Lyr Req: Sweet Connlough Bay

Subject: Sweet Connlough Bay
From: GUEST,Robbie
Date: 11 Aug 00 - 11:56 AM

I have been trying to learn the words to this song from an old recording that my father had, but I can't quite make them out. Can anyone help me out on this?

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Sweet Connlough Bay
From: Malcolm Douglas
Date: 11 Aug 00 - 12:29 PM

One of those times when variant spellings make a search difficult if you don't know what to expect.  Have a look at this previous discussion:  Sweet Carnlough Bay  and these two versions on the DT:  Sweet Carnloch Bay  and  Carnloch Bay

Malcolm

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Sweet Connlough Bay
From: GUEST,Robbie
Date: 11 Aug 00 - 02:04 PM

Thanks, Malcolm. The DT version of Sweet Carnloch Bay appears to be the same as the song my father has.

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Sweet Connlough Bay
From: GUEST,Bruce O.
Date: 11 Aug 00 - 02:37 PM

See also "Road to/tae Dundee" in DT.

Steve Roud's folksong index gives #2300 to both "Sweet Carnloch Bay" and "The Road to Dundee". He found no broadside text for either and I haven't found any on the Bodley Ballads website. The sole Irish traditional text indexed is that noted in the list of Irish folk songs in Journals on my website. O Lochlain says in his notes (Irish Street Ballads, #95) that it is by the Poet Mackay, but does not say where he got that information.

Roud lists numerous traditional and recorded versions of the Scots version, including versions from Canada. There's a slip-up here as he has Nigel Gatherer's 'Songs and Ballads of Dundee', 1986, as one of the sources indexed, but his index doesn't list a Scots version, (Gatherer's song #63A, "The Road tae Dundee"), from Belle Stewart, given with tune. Another tune without text is also given (#63B).

Gatherer, who knew of the Irish version, says in his notes that nothing is known of the origin of the song, but pointed out a variant printed copy in the Poets Box, where the girl reveals she is the daughter of a Scots duke. That Poets Box is a series of songs that I know nothing about. Gatherer also mentions that there is a parody of the song called "The Hoor o' Dunblane" (which he does not give, and I have not seen).

Several texts and tunes of the 'Dundee' version are given in 'The Greig-Duncan Folk Song Collection', V, #971, 1995, but there is nothing in the notes there about the origins of the song or any broadside copies.

All of which is to say, simply, that I don't really know much of anything about the songs. Perhaps someone else can do better, and someone can also supply us with that parody.

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Sweet Connlough Bay
From: GUEST,Bruce O.
Date: 11 Aug 00 - 04:08 PM

Sorry for an error. Sorry, I missed the coding that indicates which sources in Steve Roud's bibliography have actully been entered into his folk song database. The songs in Nigel Gatherer's 'Songs and Ballads of Dundee' are not yet indexed.

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Sweet Connlough Bay
From: John Moulden
Date: 12 Aug 00 - 06:52 AM

I have never seen a set of the north Irish version which cannot be traced to Colm O'Lochlainn's printing. This is interesting since Sam Henry, who collected many songs in the area, did not find the song. Colm O'Lochlainn learned it from Cathal O'Byrne c 1913 and, as Bruce says, attributes it to the poet McKay.

The only other references to McKay (so far as I can discover) are in Jack McBride: Traveller in the Glens (Belfast, 1979). McBride knew Alex McKie (as his book spells it and which is how McKay is pronounced in the north of Ireland and I think in Sctoland) and credits him with a song called "The drowning of young Montgomery" McBride also remembered him living at a place called Dunmaul near Garron Point and being forced to leave his cottage because of a large boulder which dropped off the cliffs and perched itself on his roof. My guess is that this would have been in the twenties or thirties and that McKay would have been in his seventies.

McBride says that McKie claimed to have been in the "Horse Police" in Belfast and that his favourite saying was "Huh! the poet was a boy in he's young days." He is also credited with writing a song called the Peridot about a coaster which was lost.

Curiously McBride does not mention Sweet Carnloch Bay.

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Sweet Connlough Bay
From: GUEST,Bruce O.
Date: 12 Aug 00 - 10:27 AM

Thanks John. I was counting on you to clarify things a bit regarding the Irish version.

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Sweet Connlough Bay
From: John Moulden
Date: 12 Aug 00 - 10:36 AM

"An old man called McKay" at Carnlough is mentioned in a letter of 1940 written to Sam Henry by Sam Knox who lived near Slemish mountain in Co Antrim. This old man had written a song about the first tennis court in Carnlough. It seems likely that all these McKay/McKies are the same person. If he was "old" in 1940 - at least 70 - he would have been in his forties in 1913. That's at least plausible.

Whoever wrote Sweet Carnloch Bay had some local knowledge because Pat Hamill's Pub is still pointed out though that is not now its name.

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Sweet Connlough Bay
From: Thomas the Rhymer
Date: 12 Aug 00 - 01:11 PM

Alright You Guys! I looked in several listings, copied down a couple of songs that I never knew existed, and got nothing for Sweet Connlough Bay. The hook is set, please get the net! I want the words, the tune,... I want it all!

p p p please?

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Sweet Connlough Bay
From: GUEST
Date: 12 Aug 00 - 01:37 PM

Read 2nd message in this thread, and click on colored titles.

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Sweet Connlough Bay
From: Thomas the Rhymer
Date: 12 Aug 00 - 01:42 PM

OOPS, Thanks for the assistance!

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Sweet Connlough Bay
From: GUEST,Joerg
Date: 12 Aug 00 - 09:35 PM

The song was also once recorded by Eddie & Finbar Furey as 'Carron Lough Bay'. Lough unlike harrharr, and also not sweet. There should be something that points to what is meant regardless of the spelling.

Joerg

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Sweet Connlough Bay
From: GUEST,mary mckay
Date: 21 Nov 04 - 04:30 PM

I know who the Poet McKay is . He was Richard McKay born Armagh 1800 and died in Blairgowrie Scotland in 1897 . He was a direct ancestor of mine. According to my family he also wrote The Road and the Miles to Dundee the Scottish version of Sweet Carnlough Bay. We were also given to believe he also wrote Come All Ye Tramps And Hawker Lads and others. He was a hawker himself as were most of my ancestors at that time.

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Sweet Connlough Bay
From: belfast
Date: 22 Nov 04 - 02:57 PM

Many thanks to Mary McKay. Can you give us any more information about your ancestor? Is there anything in print?