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The Bold Tenant Farmer

[ Roud 5164 ; Ballad Index RcTBTF ; DT BOLDTNNT ; Mudcat 20913 , 34565 ; trad.]

Mickey Cronin of Ballymakeery sang The Bold Tenant Farmer to Alan Lomax in 1951. This recording was included in 1955 on the Columbia anthology The World Library of Folk and Primitive Music: Ireland.

Joe Heaney sang The Wife of the Bold Tenant Farmer in a recording made by Dick Swettenham and Bill Leader at Olympic Studios, London, in 1962 or 1963. It was released on his 1963 Topic album Irish Traditional Songs in Gaelic & English, and was included in 1998 on the Topic anthology of local events and national issues, A Story I’m Just About to Tell (The Voice of the People Volume 8), and in 2009 on the anthology celebrating 70 years of Topic Records, Three Score and Ten. A.L. Lloyd noted on the original album:

In the late 1870s, Irish tenant farmers found themselves caught between bad harvests at home and a fall in grain prices abroad. Their security of tenure depended on prompt payment of rents, and when they had no money, eviction notices fell on the Irish countryside like snowflakes. To protect the tenant farmers, Michael Davitt, with Parnell’s help, formed the Land League in 1879, and the Land War began, with riots at evictions, assaults on land-grabbers, and the development of the technique of boycott against rackrent landlords. (The very word ‘boycott’ comes from this time. Captain Boycott was estate agent for Lord Erne. When he served ejectment notices on his tenants, the Land League declared him under a ban. His domestic and farm-hands left him, shopkeepers refused to serve him, his mail had to be delivered by the police.) In 1882, Parnell and the League were victorious. The affair belongs to the history books, but this, the liveliest of the Land League ballads, still survives as living testimony of rowdy times in the past. The ballad received a new lease of life some twenty five years ago, when the old country entertainer, John Griffin, successfully recorded it on a Regal Zonophone record that is still cherished in many an Irish parlour. Subsequent versions nearly all derive from Griffin, as does this one. The Irish expression at the end of the song: “Agus fágfaimid siúd mar atá sé”, may be rendered as: “And the less said, the better” [The Topic lyrics below translate it as “And we’ll leave it the way it is”].

John and Tim Lyons sang The Bold Tenant Farmer in 2012 on their Veteran album Easy & Bold. John Howson noted:

The Wife of the Bold Tenant Farmer, as the song is often called, is set in Ballinascarty (Béal na Scairte), which is halfway between Bandon and Clonakilty in west Cork. The main characters according to a plaque on a cottage in the village were Dan Walsh and his wife Mary, although other sources name Mrs Nyhan as the farmer’s wife and Bence-Jones as the landlord. Before the Irish land reformation most farmers rented their smallholdings from absentee English landlords. They lived in constant fear of eviction since it was often impossible to pay the exorbitant rents from the proceeds of a few acres. The bailiff and rent collector became figures of terror to the small tenant farmer. The reference to the National Land League dates the song to the period of increasingly bitter protest against the system of land-ownership in Ireland, which contributed to the suffering during the famine. Spearheaded by Michael Davitt, the Land League was established in 1879 to encourage “a general resistance to eviction and a demand for a reduction of rents”. By 1881, the agitation had “almost assumed the character of a civil war”. The word boycott entered the English language during the Irish “Land War” and is derived from the name of Captain Charles Boycott, the estate agent of an absentee landlord, the Earl Erne, in County Mayo.

The penultimate verse sung by John and Tim is a text which was edited by Ron Kavana and is included in his book and CD set Irish Ways (Proper Records PRDP400).

This song was a favourite of the great sean-nós singer Joe Heaney and he can be heard singing it on TSCD658 A Story I’m Just About to Tell.

Lyrics

Joe Heaney sings The Wife of the Bold Tenant Farmer

One evening of late into Bandon I strayed,
Down Clonakilty while making my way,
At Ballinascarty some time I delayed,
And wetted my whistle with porter.

And I spit on my fist and I raised up my stick,
And down the coach road like a deer I did lick.
I care not for bailiffs, landlords or Old Nick,
And I sang like the lark in the morning.

(lilted chorus after every other verse)
Diddly aidel dul daidel dul daidel dul day,
Diddly aidel dul daidel dul daidel dul day,
Darum diddly aidel dul daidel dul day,
And I sang like the lark in the mornin’.

And I scarcely travelled one mile o’ the road,
When I heard a dispute in a farmer’s abode:
The son o’ the landlord, an ill-looking toad.
And the wife of the bold tenant farmer.

“O what the devil came over you at all?
When I call for the rent, sure, I get none at all
But at the next sessions, you’ll pay for it all,
Or take the high road to Dungarvan.”

“O hooray for the bold tenant’s wife,” she replied,
“You’re as bad as your daddy on the other side.
Our National Land League will pull down your pride,
For it’s able to bear every storm.”

“O your husband was drinking in town last night,
Shouting and bawling for bold tenants’ right[s].
But our plan of campaign will give him a fright,
For he’ll never bear all our storm[?].”

“If my husband was drinking, now, what’s that to you?
Sure, I’d rather he drink it than give it to you.
You skinny old miser, you’re not worth a chew,
And your mossy old land is no bargain.”

So he shouted, “Hooray!” and she shouted, “Yoohoo!”
And through the green fields like Old Nick he then flew,
Saying, “God help the landlords and old Ireland, too,
Agus fágfaimid siúd mar atá sé.”

“God help the landlords and old Ireland, too,
Agus fágfaimid siúd mar atá sé.”