"Songs of Sean McCarthy" -- an article by Mattie Lennon
The Songs of Sean McCarthy
by
Mattie Lennon
"The
Songs of Sean McCarthy", a recently launched video, features fifteen
of the 160 songs, by the prolific Bard of Finuge, sung by his friend and
fellow Kerry-person Peggy Sweeney. His first song, written in 1930, when he
was seven,
with some assistance from a local songwriter, went;
" I'm intelligent Sean McCarthy And I'm known by all the
boys,I
live at the foot of Haleys wood,With muck up to my eyes."
You can order
the video and two CDs of Peggy Sweeney singing Sean McCarthy's songs
from
Self-recognition of talent was not arrogance or intellectual
snobbery, for he
was the humblest, kindest and most unassuming of men. Sensitivity, power
of
observation and love of words; tools of the songwriter, were his. " I
heard
music in the shining water of the river Feale, laughter in the flight of
the
wild geese, sadness in the passing of a friend and hope in the crying
winds that
tormented the bogs...............".
On his first day in school teacher, Bryan McMahon, noticed; "Those
merry,
mutinous eyes where gaiety and an absolute freedom of the spirit had
wondrously
mated". With ".....This ache in my brain to write a song that would be
put down
on paper", he once described himself as;" a Kerry bogman who couldn't
spell and
had no idea where commas went", (I know the feeling) but nothing
discouraged
him. Although fitting in, anywhere from Carolina to Camdentown or Fort
Said to
Philadelphia, his heart was always in North Kerry. "You don't grow up in
thebog.....you grow up with the bog." he explained.
He wrote songs tragic, touching, sad, sentimental, lyrical and light,
and all
had a story. Despite sharp wit and great humour, the sad song became his
trademark. "Why is there no humour in your songs?" he asked Ewan McColl,
who -
probably trying to beat a Kerryman at his own game- answered with a
question:
"Why does somebody die in all your songs?" He wrote on many subjects but
his
sensitivity sharpened when writing of death
The video covers a wide range of emotions, feelings and levels of
consciousness. "Step it Out Mary" was inspired by a skipping rhyme heard on
a fair day in
Kanturk. Then the tragic story of his sister, Peggy, who had a child out
of
wedlock in the 'forties. Because of prevailing attitudes, so-called
moral values
and ignorance she died of shame. Uncharacteristically, because of this
calamity,
he carried, for decades, a resentment, against Church, State and
society.
Eventually he told Bryan McMahon how the hatred was eating his soul.
Sagacious
Bryan advised; " write about the bloody thing", which he did, "to get
the hatred
out of my system and unsnarl my gut". The hate diminished each day after
he
wrote
"In Shame Love in Shame" sung with such feeling by Peggy Sweeney.
"Shanagolden",
written in a Manhattan high-rise apartment, was a story heard in a Limerick
field 25 years earlier. And a chance meeting with an old toil-worn Irishman,
in
The Mother Redcap, gave us the moving "John O' Halloran", which Sean
described as brutal, (not as in rude or coarse but
a savage account of a whole spectrum of human experiences) He claimed his
previous songs were lacking in dept.
"The Key Above The Door", Encompasses the titles of the works of
Maurice
Walshe with whom Sean shared a profound sense of place. Maurice said " A
place
acquires an entity of it's own, an entity that is the essence of all the
life
and thoughts and grief's and joys that have gone before" And his
biographer's
account of how he ".... was particularly sensitive to the atmosphere, to
the
aura and to the sensitivities of people" would fit snugly into a
description of
McCarthy.
His attachment to places was not lost on the video production team.
The
visual aspect is the result of superb camerawork, meticulous editing and
subtle
and sensitive planning. The film accompanying each song was shot in the
area,
which inspired it and Pat and Billy Donegan, of Pats Tracks, who
recorded it,
took no shortcuts. Shanagolden,
is heard at it's best among the scenes of that village.
"One
Mile From Tralee Town" was filmed a mile from Tralee town. And the "brutal"
"John
O' Halloran" was depicted by people sleeping under cardboard, and
pseudo-Irishness, in a London familiar to Sean McCarthy, where he was
many things, from a labourer with Murphy's to manager of The Crubeen Club at
Clapton Junction.
His tales of the Crubeen Club was first rate entertainment in itself,
and here the multicultural clientele became a sounding-board for his songs.
Chart-topping "Step
it Out Mary" was first heard in The Club.
He appreciated the
groups and
solo artists, world-wide, who recorded his work. But in Cork's Regional
Hospital
in 1990, he summoned only one singer to his death-bed; Peggy Sweeney,
the woman
he had literally hounded for 18 years to record his songs. On his last
night on
earth, 31st October 1990, he asked her to move his bed, so that he could
see the
stars, and to record his songs. She complied with both requests. The
respect and
admiration which the songwriter and singer had for each other was
founded on
reality and did not constitute a Mutual Admiration Society. "It was a
two-way
situation". Sean had no doubts about the potential, ability and
dedication of
the singer, after she won her first competition at seven-year old.
And the filmed scene where Peggy, while singing
"My
Kerry Hill", places a single red rose beside a weathered tombstone
bearing
the surname, McCarthy, has a poignancy, which could hardly be achieved
by mere thespian perfection.
Two great talents have given us a gem.
"The Songs of Sean McCarthy" is available from;Peggy
Sweeney,Mountcoal,Listowel, Co. Kerry.
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