Connemara Cradle Song, The

DESCRIPTION: "On wings of the wind o'er the dark rolling deep Angels are coming to watch o'er thy sleep Angels are coming to watch over thee So list to the wind coming over the sea." May the winds be fair, the fishing good, and no sailors lost
AUTHOR: See NOTES
EARLIEST DATE: 1953 (recording, Delia Murphy)
KEYWORDS: sailor lullaby fishing | wind
FOUND IN:
Roud #46223
RECORDINGS:
Gwen Bartok (Dylan), "Connemara Cradle Song" (Piotr-Archive #825, recorded 03/13/2024, played on an out-of-tune guitar)
NOTES [146 words]: This song must be traditional, because a lot of people sing it and no one can figure out where it is from! I think the strongest claim is by John Francis Waller (1809-1894), since he seems to be the oldest source cited. However, the printings that attribute it to Waller all seem to be from after the early-1950s recording by Delia Murphy. It is not in Waller's collected Poems. And Murphy claimed copyright. I've also seen an attribution to Tommy Makem, but I think we can ignore that one; Makem and the Clancy Brothers popularized the song, but that was after the Murphy recording. Similarly, an attribution to "Liam Daly" is pretty clearly false.
It occurs to me that Murphy might have fitted the tune, which approximates "Down in the Valley," to the Waller text (which may earlier have been sung to something entitled "Happy Home Waltz No 1"). But that's only a guess. - RBW
Last updated in version 7.2
File: DPio825

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