Wind That Shakes The Barley: A Song History

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"The Wind That Shakes the Barley" is a reel in D major, and Alan Ng's irishtune.info gathers many titles under it, among them the Irish "An Ghaoth a Chroitheann an Eorna," "I Sat in the Valley Green," and "The Kerry Lasses."[1] Where the tune began is disputed: the Traditional Tune Archive reports that Father Henebry and Breandán Breathnach took it to be Scottish, while Bayard, who collected versions from Pennsylvania fiddlers, found the tune widespread in Irish and Irish-American tradition yet scarcely present in Scottish tradition.[2] The earliest printings the Archive has found are Irish, in William Power's Dublin collection of country dances (about 1812) and Maurice Hime's (about 1814), with the first Scottish printing in Joseph Lowe's reel collection of 1844–45, and the Archive treats the question of origin as still open.[2] The title turns up in 1829 in William Hamilton Maxwell's Stories of Waterloo, where the narrator dances to it at a ball.[2]

Etching of a wheat field beside a sandy road, with a cluster of windblown oaks under a wide sky

Jacob van Ruisdael, The Wheat Field, etching, 1648. A wheat field rather than barley, shown for its subject; it has no connection to the tune.

Francis O'Neill printed the reel in The Music of Ireland (1903, No. 1518), The Dance Music of Ireland (1907, No. 737), and O'Neill's Irish Music (1915, No. 257), and the Archive notes that he also used the title "I Sat in the Valley Green."[2] Breathnach later included it as No. 202 in the third volume of his Ceol Rince na hÉireann.[1] The reel shares its name with Robert Dwyer Joyce's song about the 1798 rising, and the Archive connects the song to this tune while noting that its original publication named a different air, "Royal Charlie."[2]

The accordion player Peter Conlon recorded "The Wind That Shakes the Barley" for Columbia in New York, with piano, in about November 1917.[3] A 1917 Conlon recording heads irishtune.info's discography of the tune, which goes on to include the concertina player Elizabeth Crotty, the piper Séamus Ennis, Planxty, and the Chieftains.[1] Aaron O'Rourke includes it in DAD tuning in Irish Session Tunes, Volume 1, a Fingers Of Steel collection of 36 jigs, reels, and polkas commonly played at Irish sessions, arranged for the mountain dulcimer.[4]

Our book that contains the song "Wind That Shakes The Barley"

Sources

  1. irishtune.info (Alan Ng): "Wind that Shakes the Barley".
  2. Traditional Tune Archive: "Wind that Shakes the Barley (1) (The)".
  3. Discography of American Historical Recordings: "Columbia matrix 58988. The wind that shakes the barley / Peter Conlon".
  4. Fingers Of Steel: "Aaron O'Rourke, Irish Session Tunes, Volume 1".
  5. Image: Jacob van Ruisdael, The Wheat Field, etching, 1648. The Cleveland Museum of Art.

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