LAMENTATIONS: LINER NOTES
CELTIC LAMENTATIONS ~ Healing Music for Twelve Months and a Day
Track 1: Caoineadh na Dtrí Muire
This song is presented as a conversation between Mary and Jesus, primarily in question form. Jesus comforts Mary by saying that “we must all carry our own cross.” The key idea is that children must meet their own destiny, and parents cannot protect or isolate them from their path.
There are many people to credit for teaching me this beautiful old song Thanks to Sandra Joyce and Helen Phelan at the University of Limerick Masters Programs. Tómas O’Canainn, our great hero of slow and beautiful airs; Noirín NíRiann, the inspiration for all of us around matters Irish and spiritual and Cathie Ryan, who was the first to take the last verse from another old Irish song and include it as the final verse as I have also done here.
Track 2: Oran Mhor Mhic Leoid
(The Great song of Mac Leod)
This is a song I learned from the wonderful Scottish harp player Ingrid Henderson during my time in Limerick. This song was written during a particularly tough time in the history of the Mac Leod family of Scotland. It speaks to the idea of holding on in the midst of difficulties.
Pueblo Blessing
Hold on to what is good
even if it is a handful of earth.
Hold on to what you believe
even if it is a tree which stands by itself.
Hold on to what you must do
even if it is a long way from here.
Hold on to life
even when it is easier letting go.
Hold on to my hand
even when I have gone away from you.
Track 3: Griogal Cridh
This Scottish lament, sung in Scots Gaelic, is a variation of the
Romeo and Juliet theme. If is from the Blair Atholl region and dates from
about 1571. The narrator is a young woman whose beloved, the chieftain
of the MacGregor clan, has been brutally murdered by her own clan. It is
sung as a lullaby, very much like those often sung by a mother to her child
in Gaelic—deceptively calming. She’s letting the child know (even though
the child is too young to understand) of her grief and the fact that the
child’s father has been killed by his own mother’s clan. In a larger view,
the song is about the ways in which parents pass along their own losses to
their children, in matters both large and small.
Track 4: Song of the Banshee
In Ireland the mythological figure of the Banshee was a harbinger of death. She often came close to the house of the dying person and sang an eerie melody. It is said that the dying person rarely heard the melody, though it served as a signal to others that death was near and a new phase of mourning was about to begin. The Banshee legend, first recorded in the 8th century, harkens back to a time when mourning was communal and grief a public affair. The Banshee has only recently disappeared from rural Irish life, as television and transportation changed the texture of the countryside and death increasingly became a more private affair, with hospitals and strangers substituted for the community of family and neighbors.
Track5: Deus Meus
Created by anonymous authors in an Irish monastic setting, somewhere between the 8th and 12th centuries, this song is unusual in the way it mixes Gaelic and Latin. Traditionally, vernacular and church music were separate, but this song combines strands of both musical traditions. It is a song of praise, beseeching the light and love of God, but it is also a song full of tension, between the praise of God and the rage and grief of mourners. The way in which this song reflects the chasm between our highest possibilities and the losses we endure brings to mind a quote from Kahlil Gibran:
“ . . . you are suspended like scales between your sorrow and your joy.”
Track 6: Carolan’s Farewell to Music
This is the last tune composed by Carolan, the famous 18th
century blind harper considered Ireland’s national composer. He wrote
this piece knowing that he was going to die, and this song contains both
a sense of mourning and deep passion. Emotionally, the tune seems to go
through the five stages of mourning within itself.
Carolan lived an extraordinary life, in spite or perhaps even because of the challenges caused by his blindness. Though he was not a great harper, he achieved great fame through the beauty of his compositions. His was a
life of challenges and losses, channeled into creating beautiful music.
“ I took the road less traveled by and that has made all the difference.”
