The Hills Of Connemara: A Song History
"The Hills of Connemara" is an Irish folk song about poitín, Ireland's illicit moonshine, set in Connemara.[1] The song calls the drink "mountain tea," and its punch line has the excise men discovering the hidden stash and drinking it themselves.[1] The sleeve notes to Flight 2, a 1979 album by the Wild Geese, credit it to the Kerry songwriter Seán McCarthy.[2] McCarthy's Wikipedia biography also lists it among his songs, giving "Mountain Tae" as an alternate title.[3]
Robert Charles Dudley, The Heights over Foilhummerum Bay, Valentia, the William Corey Heading Seawards, Laying the Shore-end of the Atlantic Telegraph Cable, July 7th, 1866, watercolor over graphite with touches of gouache, 1865–66. Irish hills and coast drawn in 1866, shown for the song's title; the watercolor shows Valentia in Seán McCarthy's County Kerry, not Connemara, and has no connection to the song.
McCarthy was born in Listowel, County Kerry, in 1923, spent stretches of his early life in England and the United States, and took part in the Irish folk revival of the 1960s; Christy Moore, Danny Doyle, the Clancy Brothers with Tommy Makem, and Johnny McEvoy are among the performers who recorded his work.[4] He died in 1990.[3] The Wild Geese recorded Flight 2 in West Germany in December 1978, and it was released in 1979.[2] In the band's account of poitín's history, the cost of the Napoleonic War led Britain to raise duties on legal spirits steeply, pushing impoverished Irish peasants into illegal distilling, and the turf fires that heated the stills often gave their whereabouts away to the excise men.[2]
Shelley Stevens arranges it for solo mountain dulcimer in Baker's Dozen #1: Celtic Music, a Fingers Of Steel book of thirteen well-known Celtic tunes in DAD tuning, written out in standard notation and three-line tablature, with chord-melody arrangements.[5]
Sources
- Wikipedia: "The Hills of Connemara".
- More (Mostly) Folk Music: "The Wild Geese, Flight 2" (album notes).
- Wikipedia: "Sean McCarthy (songwriter)".
- Seán McCarthy Memorial Weekend, Finuge: "Sean McCarthy".
- Fingers Of Steel: "Shelley Stevens, Baker's Dozen #1: Celtic Music".
- Image: Robert Charles Dudley, The Heights over Foilhummerum Bay, Valentia, the William Corey Heading Seawards, Laying the Shore-end of the Atlantic Telegraph Cable, July 7th, 1866, watercolor over graphite with touches of gouache, 1865–66. The Metropolitan Museum of Art.