Tipperary musician to host launch event for book about Tipperary's lost songs

Tipperary musician Bill ‘The Bard’ O’Brien is preparing for the launch of his new book, ‘Lost Songs of Tipperary’.

O’Brien has been working on the book for a number of years, and is thrilled to announce that he will be hosting a launch event for the book in the Brú Ború Heritage Centre in Cashel at 8pm on May 8.

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He says he has always had a fascination with old Irish songs and poems, and was struck by how many had been lost to time.

In an effort to bring many of these songs back to the forefront of public attention, he set to work two years ago compiling old written songs from generations gone, breaking them down in an effort to reconstruct the possible melodies, and compile them into a book, so that they can live on for many more generations to come.

Speaking with the Tipperary Star, Bill outlined what his objectives were for the book, and how the idea to put the book together came to be.

“So I'm very into ballad singing, it's kind of my interest. It has been for a good few years and I've been on a bit of a mission for about two or three years to collect and document old ballads from around Ireland, focussed on Tipperary, because I live here, and over the years, I've built up quite a significant collection of old songs that no one really sings anymore, no one really hears, no one's heard, and aren't recorded. And I was using these songs reconstructing them and bringing them to singing circles around the country, just to share with people and tell them the stories and that kind of thing. And about two years ago, I had the idea to turn this into a podcast, because there's a song and a story for each one, and I like to tell the stories of the songs because you kind of cover little bits of local history, which people find interesting, local folklore and things like that.

“So I started making this podcast, Lost Songs of Ireland, which is running for about two and a half years now, and I’m really, really enjoying it, really enjoying making it, and I got quite a lot of feedback from it. And I kind of realised that every time I was going to a singing circle, and bringing something new, people were fascinated by this, they were really, really interested in this. So I started to think, what can I do more than just the podcast, to actually kind of bring these stories and bring these songs back to life, because Irish history and tradition is very, very oral-based. We have a very long established history of oral tradition, sean-nós, oral tradition of storytelling and singing. So I was trying to think of the most effective ways to get that out there.

“So on the top of the podcast and recording a few songs here and there, I started editing. It started off as just a bunch of files in a folder on my computer of these old songs with my little historical notes from my research into each of them, and I thought, why not compile this? Why not put this into a book that I can print and have out there that people can have on their bookshelves, that can be in libraries?
And that way, the work that I've done in preserving this culture can outlive me. And people can love the songs and teach them to their kids, and in generations time, they might be sung again, they might continue to live rather than just rotting away in newspapers from the 1800s, forgotten and never to be heard again.

“So I came up with this idea of putting them into a book, and after talking to a bunch of people about that, I got really, really good feedback. So I spent the last, probably two years, compiling this. Like I have a huge collection of ballads from Tipperary, probably around a thousand that I’ve collected so far. And I picked out about 50-odd, that I felt really stood out from all over, because Tipperary is a very big county, and I wanted to cover as many areas as I could in north and south Tipperary.

“So I selected about 50 of these songs. I've included notes on how I think they should be sung, paired with melodies that fit the lyrics. Sometimes there's a few clues, sometimes there's like repeated lines from other songs that you can kind of guess what the right melody is. And as well as that, I've included notes on the history of those songs and the stories that they tell. Most of them would be nice little local songs about the village down the road or something like that, or a historical event that happened in that village.
I was pleased with what I'd come up with. And I ran the Kickstarter campaign and raised over €1,000 to get it printed, got some artwork done, spent, proofread it, edited it all myself. And I finally got the finished copy there. And I'm absolutely blown away by the reception that I've got.”

When asked about what songs he decided to include in the book, and if any stood out in particular, Bill pointed to what he believes to be the song that inspired the famous ‘Seán South of Garryowen, which, from his research, he believes follows the same structure and melody of an older song from Tipperary, ‘Seán Quinn of Mullinahone’.

