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Handed Down
Handed Down celebrates traditional songs and the people who sing them. The show is presented by Jenny Shaw, an amateur musician and professional writer. Each episode is full of music, tales and curiosities as we delve into the history a single song, often with the help of a fellow folk musician, to uncover the strange stories and colourful characters that lie beneath.
These are the songs that have been handed down from our ancestors. This podcast and the people involved in it help keep them alive so that we can hand them down in turn to future generations.
Handed Down
The Pretty Girl - A Moo-ving Love Song
This little Irish love song has quite a back story. To trace its origins, we have to travel back in time to a very subversive harp festival, dig into the Irish harper tradition and follow the fortunes of some proper characters. There’s a tiff between an Irish and an English poet, a moody watcher on a hillside, and what does Judy Garland have to do with it all?
Find out in our brand new episode!
Music
The Airy Bachelor, tune collected in Donegal by Herbert Hughes
The Coolin, traditional Irish tune
The Pretty Girl tune as arranged by Edward Bunting in A General Collection of the Ancient Music of Ireland, 1796
Dinogad’s Smock, 12th Century Welsh tune
Eleanor Plunkett, Turlough O’Carolan
Judy Garland sings The Pretty Girl in “Little Nellie Kelly” (1940): Judy Garland: A Pretty Girl Milking Her Cow
Percy Grainger’s version of The Pretty Girl: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LPpQ4h26lBM
Beethoven, "Sweet Linnet": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Zpz94lzCoE
Song: The Pretty Girl Milking Her Cow / Lament for Owen Roe O’Neill (according to Clannad)
Sources and references
A general collection of the ancient Irish music: containing a variety of admired airs never before published, and also the compositions of Conolan and Carolan. Edward Bunting (1796) https://archive.org/details/generalcollectio00bunt/page/n11/mode/2up
The Song of O'Ruark, Prince of Breffni https://www.musicanet.org/robokopp/eire/thevalle.htm
Thank you to the contributors to the Mudcat Café whose discussions 25 years ago gave me most of the research I needed for this podcast: mudcat.org: Info: Pretty Maid (Girl) Milking a Cow
Thank you to Stones Barn in Cumbria and the Barnstoners who set me on this course and kept me going.