8th January, Elvis, Allingham and the rest

We're approaching 8th January 2015, Elvis's 80th birthday. The 8th January is also the date William Allingham wrote 'The Fairies' during a visit to Killybegs in 1849 (we'll say that anyhow).

On 8th January around the late 1990s we used to run Allingham Night, an extravaganza of poetry and music, in the Sail Inn in Killybegs. Part of the entertainment would be the American fiddle tune and song called 8th January or The Battle of New Orleans, performed by our own Laghey-based frailing banjo player, songsmith and singer Alec Somerville. The song, commemorating the Battle of New Orleans on 8th January 1815, comes in at 33 in the Billboard list of the 100 biggest hits ever -

http://www.billboard.com/articles/list/2155531/the-hot-100-all-time-top-songs?list_page=6

(The words, for those tremendously interested - http://www.rockremembers.com/2009/02/battle-of-new-orleans-8th-of-january.html)

The British commander who died in that engagement was an Irishman, Edward Pakenham, whose sister was the wife of the Duke of Wellington, another Irishman. Edward's death probably didn't occasion a lot of wailing in Ireland, as he'd helped put down the 1798 insurrection.


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Back to oor Wullie - http://www.donegaldiaspora.ie/people/william-allingham

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For starters, in case there are people who haven't actually heard or seen the poem (was taught in school many moons ago), here it is from http://www.bartleby.com/101/769.html -

						Arthur Quiller-Couch, ed. 1919. The Oxford Book of English Verse: 1250–1900.
William Allingham. 1824–1889
769. The Fairies

UP the airy mountain,
Down the rushy glen,
We daren't go a-hunting
For fear of little men;
Wee folk, good folk,	5
Trooping all together;
Green jacket, red cap,
And white owl's feather!
Down along the rocky shore
Some make their home,	10
They live on crispy pancakes
Of yellow tide-foam;
Some in the reeds
Of the black mountain lake,
With frogs for their watch-dogs,	15
All night awake.
High on the hill-top
The old King sits;
He is now so old and gray
He 's nigh lost his wits.	20
With a bridge of white mist
Columbkill he crosses,
On his stately journeys
From Slieveleague to Rosses;
Or going up with music	25
On cold starry nights
To sup with the Queen
Of the gay Northern Lights.
They stole little Bridget
For seven years long;	30
When she came down again
Her friends were all gone.
They took her lightly back,
Between the night and morrow,
They thought that she was fast asleep,	35
But she was dead with sorrow.
They have kept her ever since
Deep within the lake,
On a bed of flag-leaves,
Watching till she wakes.	40
By the craggy hill-side,
Through the mosses bare,
They have planted thorn-trees
For pleasure here and there.
If any man so daring	45
As dig them up in spite,
He shall find their sharpest thorns
In his bed at night.
Up the airy mountain,
Down the rushy glen,	50
We daren't go a-hunting
For fear of little men;
Wee folk, good folk,
Trooping all together;
Green jacket, red cap,	55
And white owl's feather!

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There's an interesting blog and comments on the poem 'The Fairies' here -

http://wonderingminstrels.blogspot.ie/2001/10/fairies-william-allingham.html?showComment=1420559356925#c266696937947729999,

Here's one of the comments -

Back in the early 1970s in Dublin, a Mr. Ward - retired publican from Ballybofey, Donegal, Ireland - told me that the 'little Bridget' of this poem was, in fact, his aunt. Said she had been stolen for several years and then allowed to return home for a visit. Her family was determined to keep her even tho she begged to be allowed to return 'to the music and the dancing.' In the end, according to Mr. Ward, she was sent to America to prevent her from returning to her life under the mountains. I'd love to know if anyone else ever heard this?

