O sing hey for the good old days--

[bellatrys]

Going through one of my notebooks, the ones I carry around for jotting down whatever crosses my mind or eye or ear, I found a marginal note of a song's lyrics that I chanced to hear in one of our three Irish pubs when I needed to get out of the wind on my walk home one night this winter, halfway - this one run by the son of one of the Chieftains,

Comments

It seems to be an English song preserved in Ireland

[deiseach]

I know Christy Moore says he got it from the singing of a traveller (itinerant, or tinker as used to be called) and it's an old song; these notes say that:

"[1973:] This had never been collected from oral tradition in Britain or Ireland until Tom Munnelly heard John Reilly of Boyle, Co. Roscommon sing it. Other versions of the song appear in Child's collection (No. 21). From these it is apparent that the song is based on the story of Jesus at the Well. Tom Munnelly tells us that many older singers refuse to sing the song because of its sinister, incestuous overtones. (Notes Planxty, 'The Well Below the Valley')

[1979:] A gruesome story, belonging to the moral-carrying body of ballads and even fairy-tales of medieval days. These songs and stories, apart from being mere entertainment, also fulfilled an important role in moral, religious and social education. This song was collected in Boyle, Co Roscommon, as an example of a basically English song that survived here in Ireland, while it is no longer current in its country of origin. It is another version of The woman and the palmer, a popular account of the story of Jesus and the woman of Samaria (John IV). A similar type ballad is The cruel mother. (Loesberg II, 67)

[1980:] This is Child's Maid and the Palmer (his no. 21). In earlier versions the 'gentleman' of verse 1 is a palmer (pilgrim), or Jesus himself meeting the woman of Samaria. The painful theme of incest may account for the ballad's extreme rarity - in English at least though it is not uncommon in other European languages. Indeed, Child has only two versions in English, the most recent being a fragment recalled by Sir Walter Scott. Miraculously, however, it turned up, as ballads do, on the lips of an illiterate travelling man of County Roscommon, in 1969. (Palmer, Ballads 68)

[1984:] This is a travelling song based on a biblical story. The older travellers are very reluctant to sing it and I have known it to evoke strange sensations. (Christy Moore Songbook 33)"

But yes, there is so much not acknowledged as having taken place in the "good old days" and that somehow the countryside is a more innocent place than the town or the big city.

As Conan Doyle has Sherlock Holmes say

[deiseach]

in "The Adventure of the Copper Beeches":

"By eleven o'clock the next day we were well upon our way to the old English capital. Holmes had been buried in the morning papers all the way down, but after we had passed the Hampshire border he threw them down and began to admire the scenery. It was an ideal spring day, a light blue sky, flecked with little fleecy white clouds drifting across from west to east. The sun was shining very brightly, and yet there was an exhilarating nip in the air, which set an edge to a man's energy. All over the countryside, away to the rolling hills around Aldershot, the little red and gray roofs of the farm-steadings peeped out from amid the light green of the new foliage.

"Are they not fresh and beautiful?" I cried with all the enthusiasm of a man fresh from the fogs of Baker Street.

But Holmes shook his head gravely.

"Do you know, Watson," said he, "that it is one of the curses of a mind with a turn like mine that I must look at everything with reference to my own special subject. You look at these scattered houses, and you are impressed by their beauty. I look at them, and the only thought which comes to me is a feeling of their isolation and of the impunity with which crime may be committed there."

"Good heavens!" I cried. "Who would associate crime with these dear old homesteads?"

"They always fill me with a certain horror. It is my belief, Watson, founded upon my experience, that the lowest and vilest alleys in London do not present a more dreadful record of sin than does the smiling and beautiful countryside."

"You horrify me!"

"But the reason is very obvious. The pressure of public opinion can do in the town what the law cannot accomplish. There is no lane so vile that the scream of a tortured child, or the thud of a drunkard's blow, does not beget sympathy and indignation among the neighbours, and then the whole machinery of justice is ever so close that a word of complaint can set it going, and there is but a step between the crime and the dock. But look at these lonely houses, each in its own fields, filled for the most part with poor ignorant folk who know little of the law. Think of the deeds of hellish cruelty, the hidden wickedness which may go on, year in, year out, in such places, and none the wiser. Had this lady who appeals to us for help gone to live in Winchester, I should never have had a fear for her. It is the five miles of country which makes the danger. Still, it is clear that she is not personally threatened."