Ardaigh Cuain: A Song History

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"Ardaigh Cuain" is an Irish-language song from the Glens of Antrim; the sources consulted here give its title as Airdí Cuain, Airde Cuan or Ard Tigh Cuain.[1][2][3] The earliest printing found in the sources consulted here dates from October 1895, when Eoin MacNeill included it in an article on Irish in the Glens for the Gaelic Journal; he wrote it down from the dictation of James M'Auley of Glenariff, of the post office at Waterfoot, worked in variants from James M'Naghten, a fluent speaker of about eighty living near Cushendall, and described the author only as an emigrant named M'Cambridge.[3][4] Later sources identify him as John McCambridge (Seán Mac Ambróis) and give his dates as 1793 to 1873, but the circumstances of the song's making remain unclear: the singer Dónal Kearney, writing about the song, sets out differing stories of its origin and leaves open whether it is autobiographical.[1][2][5][6]

Stereograph photograph of a horse and cart on a coastal road passing a rocky arch

William H. Rau, A highway of northern Ireland near the village of Coushendall, stereograph (one half shown), 1903. Library of Congress. No known restrictions on publication. A road near Cushendall in the Glens of Antrim, the song’s home district.

The title refers to Ardicoan, a narrow townland about a mile west of Cushendun in the parish of Grange of Inispollan.[4][6][7] Its Irish name has been spelled and explained in several ways; Kearney reports a tentative reading from the Queen's University Belfast place-name project of Ard a' Chuain, "height of the harbour," alongside a different interpretation by Seán Mac Maoláin.[6] The singer is an exile who imagines himself back on that hillside, recalls hurling on the shore as a boy, misses the birdsong of home and longs to die in Ireland; in a footnote MacNeill gave the song's Gleann na gCuach, the glen of the cuckoos, as supposedly near Creggagh in Glendun.[3][5][6]

Mary O'Hara recorded an English version by her sister, "The Quiet Land of Érin," which leaves the refrain in Irish, on her 1956 Decca album Songs of Érin, and it became the theme of her BBC television series that year; Jean Redpath, Sandy Denny and Maggie Boyle later sang it, Boyle in the opening of the 1992 film Patriot Games.[8] Skara Brae recorded it around 1971, and the air appears as no. 49 in Tomás Ó Canainn's Traditional Slow Airs of Ireland and has been recorded on fiddle.[2] Other recordings include a 1982 fiddle-and-guitar track by Eugene O'Donnell and John Krumm and a pairing of voice and pipes from around 2008 by Stéphanie Makem and Tiarnán Ó Duinnchinn.[9][1]

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Sources

  1. irishtune.info: "Airdí Cuain".
  2. irishtune.info: "Airde Cuan".
  3. Internet Archive: "Irisleabhar na Gaedhilge. The Gaelic Journal" (vols. 5-6), Eoin MacNeill, "Irish in the Glens of Antrim".
  4. Cartlann: "A Mbeidhinn Féin i n-Áird í Cuain" (Seán Mac Ambróis).
  5. Cartlann: "Seán Mac Ambróis".
  6. Dónal Kearney: "Airdí Cuan".
  7. Glens of Antrim Historical Society: "Ardicoan".
  8. Mainly Norfolk: "The Quiet Land of Érin".
  9. Villanova University Digital Library, Philadelphia Ceili Group collection: "06 Airdí Cuan".