To commemorate St. Patrick’s Day, I’m posting a couple of the Irish folk songs I’ve previously written about. Happy St. Patrick’s Day, everybody!
If you listen to any appreciable amount of Irish folk songs, a couple things become apparent. One, a lot of them are pretty sad. And two, plenty of them do not paint the British in particularly flattering light.
There are any number of historical reasons for this, dating back at least as far back as the Norman invasion of Ireland in the Middle Ages. Unpacking the full history of British-Irish relations is kinda beyond the scope of the current exercise…
Suffice it to say that a lot of the revered heroes of Irish history are viewed as heroes for fighting the British.
And today’s heroine is no exception.
Grace O’Malley (Gráinne Ní Mháille in Irish) is best known as a pirate rebelling against English power in Ireland in the sixteenth century, culminating in a face-to-face meeting with Queen Elizabeth that… didn’t actually accomplish that much — she had her sons released from English captivity, but failed to have the lands stolen by an English lord returned. So, naturally, she just kept fighting the English.
Incidentally, female pirates are fairly well-attested throughout history. I guess the whole “reject political authority, take to the sea” aspect goes hand-in-hand with rejecting established gender roles and social mores…
Grace O’Malley has subsequently become the subject of the folk song Óró sé do bheatha abhaile, which translates to something like “Hurray! Welcome home!” — “Óró” is a celebratory exclamation that doesn’t really mean anything and most of the translations of the Irish lyrics I’ve seen don’t even try to translate it.
As with most folk songs, there are multiple Óró sé do bheatha abhaile from various points in history. The earliest attested version of the song is about a man bringing his new wife home for the first time. From there, it turned into a Jacobite song, welcoming Bonnie Prince Charlie back to Ireland after being exiled (that didn’t go so hot for the Irish…).
The version of the song about Grace O’Malley was written by Patrick Pearse, one of the leaders of the 1916 Easter Rising (that didn’t go so hot, either…). Basically, this version is about how Grace O’Malley is going to come back to Ireland and kick out the English:
Gráinne O’Malley is coming over the sea,
Lyrics from the Wikipedia article.
Armed warriors along with her as her guard,
They are Gaels, not [the exact nationality here varies, but most often, it’s British or French] nor Spanish…
And they will rout the foreigners!
As with most folk songs, there are basically innumerable variants and versions, but here’s popular Irish YouTube singer and nice sweater aficionado Colm McGuinness:
The official Music to Write Realmgard to playlist has been updated to include this latest entry:
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