I've just added my tuppence-ha'penny to the blog comments -

Lots of interesting stuff in the blog and the comments, thanks! When we had the Sail Inn pub in Killybegs, County Donegal, in the 90s we used to run a poetry and music night on 8th January - the date Allingham wrote 'The Fairies' while staying in an aunt's house opposite the pub. I was told by an old man who lived outside Carrick in the shadow of Sliabh League that parts of the poem refer to this mountain, often described as having the highest sea cliffs in Europe. The old man's story was that Allingham had a romantic entanglement with a woman in the area. Columbkille would refer to Glencolumbkille, the glen of Saint Colmcille, a little further along the coast in this beautiful south-west Donegal. Fairies and people being taken away by them are very much part of the mythology and stories of this part of the world. The great Dungloe fiddler Neilidh Boyle reckoned he was taken off to a fairies' wedding and learned the tricks of two outstanding fairy fiddlers there. The renowned piper from Gweedore, also in Donegal, Turlough McSweeney, also claimed to have got the enchanted music of the fairies from an encounter at a fairy rath, or circle. Fairies gave tunes to Biddy from Muckross, near Kilcar. [All in all, fairies in Donegal] were quite busy!

The 'table and chair' at the viewing point on Sliabh League


People from the Carrick area will know the old man I'm talking about, although his name escapes me at the moment. He used to work for Gael Linn, became practically blind I think, and lived in a fine two-storey house on the right on the way to Glencolumbkille. Sadly the house, looking out on the slopes of Sliabh League, is in poor shape these days.

The bottom book in the pic below is the 1967 edition of William Allingham's Diary, which features the entry - 

January 8. - At Killybegs. Read Tennyson and Wittick's Norway.  Fairy Song : 'Wee folk, good folk,' etc.  Violin

I think I found out that Allingham's aunt lived in the house across from the Sail Inn.
The top book is a rather battered first edition of the 1855 book in which 'The Fairies' appeared, 'The Music Master, a love story, and Two Series of Day and Night Songs'. I bought the book for £5 in a second-hand bookshop in the Waterside in Derry in 1987. It's missing two woodcuts, hence the price, as the woodcuts are a big selling point - they're by the Pre-Raphaelities Arthur Hughes (7), D. G. Rossetti (1) and John E. Millais (1). It's said that this was the first book illustration by Rossetti, to go with Allingham's poem The Maids of Elfin-Mere. The illustration has been widely praised, with Burne-Jones describing it as ‘the most beautiful drawing for an illustration I have ever seen'. However Rossetti himself was apparently far from happy with it, and tore it out of his copy of the book. Perhaps it was Arthur Hughes who tore two of his woodcuts from my book, although it bears the name Mc Cullough. Its poor condition is a reminder never to pass a fragile old book around at Allingham Nights. I see two copies in decent shape with all the illustrations - but without this red cover - both priced at over £800 on abebooks. Need to have the luck Johnny Depp had in The Ninth Gate on tv last night . . the illustration he was missing from a rare book happened to fall off the top of a bookcase.

Rossetti's illustration to illustrate the poem -

The Maids of Elfin-Mere by William Allingham

When the spinning-room was here
Came Three Damsels, clothed in white,
With their spindles every night;
One and Two and three fair Maidens,
Spinning to a pulsing cadence,
Singing songs of Elfin-Mere;
Till the eleventh hour was toll’d,
Then departed through the wold.
Years ago, and years ago;
And the tall reeds sigh as the wind doth blow [ . . .] 

Some see the features of the beautiful Elizabeth Siddal in the faces of the three women. She, like these three, came to a tragic end - 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elizabeth_Siddal

http://www.rossettiarchive.org/docs/s67.raw.html

http://preraphaelitesisterhood.com/the-maids-of-elfin-mere/

A comment from this last site - 

Tori Amos was inspired by this poem and the illustration. The song Maids of Elfen-Mere is on her latest album Unrependant Geraldines. You can listen to it here. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XC41gJINkJ4.

As Allingham was a fiddler and also wrote ballads, here's another contemporary song, this one seemingly inspired by the poem The Fairies. It's performed by Caprice, a Russian neo-classical band no less - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZJ8UqWMT_zo