EAW Singing Decades Part III Challenge/Showcase Thingy CXX
The Irish Girl (Cover) June Tabor – Peter Bond
EAW Singing Decades Part III Challenge Showcase Thingy CXIV: July 28 – Aug 4
Theme: Post a song from either or all of the following decades – 1950s, 1980s, 1990s
Qualifies for both 1980, and 1990.
My first collaboration with two of Youtube’s finest musicians/songwriters:
On Piano:
Duckscli
On Fiddle/violin:
rhopen
This is a tribute to the writer of this beautiful song Peter Bond, who I am led to believe was a folk singer/songwriter doing the circuits 1970’s – 1985, I could find very little about him, but if this song is anything to go by, I would imagine, hearing and seeing him live a great pleasure.
It is sung by June Tabor on her album “Against The Streams” in 1994.
Many thanks Duncan and Ron, you gave me an opportunity to sing something very beautiful and I am honoured to join you.
It was very hard to source the lyrics – so I had to listen and write them down, there is a chance the first lines may be misinterpreted:
I walked on a northern shore
Where the sandywort sped on before the ocean’s blast
The grass ran like lemmings for the dune’s high edge
And I thought it meant like the grass
We bend in the driving gale
and scarcely paused to think what makes the wind so strong
or if there’s a refuge from the drivers flag
But then I heard the saddest song
of the Irish Girl
The Irish Girl
Her eyes through a sparkling red
like raindrops on a laurel when the moon appears
She sang of her sorrow through the stinging spread
and through the sweeter brine, the salt of tears,
I weep for the lost of a love
Who’s gone brooding now and silent as a standing stone
Two sides of a coin we rolled a battered roll
but in time he chose to leave alone
His Irish Girl
His Irish Girl
I touched her and spoke my name
for it seems she didn’t know me for the song she sang
she said, oh I know your face but here’s the shame
for though I knew the boy, who knows the man
and I wept who might turn for the fool
who never saw the joys that make a blind man smile
seeking his fortune while the brightest jewel
was within his reach all the while
The Irish Girl
His Irish Girl
Images by kind permission:
RobRoyAus – Flickr