Heathery Hills, The

DESCRIPTION: "I mind it well, and I see it yet" The singer recalls past days meeting Rory on the Heathery Hill. She misses her mother and her father's fields. "The city holds no pleasure" and she would give it up for a summer eve with Rory on the Heathery Hill.
AUTHOR: Ethna Carbery (Mrs. Seamus MacManus, Anna Johnston) (1866-1902) (source: _A Celebration of Women Writers_ on the University of Pennsylvania Library site)
EARLIEST DATE: 1906 (Ethna Carbery, _The Four Winds of Erinn_, according to _A Celebration of Women Writers_ on the University of Pennsylvania Library site)
KEYWORDS: homesickness love separation lyric nonballad lover mother
FOUND IN: Ireland Britain(Scotland(Bord))
Roud #5295
RECORDINGS:
Brigid Tunney, "The Heathery Hills" (on IRTunneyFamily01)
NOTES [132 words]: IRTunneyFamily01: Brigid Tunney explains that she learned the song from her sister; it was among the songs she learned in Glasgow and brought back to Ireland on her annual return. - BS
According to Patrick C. Power, A Literary History of Ireland (Mercier, 1969), p. 160, Ethna Carbery, a native of Belfast, took Donegal as her theme; her "fame rests on one volume alone -- The Four Winds of Erinn. This was published posthumously in 1902. She essentially belongs to the nationalistic ballad tradition which goes back to the Nation writers."
According to Kathleen Hoagland, 1000 Years of Irish Poetry, p. 775, Carbery's true name was Anna Johnston McManus. (I have no idea why she needed a pen name after her death.) Her one song work well-known in folk circles is "Roddy McCorley." - RBW
File: RcHeaHil

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