Tommy, We Hardly Knew Ye

“That the world may know, I died for love”

I cannot mark a single St. Patrick's Day without singer and storyteller Tommy Makem. I love him so!

He died in 2007— and we miss him dearly. The poetry and soul of his storytelling and singing were one of a kind. I hope you’ll enjoy some of his poetry and playing that I love best.

Tommy Makem, and the Clancy Brothers, sang the songs I was put to bed with,as a child, my lullabies.

I remember my mother grabbing me up into the air and starting an Irish jig at the first chord of Finnegan's Wake, or O'Reilly's Daughter.

I wore my dancing slippers out!

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Irish folk songs are the first lyrics I learned by heart, the kind of tunes a toddler warbles without having any idea what the words mean.

Here’s one I sang to my babies, too: “Mary Mack.” I also remember singing this with other girls jumping rope, and playing “clap-hand” games. Everyone knew the words. And this was California in the 60s . . .

Mary Mack, Mack, Mack
All Dressed in Black, Black, Black
Silver Buttons, Buttons, Buttons
Going Down Her Back, Back, Back

Now way down Yonder, Yonder, Yonder,
In the Jailbird Town Town Town
Where the Women All Work Work Work
When The Sun Goes Down Down Down

You know, it wasn't until I was 32 years old, and singing my infant to sleep, that I realized that song is the story of a singular streetwalker. Wouldn’t I love to know who it was originally written about and see that dress.

I was watching the Pete Seeger documentary the other night— The Power of Song— and contemplated his remarks on the fate of music's communal memory:

In 1943, when he was in the Army, Mr. Seeger conducted an experiment on his fellow soldiers, asking them to write down the names of the songs whose words and tunes they really knew.

In his own memory file he counted about 300, but he was impressed by the competition.

“I was surprised how many songs the average person knew back then,” he said.

He supposed that the number of songs crossing lines of generation, class and sex would be much lower today, outside of “Over the Rainbow” and “Happy Birthday to You.”

Ouch.

That's sad but true. I think how many songs I know by heart, and they pale in comparison to my parent's musical memory. My mom not only sang all the songs, she knew all the dances that went with them. My dad seemed to know as many songs as Seeger, and in multiple languages as well.

Sometimes I get in a panic, about losing my songbank. I realize that the days when I sang my daughter every night are long behind us.

At a certain point, (grade school?) my kids became embarrassed by my singing— Mom! Stop it!—  and since the rest of the neighborhood wasn't crooning their own tunes, voices floating out the windows, young people singing harmony in the streets, there's been no peer support for it.

You have to go out of your way to find a singing group today— in my childhood, I can't recall going over to someone's house where people didn't dance and sing as a matter of course. It wasn’t showboating, or “art night,” or church— just normal get-together.

Of course we recognized someone how had a “gift” of a voice like Tommy Makem, but historically, singing around the house and at casual parties wasn’t about whether you were a great singer. It was just being yourself.

The other night I went to a neighbor’s dinner party which followed by the roll-out of a home karaoke machine. Goody goody.

I noticed that anyone who knew the song, would rather turn around to the crowd, and belt it out, without the lyric prompt. The microphone's the fun part, not following the bouncing ball.

My friends were shocked that I knew so many  old country tunes, like "Your Cheatin' Heart," or "Jackson."

I don’t even remember why I know them! They get in your ears early, and you can’t get them out.

I realized such songs go so far back in my mind, because I learned them from my family's singing, not from a recording or radio. I didn't know who "Patsy" or "The Carter Family" was.

It was only when I when I got older, and bought my own 45's and records, that I learned lyrics from the original recording artist.

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Above is the Makem song that brings me to my knees, The Butcher Boy. It is the lament of a young girl who's found herself knocked up by the butcher's helper, who's abandoned her.

She contemplates her and her baby's fate, and  hangs herself, with her last poem tucked in her pocket.

In London city where I did dwell
A butcher boy, I loved right well
He courted me, my life away
But now with me, he will not stay

I wish, I wish, I wish in vain
I wish I was a maid again
A maid again I ne'er will be
'Til cherries grow on an apple tree

I wish my baby it was born
And smiling on its daddy's knee
And me poor girl to be dead and gone
With the long green grass growing over me

She went upstairs to go to bed
And calling to her mother said
"Give me a chair 'til I sit down
And a pen and ink 'til I write down"

At every word she dropped a tear
And at every line cried "Willie dear
Oh, what a foolish girl was I
To be led astray by a butcher boy"

He went upstairs and the door he broke
He found her hanging from a rope
He took his knife and he cut her down
And in her pocket, these words he found

Oh, make my grave large, wide and deep
Put a marble stone at my head and feet
And in the middle, a turtle dove
That the world may know, that I died for love

The tragic splendor of the tale, is an inspiration to Patrick McCabe's novel, The Butcher Boy, and Neil Jordan's movie of the same name.

In the case of the McCabe's tale, it's as if the young girl had birthed her child after all, and named him "Francie Brady." His story makes his mother's look like a walk in the park— one of the most damning stories about religion, poverty, violence— and Ireland— I've ever read.

But back to Tommy. What a passion for life. His poems will be sung for very long time.

I hope you don't mind if I change the lyrics to another one of his favorites, this time, a Scottish one, My Johnny Ladd:

Now Tommy is a bonny lad, he is a lad of mine,
I've never had a better lad and I've had twenty-nine...

And for you, and for you, and for you, my Tommy lad,
I'd dance the buckles off my shoes wi' you my Tommy lad!