E:\Irish music\A4 Irish history in song 1 & 2.wpd - Ireland in Schools

‘Young Ned of the Hill’, however, is intent on clearly defining the line between the solidarity of Ireland’s gallant men andthe homogeneity of Cromwell’s villainous crew and their successors. Admitting betrayal by the very community Neddefends and supports would problematise the simplistic view of Anglo-Irish conflict offered by Young Ned of the Hill.Other elements of Ned’s story in oral tradition are similarly not referred to for fear of invalidating theeternal conflict posited by the song. A fuller picture of Ned would have meant a more important role inthe song than that of a two-dimensional foil to Cromwell; the nationalistic message of the song wouldnecessarily be subtler, as are the messages embedded in older songs and stories concerned with Ned andother rapparees. The rapparees’ actions portrayed in older folklore did have political implications thatinvite nationalistic interpretations, but explicit antagonism toward a specific English ruler is unique to‘Young Ned of the Hill’.4. Music & structureDrawing on traditionInitially, the instrumentation of ‘Young Ned of the Hill’ identifies the musical style as specifically Irish.The first stanza is given only the sparse accompaniment of tin whistle and accordion, cultivating thelonesome hills imagery of the text. Then in the second stanza the tempo quickens dramatically, and bass,guitar, and bodhrán (percussion) are added, complementing the introduction in the text of those noblemen willing to fight with Gaelic honour held on high.Departing from traditionOnce the lonesome hills have been populated in stanza two with these as yet unnamed rapparees, backupvocals join in the refrain, which pounds on in a frenetic pace to the third stanza. This orchestration andintensity is maintained until the end. Thus, given the management of tempo and instrumentation, thesong follows a gradual crescendo toward the third stanza, in which Ned is finally mentioned by name,then maintains a sort of high plateau through the fourth stanza and final refrain.With its four stanzas and a refrain, the structure of the song is not a traditional Irish lyric form.5. Conceiving a present, appealing to a pastThe transforming of ‘Young Ned of the Hill’ into a resistance fighter is part of a wider process of reconceivingIreland as a cultural unity and as a nation with the right to independence in train since thelate nineteenth century and emphasised by the renewed violence in Northern Ireland in the late 1960s.Ned is not the only rapparee text to be re-interpreted. The re-interpretation of traditional texts, includingrapparee stories and songs, have a role to play in granting the IRA and other republican groups thelegitimacy of being part of a longer, heroic tradition to armed resistance to English colonisation.6. CautionThis summary does not do justice to the subtlety of Professor Cashman’s scholarship and the way headdresses ‘the central issues of context and contextualisation, text and entextualisation’. Only a readingof the full text can do that.IiS, Irish history in song 1 & 2, page 24