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| Image by Caty Bartholomew |
It is a fact, however, that in a Christmas season about 20 years ago I got a rush of creative blood to the head above in Connemara and wrote one of the most popular Irish Christmas songs in less than an hour.
It came to me, air and all, after I'd watched a poignant TV documentary about the spontaneous soldiers' truce in the trenches during World War I. Deeply moved and somehow inspired, I was walking through the living room singing it, tears streaming down into my beard, before that strange hour was over.
I first sang it in public in Griffin's pub in Ennistymon that Christmas and was amazed to see tears in many of the listeners' eyes too. So I knew I had a song to sing.
If you are at all a creative person you know the limits inside which you normally operate. I have always been aware that I am a good competent hack with a relatively low ceiling of achievement and no ambition at all.
But this song, which is entitled "Silent Night -- Christmas in the Trenches 1915" came from a place away above my creative ceiling. It was some kind of gift from Above.
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I've tried to get there again many times since that evening but have never come anywhere close. I've written other songs, some of them mediocre, but most are maudlin yokes of which I'm not proud.
It was years later before the song was recorded by the great Kilfenora tenor Gerry Lynch, with an arrangement by his talented uncle PJ Curtis, and it has been increasingly popular every Christmas since.
Many other artists have now recorded it, including Celtic Thunder and even Daniel O'Donnell but, to
my mind, Lynch's version is the classic.
The real joy for me comes at this time of year when men and women in pub sessions, most not knowing I'm the writer of the thing, deliver their versions from stools and corners. That's very special when you are sitting there quietly listening in the shadows.
I now know exactly how my brother Mickey feels when he hears somebody delivering "Only Our Rivers Run Free.”
There was one Christmas when Lynch's version of "Trenches" got into the Irish Top 20, and I occasionally rib my younger brother that this was higher than "Rivers" ever climbed, even with the assistance of Christy Moore. A bit of sibling rivalry is a healthy thing!
Last weekend there was a big concert in the arrivals hall of Shannon Airport. My former colleagues in Clare FM, who were recording the event, prevailed upon me to come up and sing my Christmas song on the night. I did so with the greatest of pleasure and no pressure at all, aided by a splendid Shannon folk choir singing "Stille Nacht" and a mighty warpiper from Tulla skirling away at the end. My head was quite large leaving the stage!
Not large enough, however, to stop me telling ye that the Tulla Pipe Band and the Tulla Ceili Band are still as thrillingly good as ever they were. They pumped more life into the threatened airport than it has experienced in a long time.
And would you all please remember that I was the first to tell ye about a Shannon teenager called Aoife Casey? Aoife, who is about 16, and who has a voice to die for, a soaringly beautiful voice on either Irish or English songs, was beyond doubt the star of the show, and I predict she will be internationally known and famed before she reaches 20. Remember that.
And when she is at the height of her fame maybe she will sing my song some Christmas. And I will sit in the shadows listening with a smile on my face as wide as the Atlantic Ocean.
And even Mickey will be a small bit jealous!
Here, listen to 'A Silent Night [Christmas 1915]'
13 Comments
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Switch to the desktop site to post a comment.eiriamach | Dec 16, 2011, 08:45 AM EST
I've been thinking about Cormac's marvelous story of his mother and the curse she will surely send down on GD. I can find in my family tree also an ancestor of incisive wit and sharp moral discernment. So I'm going to invoke the spirit of my great-great aunt Bridget for much the same goal. She has helped me in the past, and I'm sure she'd be willing to help clean up the IC com boxes as well. Those who ran afoul of Bridget have had ample cause for regret!
