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Erin’s Green Shore

[ Roud 280 ; Laws Q27 ; Ballad Index LQ27 ; DT ERINGREN , ERINSHOR ; Mudcat 3374 , 163402 ; trad.]

Colm O Lochlainn: More Irish Street Ballads Dáibhí Ó Cróinín: The Songs of Elizabeth Cronin

Hedy West sang Erin’s Green Shore in 1963 on her eponymous Vanguard album Hedy West and in 1976 on her Bear album Love, Hell and Biscuits. She noted on the first album:

My great-grandmother, Talitha Sparks, married Kim Mulkey around 1870 and settled in Gilmer County, Georgia. Before then she had moved with her parents every two years to various towns in North Carolina, Tennessee, South Carolina and Georgia, each move alternating between freestone and limestone water. It’s said that her father couldn’t live on freestone water and her mother couldn’t live on limestone water.

It was only incidental that Talitha Sparks was learning many songs that her 12 children would learn from her. Grandma says her mother learned Erin’s Green Shore during the Civil War, maybe in Benton, Tennessee and maybe in Union County, Georgia.

Steve Turner sang Erin’s Green Shore in 1975 on Canny Fettle’s Traditional Sound album Varry Canny and in 2026 on his Tradition Bearers CD A Host of Furious Fancies. Canny Fwttle noted on the first album:

An abridged version of a beautiful song of the aisling (vision, or dream) type. The poet falls asleep and sees in his dream a magnificent lady who identifies herself in allegorical fashion as Ireland. She laments her present woeful condition and predicts the early expulsion of the oppressors. The song was collected by Helen Creighton from Mr. Grace Clergy, a fisherman from Nova Scotia. It is known in Ireland as The Mantle of Green and a variant of the tune called The Flowers of Erin’s Green Shore can be found in O’Neill’s collection.

Lisa Null sang Erin’s Green Shore in 1980 on her and Bill Shute’s Green Linnet album American Primitive. She noted:

Since the early middle ages, Irish poets have used the allegorical device of a beautiful dream woman to symbolize freedom or virtue. The dream woman here carries a political message and calls herself a sister of Daniel O’Connell, the Irish patriot. Erin’s Green Shore has taken root all over America, not only in Irish ethnic communities. This version , again from Carrie Grover, has a wonderful and archaic tune.

Doug Wallin sang A Bed of Primroses at his home at Crane Branch, Madison County, North Carolina to Mike Yates on 24 March 1983. This track was included in 1992 on the VWML double cassette of old time ballad singers and musicians from Virginia and North Carolina colleced by Mike Yates, Crazy About a Song. This and a conversation with Doug’s mother Berzilla Wallin were included in 2002 on the Musical Traditions anthology of songs, tunes and stories from Mike Yates’ Appalachian collection, Far in the Mountains Volume 3. Mike Yates and Rod Stradling noted:

Berzilla Wallin: They told me that the lady that was with Cecil Sharp … wrote the music and he wrote the words down. When they first come to the mountains back here you see, at that time, there wasn’t many horses and many fine riders around and they rented horses from a liberal (livery) stable, or whatever you call ’em, in Marshall. An they’d, there’s just one little old path that passed our house and they’d ride up by our house and back over into the Sodom Laurel country and, er, finally they didn’t, (there) was a suspicion that something might be wrong with them, and then they found out they was a-making a book an they was all right. But they was sort of scared of ’em at first, and they found out what they was a-doing and the people was more friendly to ’em and, er, corresponded more with them.

Doug’s mother, Berzilla Wallin, was about 22 years old when Cecil Sharp and Maud Karpeles visited Madison County in 1916. Berzilla did not sing for Sharp, although many of her relatives did so. Berzilla’s sister, Zipporah Rice, for example gave Sharp a version of Lord Bateman. According to Berzilla, the people were scared of Sharp because they thought that he was there to secretly map the area on behalf of the water authority. It was believed at the time that a dam was to be build, and the land flooded, so that a reservoir could be established to provide water to the nearby town of Marshall. As Berzilla says, though, the people soon learnt of Sharp’s real intentions and their attitude towards him softened. (Incidentally, it was Sharp who took down the tunes and his assistant, Maud Karpeles, who noted the words.)

Doug’s Bed of Primroses is an American version of the Irish Erin’s Green Shore, an Aisling or vision song, in which a sleeping person is visited by the spirit of Ireland. It is easy to see how such a song, which in its original form called for the freedom of Ireland from Britain, should appeal to the independent minded frontiersman of the New World, even if some of the political and classical allusions have become somewhat blurred over the years. Robert Cinnamond, of Co Tyrone, sang it, as did Elizabeth Cronin and Tom Lenihan, and Sharp heard it in London, in 1908, from Maurice Reardon. A version from West Virginia, sung by Maggie Hammons Parker, can be heard on Rounder CD 1504/05.

Doug had a paperback edition of some of Cecil Sharp’s Appalachian songs in his home and he was extremely proud to be able to sing me a song that Sharp had missed. It was also, incidentally, Doug’s favourite song.

Bob Conroy sang Erin’s Green Shore in 2003 on the Folk-Legacy anthology of traditional Irish-American songs from the Helen Hartness Flanders Ballad Collection, Irish Songs From Old New England.

Andy Irvine sang Erin’s Green Shore in 2019 on the Fylde / Fellside double CD anthology of Fylde guitars and their players, Strings That Nimble Leap.

Lyrics

Doug Wallin sings A Bed of Primroses

One evening so late as I rambled,
On the banks of a clear purling stream,
I ’posed back on a bed of primroses
And gently fell into a dream.

I dreamed that I saw a fair female,
Whose equal I’d never seen before.
Such poise, such grace and such beauty,
Never walked upon Erin’s green shore.

Transported with joy I awakened
And found it was only a dream.
Then I ’posed back on a bed of primroses
And soon I was slumbering again.

I dreamed that Lord Lundy came to her,
Saying, “Maiden, pray tell me your name.
You stand in the midst of great danger,
Or I would not have asked you the same.”

“I’m the daughter of Daniel the King, sir,
From England I’ve lately sailed o’er.
I’ve come to awaken this nation,
As she sleeps upon Erin’s green shore.”

Young gentlemen be kind to all females
And give them advice as a friend.
Be pious and also live a Christian
And Heaven is yours in the end.

All sins from the book will be omitted,
With the females you’ll walk hand in hand.
All troubles on earth will be over
And you’ll dwell at your Saviour’s right hand.