluegrass and traditional Appalachian music, so it ties right in with your Scottish/Irish bent, probably why I always dig your posts. I can hear this tune with an upright bass, fiddle, banjo, close-harmony vocals..... it sounds very pretty in my head, might have to learn it.....

A bit of history.

Down by the Salley Gardens (Irish: Gort na Saileán) is a poem by William Butler Yeats
published in The Wanderings of Oisin and Other Poems in 1889.

Yeats indicated in a note that it was "an attempt to reconstruct an old song from three
lines imperfectly remembered by an old peasant woman in the village of Ballisodare,
Sligo, who often sings them to herself."

The "old song" may have been the ballad "The Rambling Boys of Pleasure".
The lyrics to The Rambling Boys of Pleasure contain the following verse:

It was down by Sally's Garden one evening late I took my way.
'Twas there I spied this pretty little girl, and those words to me sure she did say
She advised me to take love easy, as the leaves grew on the tree.
But I was young and foolish, with my darling could not agree.

The similarity to the first verse of the Yeats version is unmistakable and would
suggest that this was indeed the song Yeats remembered the old woman singing.
The rest of the song, however, is quite different.

Have a listen to the Yeats poem set to music and you have to agree that the melody
and some of the words are similar.

I think there's a definite similarity..... You can always count on Yeats to reinterpret the Gaelic tradition.....at university, my academic adviser and favorite instructor were both fairly heavy-duty Yeats scholars, one focusing on verse, the other on his dramatic work. I got pretty well sucked in for a couple of years, especially the Cuchulain cycle of plays. I even ended up modelling a one-act play on "At The Hawk's Well", using the Lakota Sioux myth of the White Buffalo as a refiguring of the hawk-lady Guardian of the Well. I found it very intriguing, the number of correspondences between traditional Irish folklore and the mythology of different Native American tribes..... makes the world seem like a small place on the outside, but big on the inside....

In the Finnish epic poem the Kalevala, a 19th century work of epic poetry
compiled by Elias Lönnrot from Finnish and Karelian oral folklore and mythology,
there is a character called Väinämöinen, a hero with a magical power of song and music,
similar to that of Orpheus. He has the ability to sing things into existence... and when I read
that it seems to be an echo of "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God,
and the Word was God... Through him all things were made; without him nothing
was made that has been made."

It is said that J. R. R.Tolkien was an avid reader of the Kalevala and that it partly inspired
the Lord of the Rings, but further than that In Tolkien's other book Silmarillion features
speaking things into existence, or rather the singing of the worlds' into being.

So it would appear that essential truths are embodied in many different stories,
and it is a puzzle to try and find where the original idea came from and all the different
derivatives.

Old Irish folk song -> Yeats poem -> Andy Irvine song
Hawk-like woman guarding the miraculous waters -> Louhi the sorceress and the Sampo, a magical artifact to bring good fortune to its holder.


So did the white buffalo guard or protect something?

wee_ginga_yin said:

So did the white buffalo guard or protect something?

Click to expand...

Rereading the post, I left out the word 'woman'. It's actually White Buffalo Woman, or White Buffalo Calf Woman. She's pretty much the central figure in the spiritual life of the Lakota and versions of the story show up in most of the tribes of the Great Plains. She's not a protector, but a deliverer - she brings the people the sacred pipe and teaches them all of the religious rituals of the Sioux - sort of a prophetic, Promethean figure. There's also a little Messianic element thrown in - she promises to return again to bring peace to the world (and get her pipe back).

She is a shape-shifter, appearing as a snow white buffalo calf or a beautiful young woman, just as Yeats' Guardian moves from hawk to woman. The story also describes two young men who encounter her in human form - one of the warriors approaches her sexually, without reverence, and is reduced to a pile of bones.... she is desirable but unattainable, just as the Guardian lures Cuchulain away from the magical waters, denying the hero immortality. The second warrior in the Lakota story is appropriately pious after his buddy gets consumed and returns to the tribe to spread the word and bear witness - just as Yeats' Old Man stays at the Well, always denied a taste of immortality but ever present.

When the WBCW visits the tribe, she dances, moving inside their meeting place in ritual circles and presents the sacraments of their faith to them - the practical expression of their responsibility to honor and maintain the natural and supernatural order of the world .... the Guardian of the Well does a similar hawk-like dance that is what really gets Cuchulain interested in her rather than the promise of immortality. This distraction is ultimately what protects the waters and maintains that same natural order. The beautiful young woman dancing, erotic advances decidedly deflected with mortal implication, truth delivered, the natural order of the world maintained..... there are just lots of parallels in the stories.

Have you ever read any Frithjof Schuon? An interesting guy, he can get a little out there sometimes.... used this book as one of my primary references for the project.... pretty exhaustive resource, just excellent writing. While he's not an 'academic', it's a lot more readable and thorough and intriguing than most comparative mythology/ philosophy.... whatever you want to classify it.

So it would appear that essential truths are embodied in many different stories,
and it is a puzzle to try and find where the original idea came from and all the different
derivatives.

Click to expand...

Yep. This is what really got me thinking about Schuon - he also wrote 'The Transcendent Unity of Religions' just about the most intriguing book on comparative religion I've read. Based on your posts, I'd think you'd find it interesting as well.....

wow.... haven't thought about some of this in years..... interesting discussion. Never know what you'll find on this forum.....

I think we just might have used up our years quota of words on UU.
It is so unusual to get more that a couple of sentences in a reply...
far less a measured academic response

Now I have branded myself as someone who not only plays crazy music,
but also espouses unconventional and esoteric ideas.

What a combination, but my motto has always been
Never let good taste stand in the way of style

wee_ginga_yin said:

I think we just might have used up our years quota of words on UU.

Click to expand...

I was thinking the same thing.... I think this thread is longer than all of my other posts put together. Once I started thinking about it, it just came out.... interesting topic, good to exercise the parts of the brain that haven't been used in awhile.... Maybe your next song selection should be a little more conservative.....