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One Morning in May
[ Roud 44779 ; Mudcat 4319 ; trad.]
Len Graham sang One Morning in May on his 1977 Topic album of traditional songs, ballads and lilts, Wind and Water. This is similar in theme to The Bold Grenadier / One Morning in May (Roud 140) but here the seducer isn’t a soldier and the sweet singing birds aren’t identified as nightingales. Len Graham noted:
This is yet another song I learnt from the late John McGrath. There is a modest seduction scene—modest as with most Irish songs, the seduction isn’t too explicit. In this case “When the birds sang so sweet, this young man proved his deceit.”
Niamh Parsons sang One Morning in May in 1992 on her Greentrax album Loosely Connected. A live recording from Fylde Folk Festival 2005 was released in the same year on her and Graham Dunne’s album Live at Fylde.
Nuala Kennedy sang One Morning in May in 2014 on The Alt’s eponymous first album The Alt. She noted:
This is a song I associate with my native Dundalk, having first heard it sung in my late teens by the late County Louth singer and flute player Eithne Ní Uallacháin. I’ve long been captivated by the song’s journeying theme, echoed in its meandering melody.
Ken Wilson and Jim MacFarland sang One Morning in May in 2017 on their CD Here’s a Health to the Company!. They noted:
Learnt this song from the singer Len Graham.
Sandra Joyce sang One Morning in May on her 2023 album of songs of love and loss in the Irish tradition, Since You and I Have Been. She noted:
Eithne Ní Ualláchain (1957-1999) was a beautiful singer and musician from Co. Louth and it was from her album with Gerry O’Connor entitled Lá Lugh that I got this haunting song. The album notes state that Eithne learned it from the great Antrim singer Len Graham, and that it was a song in the northern ‘hedge school’ tradition. The notes continue: “Such songs are typified by their high-flown language, their allusions to classical literature and an internal rhyming scheme derived from 17th- and 18th-century Gaelic poetry”. Here, we find references to Venus and Diana in a tale that is a too familiar—a woman who is seduced and then abandoned by a young man. The narration switches between the man, an anonymous storyteller and the woman, which gives the story a curious and interesting trajectory. The melody features some wide and unusual leaps, and I love the quality this gives the song.
Lyrics
Len Graham sings One Morning in May
One morning in May as I carelessly did stray
For to view yon green meadows and the lambs sport and play,
In the clear morning dew as I lay down to muse
A fair maiden of honour appeared in my view.
Said I, “Pretty maid how happy we could be?
For it is so decreed, love, that married we should be.
Let me not see you frown for this heart is your own.”
When these words they were spoken sure the tears trickled down.
“Come dry up your tears, there is nothing to fear.
I will roam through the green fields for many’s the long year.”
When the birds sang so sweet this young man proved his deceit
Saying, “Adieu pretty fair maid, we will never more meet.”
With my snuff box and cane the whole world I would range,
Like Venus or Diana in search of her swain.
While the moon does shine clear I will mourn for my dear,
Over mountains, clear fountains, where no-one will hear.
There’s one thing I know and that before I go
I will never return for to hear your sad woe.
There’s another thing I know and that before I go
That the ranger and the stranger have many’s the foe.