Tell My Ma: A Song History

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"Tell My Ma," better known as "I'll Tell Me Ma" or "I'll Tell My Ma," is a children's street song most closely tied to Belfast, although singers elsewhere have been known to swap in Dublin.[1] The Roud Folk Song Index files it under number 2649 together with a song called "The Wind" or "Rain, Rain, the Wind Does Blow," and the Traditional Ballad Index, whose editor admits to misgivings about the decision, keeps them as separate but closely related entries.[2][3] Alice Bertha Gomme's The Traditional Games of England, Scotland, and Ireland (second volume, 1898) printed several versions of "The Wind," from places including the Forest of Dean and Perth, and described a ring game in which the child in the middle names a player from the ring, who then goes into the centre.[4] Its tune, the Irish News reports, is thought by some to be English in origin, with Irish children taking it up in the streets early in the twentieth century.[1]

Colored lithograph of a small child in a striped dress playing with a red ball on a yellow lawn, with strolling figures in the distance.

Édouard Vuillard, Children's Games, color lithograph, 1897. Children playing ball in a park in 1897, shown for the song's playground world; the lithograph has no connection to the song.

David Hammond published a text and tune of the song and recorded it on I Am the Wee Falorie Man: Folk Songs of Ireland, a 1959 Tradition LP; his printed version and the Clancy Brothers' are nearly identical, each pairing a single "I'll Tell My Ma" verse with the rest of "The Wind."[3] The Ballad Index observes that the Clancy text also brings in a Belfast girl who has set her heart on a young man, a detail its editor did not find in other versions.[2] The song has since traveled far beyond folk clubs, recorded by Van Morrison and the Chieftains for Irish Heartbeat (1988) and, about ten years on, turned into a dance hit by the Belfast band Sham Rock that peaked at number 13 in the UK.[1]

In 2024 it was named among Ireland's songs for the EU Songbook, a collection of 164 songs representing the member states.[1] Dulcimer players will find it in DAD tuning in Mike Anderson's Songs For Kids, a Fingers Of Steel download of easy arrangements of songs children like to sing, chosen from his decades of teaching kindergarten.[5]

Our book that contains the song "Tell My Ma"

Sources

  1. The Irish News: "Belfast children's song among Irish selection for EU songbook".
  2. The Traditional Ballad Index: "I'll Tell My Ma (I)".
  3. The Traditional Ballad Index: "The Wind (Rain, Rain, the Wind Does Blow)".
  4. Project Gutenberg: "The Traditional Games of England, Scotland, and Ireland (Vol 2 of 2)" by Alice Bertha Gomme.
  5. Fingers Of Steel: "Mike Anderson, Songs For Kids".
  6. Image: Édouard Vuillard, Children's Games, color lithograph, 1897. The Cleveland Museum of Art.

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