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The Blackbird of (Sweet) Avondale / The Arrest of Parnell

[ Roud 5174 ; Ballad Index Zimm081 ; Mudcat 1599 , 23701 ; trad.]

Maureen Melly sang The Blackbird of Avondale to Peter Kennedy and Sean O Boyle in Belfast on 2 August 1953 (BBC recording 19355). This track was included in 2014 on the Topic anthology of traditional songs, airs and dance music in Ulster recorded in 1952-3 by Peter Kennedy and Sean O’Boyle, The Flax in Bloom (The Voice of the People Volume 27).

Peta Webb sang The Blackbird of Avondale in 1973 on her Topic album I Have Wandered in Exile. Reg Hall or A.L. Lloyd noted:

In Irish song, when a man encounters a handsome woman in mourning by the waterside, the chances are that the lady is a personification of Erin in distress, and we are in the presence of a political ballad; so it is with The Blackbird of Avondale. The song is from 1881, and the symbolic blackbird represents Charles Stewart Parnell, who was arrested and lodged in Kilmainham Gaol following Land League agitation. On broadsides, the ballad is usually sub-titled: The Arrest of Parnell.

George ‘Geordie’ sang The Blackbird of Sweet Avondale to Robin Morton in his sister Sarah Anne O’Neill’s home near Derrytresk, Coalisland, County Tyrone, in 1977. It was released in the following year on the siblings’ Topic album of traditional songs of a Tyrone Family, On the Shores of Lough Neagh. This track was also included in 1995 on the Topic anthology Bards & Ballads / Celtic Voices. John Moulden noted on the original album:

There is a legend, not very likely, that this song was written by Anna Parnell, sister of the celebrated Charles Stewart Parnell. According to Georges-Denis Zimmerman in Songs of Irish Rebellion (Dublin, 1967) it was probably made to the air of The Royal Blackbird; a Jacobite song referring secretly to the deposed James II. Our song also follows the convention of referring to its hero, Parnell himself, in a secret way as the ‘Blackbird’. Parnell and other leaders of the Irish Land League, a body devoted to rights for tenant farmers, who were arrested in October 1881 and lodged in Kilmainham Prison in Dublin. The action was taken in exasperation when the League refused to concede anything in return for Gladstone’s Land Act, itself intended to put an end to three years of passive resistance and acts of violence. The imprisonment led to the so-called Kilmainham Treaty which effectively ended the Land War.

Geordie has the song from another of the McMahons, Paddy’s father, Ned. It is very popular, sung to the same Doh mode air as here but, as Geordie says, “with different birls”.

Silly Wizard sang The Blackbird of Sweet Avondale in 1986 on their Green Linnet album A Glint of Silver. They noted:

Charles Stewart Parnell was imprisoned in Kilmainham Jail in Dublin in 1881 for the leading part he played in the Irish Land League. In songs of rebellion or songs that the government might consider seditious, it was common to use a synonym instead of a person’s real name. In this case, Parnell is ‘the Blackbird of sweet Avondale’.

Lyrics

Maureen Melly sings The Blackbird of Avondale

By the sweet bay of Dublin, while carelessly strolling,
I sat myself down neath a green mossy shade,
And there by the beaches, the wild waves were rolling,
In sorrow condoling, I spied a fair maid.

Her robes were in mourning, that once shone so glorious.
It made my heart ache all to hear her sad wail.
Her heart-strings burst out in wild accents uproarious,
Crying, “Where is my blackbird of sweet Avondale?”

In green County Meath, Wexford, Cork and Tipperary,
The rights of old Ireland my blackbird did sing.
But woe to the hour, when, with heart light and airy,
He flew from my arms and to Dublin took wing.

The fowl hawks were there with intent to ensnare him,
While I here in sorrow his absence bewail.
It grieves me to know that the walls of Kilmainham
Surrounds my poor blackbird of sweet Avondale.

A cold prison dungeon is no habitation
For one to whose country’s so loyal and true.
Oh, give him his freedom without hesitation;
Remember he fought hard for Ireland and you.