“I'd say my favourite one, there’s a very very famous Limerick song called ‘Seán South of Garryowen’. And this was from the 1950s. So it's not that old, in terms of Irish balladry, it's not that old. And I found one from Mullinahone and it's called ‘Seán Quinn from Mullinahone’. And it's very, very clearly to the same melody. And it's a great one, Seán Quinn was an IRA volunteer from Mullinahone, and he died during the War of Independence. And I'd never heard that before, I'd never heard this song before. And it's very, very clearly to the same tune as Seán South. And obviously, where I got it from was from the schools collection, which was from the 1930s, the late 1930s. So it's older than Seán South. And I think that's very interesting, that obviously, whoever wrote Seán South probably based it on this song. And Seán South is huge, that's a very well known song, and I think it's very interesting that that is based on a Tipperary ballad that no one's heard, that no one sings, and that's probably my favourite one.”

When asked about how he went about finding new songs to include in the book, Bill pointed to old newspaper archives as a major source for him, citing old poetry and songwriting sections that appeared in local newspapers, with some dating back more than a century.

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“The first place I was really starting to dig into was at the school’s folklore collection. And this is basically in 1937 to 1938, during the Free State, there was a government programme that every single national school in Ireland, every student was given homework to go home to speak to their parents or their grandparents, or an elderly relative or someone from the locality and to bring me back to school the next day, a piece of local folklore. This could be a story or a piseog or you know, a cure for warts or something like that. A lot of them are songs, a lot of them are poems and ballads and songs. And that was the first place I started to find songs in. I basically sat down and looked at every single national school in Tipperary, copied and pasted them, and analysed them, try and figure out, can I sing this, can I figure out how to sing this? 
After that, I started to head down to the local library or to the Source in Thurlas and look through old archives and newspapers. The Tipperary Star, for example, used to have a very, very regular song and poetry section, and a lot of material was published back then. A lot of it is, you know, not the best songwriting, but there are some really good ones I found that way. There's the Cashel Sentinel as well, which is a newspaper that doesn't exist anymore. They used to publish a very regular song and poetry section. I got a lot from there. As well as that, I do a lot of field work. Like I said, I'm a regular at singing circles all over the country. And just from talking to older people and listening to the stories and the songs that they have, and if I hear something I've never heard before, I'll ask them about it and find a bit of information from them. So a few are collected directly from people from older generations that, a lot of the time, might be the last person alive that still knows this song. So that was where quite a few came from.”

Regarding the composition of the different melodies, Bill said that there is no way to prove with certainty that the melodies he has put together as identical to the original ones once sung with the songs in the book, however he says he is confident that they are close to what he believes the original melodies sound like.

“It's pretty much an anthology, like it's kind of grouped by topic, like the Bridget Cleary songs, for example, there's three there, and they're kind of one after the other. There’s the title of the song and then if possible, there's some that I’ve identified who wrote the song, and I'll attribute that where it's possible, but a lot of the time it's just not possible to do that. And then after the title, there'll be a suggestion of melodies that fit it. Sometimes there's like two possible melodies that I've picked. And it's very clear that they're not definitive. Like I could be wrong about the melodies. There is no way to know 100%. But just based on the metre, the rhyme and that kind of thing. And after the song itself, I've got a paragraph explaining the history of the song or any interesting notes about it.”

Reception to the book so far has exceeded his expectations, he says, with many people interested in music speaking with delight regarding its release.

Bill offered his thanks to Jim Ryan Anthony, of Jim O’ the Mills pub in Upperchurch, whom he cited as a great source of knowledge throughout the process.

“The kind of people that are passionate about singing are delighted with this. I've got very, very good reviews. Jim of the Mills is a good friend of mine. I’d consider him a mentor. He runs the pub on an Upperchurch that do one of the best singing circles in the country every Thursday night. And he's been absolutely fantastic. I can't thank Jim enough for the help that he's given because I'd be into him nearly every week with a new song asking him, ‘Oh, do you know anything about this? Do you know anyone who might know anything about this song?’ and he's just been an endless source of information and help for me. And obviously him writing the review as well has been absolutely fantastic, I can't appreciate it enough.”

‘Lost Songs of Tipperary’ is available to buy in Bookworm, Thurles, Brú Ború Heritage Centre, Cashel, SuperValu, Cashel, Bargain Bookstore, Kilkenny, and through Bill’s ebay account.