Contemporary: Highland Paddy
Highland Paddy
Sean McCarthy c. 1950
One verse & chorus: (133K)
"Highland Paddy" is performed by Wild Mountain Thyme
on their CD Depraved.
Notes: 'Highland Paddy' was a
nickname for Irishmen previously emigrated to Scotland, who returned to
fight
for Ireland during the 1798 Rebellion.
In the songbook titled:
The Road to Song: Sean McCarthy, His Songs, Their Music and Story, (pub
Clo Duanaire, Cork Ireland, 1983) Sean wrote the following notes:
The hotel was rundown, seedy
looking, and badly in need of a lick of paint. It catered mostly for
transient
labourers looking for work, dodging work or just plain shy of work. The beds
were relics of the old English era of the spike and the workhouse, sagging,
misshapen
and sorely in need of airing. It was the hardest winter that England could
remember. The ground was iron hard, and all construction work was at a
standstill. As the Cockney pub owner who employed me to sing songs six
nights a
week said: "Sorry mate, if the bleeding Paddy's can't work, they have no
money; no money, they can't drink; no drink, they can't listen to your
bleeding
rebel songs, so mate I have to let you go."
The hotel library was a small dusty
little closet of a room, with a few tattered magazines, and a mound of dog
eared
copies of Readers Digest. It was in one of those dirty fly specked books
that I
came across a writer named Ernest Deeling. Deeling's story was headed
"Captain Brady and his Highland Paddy's. I read it carefully, lying on my
cold rickety bed, and I promised myself, when times got better, I would
journey
to Kilkenny, and find some man or woman in a quiet pub, a man or woman who
liked
to relate stories of the long ago.
Times did get better, Jack Frost
released his iron grip on the English landscape. McAlpine's men, and
Murphy's
men went back to their English dig. The Cockney pub owner took me back. We
raised the rafters nightly with our rebel songs. I found my quiet pub a year
later in Kilkenny town. I also found a grey haired, hard drinking historian
named Daniel Keegan.
Between songs, fishing lies,
political arguments, and spouts of poetry, Dan told me the story. I put the
story into a song. The Wolfe Tones put it on record, that led to other
recordings. A few years ago, at Listowel writers week, I met a tall
Scandinavian
lady in Mary Bs Hotel, I was singing a piece called Cloheen for my own one,
she
likes the words of that particular song.
When I finished my stave, the
Scandinavian lady came with a request to our table. She had heard she said
an
Irish tourist sing a song called "Heeland Patty" in a pub in Sweden.
Did I know it? I said I did. I sang it for her. Come to think of it now, she
never offered to buy me a drink.
One evening fair as the sun was shining,
To Kilkenny I did ride,
I did meet with Captain Brady -
a tall commander by his side.
Chorus:
Then you are welcome Highland Paddy,
By my side you'll surely stand, hear the people shout for freedom,
we'll rise in the morning with the Fenian band,
Rise in the morning with the Fenian band.
In the mornin' we rose early
Just before the break of dawn blackbirds singing in the bushes
Greetings to a smiling morn.
Gather round me men of Ireland
Gather Fenians gather round
Hand to hand with sword and musket
Spill the blood upon this holy ground.
There's a glen beside the river
Just outside Kilkenny Town
There we met this noble captin
Men lay dead upon the ground.
Chorus
There's a grave beside the river
A mile outside Kilkenny Town
There we laid our noble captain
Birds were silent when this Fenian died
All my life I will remember
I'll remember night and day
That once I rode into Kilkenny
And I heard this noble captain say.
Chorus