—Robert Frost
Track 7: Awakening
This song is loosely based on the Irish melody “Jail of Clonmel.” It is meant to express the most powerful aspects of being alive, in spite of the losses and challenges we face. This embrace of the full range of life’s gifts is expressed beautifully in the poem “When Death Comes,” by Mary Oliver:
. . . I think of each life as a flower, as common
as a field daisy, and as singular,
and each name a comfortable music in the mouth
tending as all music does, toward silence,
and each body a lion of courage, and something
precious to the earth.
When it’s over, I want to say: all my life
I was a bride married to amazement.
I was a bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.
When it’s over, I don’t want to wonder
if I have made of my life something particular, and real.
I don’t want to find myself sighing and frightened
or full of argument.
I don’t want to end up simply having visited this world.
Track 8: A Íosa, B’ím Chroís (Christ, Be In My Heart)
This is an old Irish hymn, one of the few that have come down to us.
Track 9: Do Not Stand
These lyrics are based on a poem by Mary Fry, written in 1932. It speaks to the mourner’s need to know that the loved one has moved on to a better place, and to the idea of the divine reflected in nature. In its repetitions and nature imagery, it calls to mind medieval Irish poetry written in monastic communities:
Do not stand at my grave and weep
I am not there.
I do not sleep.
Do not stand at my grave and sigh
I am not there.
Do not cry.
I am a thousand winds
that swiftly blow.
I am the diamond glint
on newly fallen snow.
I am the sunlight on ripened grain.
I am the soft and gentle autumn rain.
When you wake from sleep
in the early morning hush,
I am the swift, uplifting rush
of quiet birds in circling flight.
I am the soft, starlight at night.
Do not stand at my grave and weep.
I am not there.
I do not sleep.
Do not stand at my grave and sigh
I am not there.
Do not cry.
Track 10: Song of Keening
In old Ireland, the practice of keening provided a physical and emotional release for those who grieved. Sometimes, keening was a direct emotional response to loss, practiced by both men and women, though particularly by women who had lost young children—a common occurrence in the past, when child mortality rates were significantly higher. However, often a professional keener was hired by a family as a way of honoring the dead. These professional mourners were always women, and their keening was more stylized, taking the form of an improvisation based on particular structures and handed-down phrases.
Though practiced in diverse cultures from Ireland to Greece, keening was generally frowned upon by church authorities, and treated with disdain by those who embraced the trappings of modernity. The practice now has virtually died out. This piece is improvised in the old style, using old structures and vocables.
Track 11: Kilcash
This is a tune written in memory of the Flight of the Earls, marking the last plantation of Ireland and also the final loss of its aristocracy and culture. Though written in response to a particular historical incident, this song can be seen as a reflection on all monumental and society-altering losses, up to the present day.
The concept that music is the ultimate mourning tool is central to this song. It teaches us to grieve as a human family, and reminds us that life goes on, no matter how great our loss.
CREDITS:
Musicians:
Eugene Friesen, cello
Alasdair Halliday, background vocals on “Awakening”
Baird Hersey, throat singing on “Awakening”
Joanie Madden, Irish whistles, alto flute
Áine Minogue, Irish Harp & vocals
Scott Petito, acoustic guitar, bass, upright bass, keyboards, soundscapes & programming
Randy Roos, soundscapes on “A Íosa,” “B’ím Chroíse”
Leslie Ritter, background vocals
Mark Wessel, engineer for harp tracking on “A Íosa,” “B’ím Chroíse”
Sam Zucchini, percussion
Co-producer:
Áine Minogue
Scott Petito
Production Assistant:
Beth Reineke
Executive Producer:
Steven M. Gates
All music traditional, arranged by Á. Minogue (Little Miller Music (BMI)), except “Do Not Stand,” music by Á. Minogue, Little Miller Music (BMI); and, “Awakening” Traditional, Arr. By Á. Minogue (Little Miller Music, BMI) and Scott Petito (Spotted Music ASCAP)
Engineered and mixed by Scott Petito at NRS Recording Studio, Catskill,
New York, www.scottpetitoproductions.com
Mastered by Robert Hadley at the Mastering Lab, Los Angeles, CA
Liner Notes: Mitchell Clute