The Parting Glass: A Song History

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"The Parting Glass" is a farewell song sung in both Scotland and Ireland, catalogued as Roud 3004. The Traditional Ballad Index observes that it readily borrows verses from other songs, and that some commentators treat it as the same song as "Guid Nicht an' Joy Be Wi' You A'," with which it has some verses in common[1]. Jürgen Kloss, in a detailed study of the song's history, traces the farewell text back to a seventeenth-century broadside, "Neighbours farewel to his friends," dated either 1654 or about 1670. Walter Scott later printed related lines as "Armstrong's Goodnight," attributing them to an Armstrong put to death for the killing of Sir John Carmichael; Kloss treats that story as apocryphal, finding no reliable evidence linking the verses to Carmichael's death in 1600 or the executions of 1601[2]. Writing in 1839, William Stenhouse said a "Good Night" tune had long closed convivial gatherings in Scotland, but the Traditional Tune Archive notes that the melody he meant is not the one sung today[3]. Likewise, Kloss notes that the tune for "Good Night and God Be with You" in the Skene Manuscript, compiled in the 1620s or 1630s, is not the modern melody[2].

Tall eighteenth-century drinking glass with an engraved bowl and a faceted stem

Drinking glass, 1714–60. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Public domain (CC0). Shown for the glass only; it has no connection to the song.

The melody used today appears as "The Peacock" in the second volume of James Aird's Selection of Scots, English, Irish and Foreign Airs (1782)[2][3]. Kloss concludes that most of the modern text took shape in Scotland; he describes the tune as Irish but of unknown origin (though elsewhere he speaks of it as brought from Scotland), and he leaves open where words and tune were first joined. The words he finds on a Glasgow chapbook of about 1815–1822 and a Liverpool broadside of the early 1820s, with the first known Irish printing on a Cork broadside of the 1830s[2]. Some broadsides directed it to be sung to "Over the Hills to My Nanny, O"[1]. Colm Ó Lochlainn printed a version in Irish Street Ballads (1939), learned through his mother from his Limerick grandfather[2], and Francis O'Neill had already published the tune as an air in 1903 and 1915[3]. In Ulster it was sung by Joe Holmes and Len Graham, who recorded it on After Dawning (1979)[4]; Graham recalls Holmes speeding the slow air up into the dance tune "The Peacock's Feather"[5].

The Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem recorded the song on Come Fill Your Glass with Us (Tradition TLP 1032, 1959)[3][4]. Kloss suggests that Patrick Galvin's Riverside LP of Irish drinking songs, perhaps from 1957, may be the earliest recording, but that the Clancys' version, which closely matches Ó Lochlainn's text, became the standard one[2]. Mainly Norfolk, which notes that it is often sung as a gathering of friends breaks up, lists a long run of later recordings, from the Voice Squad and Steeleye Span to Rosanne Cash and Karine Polwart[4].

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Sources

  1. The Traditional Ballad Index: "Parting Glass, The".
  2. Just Another Tune (Jürgen Kloss): "Some Notes On The History Of 'The Parting Glass'".
  3. Traditional Tune Archive: "Parting Glass (1) (The)".
  4. Mainly Norfolk: "The Parting Glass".
  5. Séamus Connolly Collection of Irish Music (Boston College): "Parting Glass, The / The Peacock's Feather".