The Bold Fenian Men

Yes, another song. I'm into Scottish songs and Irish songs that are against the English. This should make our very British neighbors aboslutely thrilled. Anyway, this one is "Down By the Glenside", and it's Irish. I've decided that I'm going to try and learn a lot of Jacobite songs and some Irish Rebellion songs. So far: the rest of "The Rising of the Moon" (Theodore Bickel tune) and "Down By the Glenside" and "The Foggy Dew". That's for the Irish. For the Jacobites: "Ye Jacobites By Name" (Robert Burns version!!!), "Johnnie Cope" (Not Robert Burns), "Will Ye No Come Back Again?" and perhaps some more. When we get home I'm really going to have to learn the guitar.

"Down By the Glenside" is a beautiful song about some rebellion (part of my project, after I've got words and tune down as easy as an Atwater-Donnelly song, is to research to death the origins and background, because there's some obscure stories out there), and its first verse deals with someone saying, "I was out walking and I saw this old granny humming this tune--'Glory O, Glory O to the bold Fenian men'." Anyhow, the tune is beautiful, and on some website I found an MP3 sample instead of a MIDI. I wish every website did that! It helps to know how the words fit in. But I like MIDIs, too and wish I could make them as good as some people out there...

Anyway, I'm writing a comic strip for my dad, the fourth in a series. The first three stories dealt with a young woman who 1.) frees her galaxy from the tyranny of the evil "Bureau" and its leader, Commander Krane; 2.) Gets Krane put in jail once and for all; 3.) Puts down another woman who wants to rule the Galaxy and is killing people to do it. But now, we turn from Sci-fi (and really bad Sci-fi at that) to folk music. This young woman's by this time aged quite a bit, and her children are grown. So her son, daughter, and son-in-law form a folk trio. Anyway, the story is about this woman's son, who is a bit of a jokester. Hence a really bad joke I made at the expense of this truly beautiful song:

Emmett (the son) is miffed at Theresa (his sister) because she said that he sang out of tune. Whether he does or not is yet to be soon. Theresa is moody and the siblings often have slight tiffs. Anyhow, Emmett has the solo for the first verse of this song, so he begins nicely:

"'Twas down by the glenside, I met an old woman
A-picking wild nettles; she scarce saw me comin',
I listened awhile to the song she was hummin':

And then he grins at his sister and bursts into "Angels We Have Heard on High"--"Glo-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-oria in excelsis--oh, sorry. Glory O, glory O to the bold Fenian men!"

Theresa's response is: "Can't he just be serious?"

But it is a beautiful song, truly!