1989 (she heard the song first on a Van album, possibly the one he made with the Chieftains): * Jim McCann with the Dubliners, at the Gaiety Theatre, Dublin in 2003: I offer three alternatives, all live recordings, among the many available. I just don't regard his voice as the kind I want to hear on Carrickfergus. I saw him sing it with the Chieftains at the Royal Albert Hall, loved the concert and respect Van the Man as a major fixture of rock. For that reason, I reluctantly exclude Van Morrison's version, liked by many, from this edition of the Cover Story series. So magical, in fact, that the song absolutely demands a great singer. "For all their faults," Irish Music Daily concludes, "the lyrics still conjure up a sense of sadness and nostalgia and when coupled with such a beautiful, soaring melody, the effect is quite magical." One writer, Robert Gogan, has suggested the ballad derived from three separate songs, not an uncommon feature in traditional music, and perhaps explaining the disjointed narrative and geographical uncertainties of the surviving three verses. "Whether the O’Toole link to its discovery is right or not, it seems likely that what has now become the generally accepted lyric is in fact an inaccurate recollection of a fuller and more consistent earlier version." "Carrickfergus is a great but possibly incomplete song," says the Irish Music Daily website. The Clancy Brothers followed his lead and countless other artists - the Dubliners, Joan Baez, Bryan Ferry, Van Morrison with the Chieftains among them - have performed their own versions. In relatively modern times, the song reportedly became popular from the mid 1960s after Dominic Behan, brother of Brendan and a formidable songwriter, learnt bits of it from the actor Peter O'Toole and added some lines of his own. The opening lines mention Ballygran or Ballygrand and there is lively dispute as to whether this refers to a location near Kilkenny, one of the places called Carrick elsewhere in Ireland or nowhere at all, in other words an invention. One verse talks about Kilkenny, a town nearly 200 miles from Carrickfergus. The origins, though far from clear, may be in events from the 18th century. Image: Stewart / Carrickfergus Castle, reflections at sunset Look into the history of Carrickfergus, however, and it all becomes more On the face of it, we have a gorgeous song with striking, mournful lyrics of lost love and impending death set to an impossibly beautiful melody. How strange then, that it cries out to be better still and, for all we know, once was. In an effort to both pay tribute to Percy Grainger, and to create a symphonic setting of this timeless folk ballad in a manner similar to what he might have written himself, I present “Carrickfergus Posy”, a Symphonic Tone Poem for Wind Band, composed in the style of the immortal Percy Aldridge Grainger.What a great Irish ballad Carrickfergus is. “Carrickfergus” would have fit that mold perfectly, as its lyrics tell the tragic tale of an old and sickly man who wants only to be able to return to his beloved home town of Carrickfergus to die, but cannot. Percy Grainger loved to arrange songs containing lyrics and story lines of a tragic nature, the tone and flavor of which he would incorporate into his works. Had Grainger not passed away in 1961, prior to the revival of “Carrickfergus”, he may very well have chosen it as the subject of yet another masterwork for Wind Band. The Australian-born composer Percy Aldridge Grainger, who migrated to London, and later to the United States, built an iconic career around his masterful arrangements and settings of well-known European, mainly British, folk songs. Since then, the song’s popularity has exploded, and it has been recorded by dozens of recording artists over the past several decades. He made a studio recording of the song in the mid- 1960s. The beautiful and haunting Irish folk song “Carrickfergus” was almost lost and forgotten to the ages, had it not been for the Irish-born actor Peter O’Toole, who sang the song to his friend, recording artist Dominic Behan.
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