GeorgeDillon | Dec 10, 2011, 03:17 PM EST
cormacmac: What a contemptible clown you are, screaming "racist' when you've lost an argument. Why don't you back up your stupid militaristic warmongering with some effort at reason and evidence? For the record, I am as much a racist as you are a journalist. And for your homework write out 100 times the correct spelling of the word. It's not "rascist", you illiterate fool.
joycean | Dec 09, 2011, 05:40 PM EST
My grand-uncle, my paternal grandmother's brother was killed in action in Flanders on 19 March 1915. He was 25 years old, a private in the Irish Guards. My father, his nephew taught me to sing Silent Night when I was a little child.
cormacmac | Dec 09, 2011, 05:32 PM EST
I very courteously requested a rascist ranter called Dillon to cease contaminating this relatively gentle space after an outburst a month ago.Of course he did not listen. However offended posters can now relax totally. I hereby invite Dillon to comment two or three times every week and the more abusive the better. My late mother Mary was a Clough Bannon from Lisbellaw. They were a rare clan noted for their yellow necks and their connections with what we here call the Black Arts. She is dead for a decade but, because of her special powers, all of us are still in close spiritual communion with her. I placed the matter of the Donkeyman in her hands yesterday and her advice was to encourage him to rant here, the oftener the better, and she would deal with the matter sometime before Saint Patrick's Day. Dillon, please let us hear much more from you between now and then in any frequency. You will laugh at this but I suggest you examine your ears in late January and, if I know my mother at all, they will by then begin to become much larger and hairier. And the other element of your anatomy of which you are boasting now will probably shrivel away totally at the same time. So please continue to let us hear from you until your hands become hooves. And other readers can now relax. The Clough Bannon is looking after us.
GeorgeDillon | Dec 09, 2011, 02:25 PM EST
"George Dillon descended from a donkey?". Actually, now that you mention it, over the years for some reason several lady friends have made that same hypothesis. But to turn to the matter in hand, I make no apology for using the epithet "murderers" to describe those who kill for no just reason. In this case, these Irishmen killed Austrians, Turks, Germans, Hungarians etc., people of whom they knew nothing and with whom they had no quarrel. I am not surprised that a lously racist like OLoingsigh glories in stupid slaughter. But the mawkish sentimentality of irishman6 is quite nauseating --:"then maybe we could all get together and live in peace." The exact opposite happened, you dope, when the lousy officer class blew the whistle the following morning, these idiots started trying to kill people for some imbecilic reason only known to them. I despise these mindless merceneries, and I salute the forever verdant memory of Pearse and Connolly and those who stood with them.
johnshiel | Dec 09, 2011, 10:03 AM EST
doesn't one thing just lead to another??? finally I youtubed "Only Our Rivers..." and found it sung by five handfuls of Irish groups and names... met numerous groups for the first time that Ive heard mentioned for yeras (bad on me...) heard Planxty guy tell storu of 1969 playing and not many singer songwriters were around, it was a new thing at the time, and they heard this song by young singer-songwriter from Fermanagh named Mickey cConnel... Maybe I'm the only slow student in the class (me and georgie boy, that is!) but it's been t great tour through time and space and cultural history... thanks and always, Cormac!
eiriamach | Dec 09, 2011, 07:49 AM EST
Beautiful, brilliant! The 'silent night' songs, all of them, in German or English, in a Hollywood film or in a cathedral or in the muddy trenches, have a special resonance in wartime, when we most need to listen. And let's not forget, the US is at war again.
DanOLoingsigh | Dec 08, 2011, 07:36 PM EST
George Dillon descended from a donkey?...surely not...Donkeys are a lot further developed than any of George's genes...given his (offensive) penchant for referring to those he disagrees with as Vermin, Rattus rattus is most likely...
irishman6 | Dec 08, 2011, 05:55 PM EST
I am very much offended by the comments of George Dillon who again has proven that man just may have decended from donkeys at least some males!
GeorgeDillon | Dec 08, 2011, 02:26 PM EST
This is stupid garbage. Any fools who stop killing on December 25 in order to resume it when told by their officers to do so on December 26 are nothing but murderous vermin. Real peacelovers would have turned their guns away from the "enemy" and trained them instead on their lousy officer class, just as Lenin and Connolly called for.
rosyposy | Dec 08, 2011, 01:29 PM EST
cormac i too was deeply moved by the story. your song is wonderful! all the best
irishman6 | Dec 08, 2011, 11:46 AM EST
Cormac...what you have done is written a song which should be heard around the world all year long then maybe we could all get together and live in peace. Thank you form sharing it and I understand why there is not a dry eye around. Well done my friend!
johnshiel | Dec 08, 2011, 10:31 AM EST
gobsmacked.