The Holy Ground: A Song History

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"The Holy Ground" is a sailor's song of leaving and coming home: in the Traditional Ballad Index's summary, a seaman parts from home and his sweetheart, fights foul weather on the passage around Cape Horn, writes to his girl when the ship reaches port, and is at last welcomed back joyfully.[1] The Index files it as Roud 929 under "Swansea Town (The Holy Ground)," explaining that in Ireland it normally carries the Holy Ground title, which is also the name of a spot in Cork, while elsewhere it generally goes by "Swansea Town."[1] It gives an earliest date of 1905, citing Purslow's Marrow-Bones, and reports the song from southern England, Ireland and Massachusetts; its references include four texts printed by the shanty collector Hugill under titles such as "The Holy Ground Once More," and a variant called "Old Dundee Town Once More" from a collection of Dundee songs.[1] The Index also passes on Robert Gogan's note that the name usually means the east side of Cobh.[1]

Etching of a sailing ship heeling in heavy seas under dark storm clouds, with a rocky shore and tower at right.

Ludolf Backhuysen, Storm at Sea, etching, 1701. A sailing ship in heavy weather, shown for the song's seaman who fights foul weather on his passage; the etching has no connection to the song.

Cobh has taken the song as its own; Adrian Gebruers, writing for the Irish Traditional Music Archive about two Cobh songs tied to the Holy Ground, calls the better known of them "the much-loved Cobh anthem" yet suggests the song itself may have arrived from across the Irish Sea, displacing a native one.[2] He points to a version his father, Staf Gebruers, took down in 1926 from Len Leary, a seafaring man from the east end of the town, under a heading naming the "Swansea Town" tune.[2] In England, Gustav Holst had already made "Swansea Town" the sixth of his Six Choral Folksongs, Op. 36b, written in 1916 and published by Curwen in 1917, from words collected by George B. Gardiner;[3] a Curwen copy digitized by People's Collection Wales labels it a Hampshire folk song.[4]

The Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem recorded "Holy Ground" in New York in 1962 for The Boys Won't Leave The Girls Alone, a Columbia LP released that November, and the sleeve note, admitting some doubt, described the Holy Ground as a place in Cork City where sailors went when they came ashore.[5] Sources differ on the location, then: the sleeve note says Cork City, while Gogan, as reported by the Ballad Index, says Cobh.[5][1] Janene Millen and Shawn McCurdy set it in DAD tuning in From Ditties To Dirges, a collection whose listing says its pieces were picked for the beauty of their melodies; each comes in tab, standard notation and chord names, and five of the book's tunes appear in more than one arrangement.[6]

Our book that contains the song "The Holy Ground"

Sources

  1. The Traditional Ballad Index: "Swansea Town (The Holy Ground)".
  2. Irish Traditional Music Archive: "The Two 'Holy Grounds'! A Musical Enigma".
  3. IMSLP: "6 Choral Folksongs, Op.36 (Holst, Gustav)".
  4. People's Collection Wales: "Swansea Town".
  5. The Balladeers: "The Clancy Brothers & Tommy Makem, The Boys Won't Leave The Girls Alone".
  6. Janene Millen And Shawn McCurdy: "From Ditties To Dirges".
  7. Image: Ludolf Backhuysen, Storm at Sea, etching, 1701. The Cleveland Museum of Art.

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