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Older editions are archived and listed by date.
'Mick
Ryan's Lament' is the name of a song written by Robert Emmet Dunlap,
a Boston born, but well traveled singer songwriter. The core of the
song is based on a west Ireland drinking tune that emerged in the
late 18th century called 'Garryowen.' Many ironies surround both
songs. Young rich men of Limerick, Ireland, adopted the tune as they
drank and sang their way from pub to pub and party to party. Poor
Irish emigrants in New York City also clung to the ballad and adopted
it as their regimental marching song after forming a local militia.
Beethoven wrote two arrangements of the song and General George
Armstrong Custer selected Garryowen as the 7th Cavalry's marching
tune. The garryowen haunted the wars in Korea, Viet Nam, and Iraq to
name just a few. 'Mick Ryan's Lament,' of course, is a sad commentary
on the folly of our specie's incessant drive to acquire and conquer.
The
American government's policy on native Americans was as clear and
decisive as the English government's policy on Ireland. All the
various tribes from the Cherokee to the Cheyenne were subject to
genocidal practices from simple displacement and meaningless
treaties, to nefarious introduction of diseased bedding and alcohol.
The English role in the An Gorta Mór,
The Great Famine, was equally odious. While the potato crop did
suffer a devastating blight, the Catholic peasants ruled by their
English masters starved while exports of foodstuffs such as butter,
livestock, peas, beans, rabbits, fish, and honey actually increased.1
The
word garryowen comes from an Irish phrase Eóin
garrai. Eóin
is the proper name 'John' and garrai is the Irish for
'garden' which gives a translation of 'John's garden.' The old river
town of Limerick, located on the Shannon River near the river's
extensive estuary, has a neighborhood named Garryowen. The place name
was derived from a 12th century church, St John's, and the adjacent
fields and pastures.
click
on link for song
Of
the many covers of Dunlap's song, bluegrass legend Tim O'Brien has
hit the right tempo and phrasing to convey the song's message; and
his duet with Darrell Scott is included below. The Garryowen itself
was an uptempo number with a defined insouciance which created its
appeal to soldiers, rugby clubs, and rowdies generally. Dunlap slowed
the tempo and created his own lyric, and the song turned inside out
with the roisterous hubris becoming a melancholy despair.
Tim
O'Brien and Darell Scott
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