Brighidin Ban Mo Store

DESCRIPTION: "I am a wandering minstrel man, and love my only theme. I've strayed beside the pleasant Bann, and eke the Shannon's stream," but nowhere has he seen anyone like Brighidin. He would not trade even "the high-born Saxon queen" for Brighigin
AUTHOR: Words: Edward Walsh (1805-1850)
EARLIEST DATE: 1859 (Hayes)
KEYWORDS: love music
FOUND IN:
REFERENCES (2 citations):
ADDITIONAL: Edward Hayes, The Ballads of Ireland (Boston, 1859), Vol II, pp. 32-33, "Brighidin Ban Mo Store" (1 text)
H. Halliday Sparling, Irish Minstrelsy (London, 1888), p. 220, "Brighidin Ban Mo Storer" (1 text, with even the note on the text lifted, almost verbatim, from Hayes or some source with the same notes as Hayes)
NOTES [196 words]: This poem does not properly belong in the Index; it is not traditional. But it was set to music by Andy M. Stewart, and recorded by Stewart, Manus Lunny, and Phil Cunningham on "Fire in the Glen." There it is stated that the text is traditional, or at least based on a traditional Irish text. However, as Hayes shows, the poem is by Edward Walsh. I suspect that someone read that the words were public domain (which they certainly were) and read it as "traditional." I suppose you could argue that this is a "translation," but given how banal the piece is, the word hardly has meaning.
I am still trying to find out where Walsh published this poem. It is not in either of his best-known works, Irish Jacobite Poetry and Irish Popular Poetry.
I find myself wondering about the singer's lack of interest in "the high-born Saxon queen." Is that English women in general -- or, just possibly, Queen Victoria herself, who was of course Queen of the English -- but also a Queen of German descent. Of course, Walsh could have meant both....
I have seen a report that the text was sung before Stewart set his tune, using an O'Carolan melody, but it was not specified which one. - RBW
Last updated in version 6.6
File: EHay0232

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