I have always had a rather complicated relationship with Irish music.  I both love it (I am listening to it right now, ‘The Fields of Athenry,’ to be precise), and I get ultimately frustrated with it.  There is a reason I gravitated towards the Pogues when I was a young man, and when I picked up a guitar to play, I punked it up.  Having said that, there are some traditional Irish songs I can listen to over and over and over again once more.  ‘Cúnla’ is just such a song, I have loved this song since I was a kid.  ‘Cúnla’ dates back to the 14th century and was originally composed as a lullaby, or, as it is called in Irish, a baby-tickling song.  It was originally (and still is) sung in the Sean-nós style, an old-style form of Irish song, generally sung in a highly ornamented, complex form.  The Sean-nós style is generally native fo the south and west of the island.  It was translated into English at some point in the 18th or 19th century and versions in both languages have been recorded by nearly every traditional Irish singer, as well as their dogs.

A cúnla is a son of a hound, and the lyrics of the song suggest one of those things that goes bump in the night (as an aside, I have always been struck by the idea that lullabies, if you actually pay attention to the words, are anything but soothing):

Who is that there that’s rapping the door to me x3
Only meself says Cúnla

Chorus:

Cúnla dear don’t come any nearer me x3
Maybe I shouldn’t says Cúnla

Who is that there that’s tapping the window pane x3
Only meself says Cúnla

Chorus

Who’s that there that’s climbing the stairs to me x3
Only meself says Cúnla

Chorus

Who’s that there that’s pulling the blankets down x3
Only meself says Cúnla

Chorus

Who is that there that’s tickling the toes of me x3
Only meself says Cúnla

Chorus

Who is that there that’s tickling the thighs of me x3
Only meself says Cúnla

Chorus

Who is that there that’s raking the fire for me x3
Only meself says Cúnla

Recently, the Canadian Celtic punk band, The Peelers, included a version of the song on their album, The Palace of the Fiend.  It has quickly become my favourite version of the song, due to the combination of the thundering bass and drums and Jonny Moorman’s fiddle duelling with Eric Diamond’s tin whistle over top of the slashing guitars and Dave Barton’s voice.  I recently cornered Barton and asked him about his band’s version of the song.

Politics/Letters: How do you approach doing a version of a song that dates back to the 14th century? Do you have a sense of history in so-doing?

Dave Barton:  Well, really our “version”, is a version of a version right? Traditional songs have been passed down through the years, sometimes to the point where they no longer genuinely reflect the original. And that’s where they become victims of history, much like human history itself is so often blurred. I read someone describe traditional Irish tunes as ‘sonic ghosts’; I think implying, that in the music, tradition and history are irrevocably linked, particularly within the context of a country like Ireland whose political, religious, and social history is so notorious. So there’s definitely a sense of history, understanding that the original version was written in Gaelic, and a number of English translations have been produced. We are yet another part of this ‘storytelling’ aspect of oral history, because we used verses drawn from two different sources. And at least one of the verses I believe, “don’t come any nearer me”, dates back to some of the original English translations. But really, we’ve created our own “version”, as I mentioned before. I can’t, nor have I attempted, to secure the veracity of the verses we use. We listened, we repeated, based on, essentially what we thought worked, and sounded best. Especially in light of the speed at which we play the tune, even the verses we amassed were slightly altered to fit the groove. 

P/L: Tell me about the way in which you conceived of this cover (Dubliners & Gerry O’Neill).

DB: We listed it as “arranged by” us on the album, which is true only in that we used varied verses, and modified the lyrics to suit. Otherwise, the order of the five part tune, and verse placement was taken from The McMartin Fiddle arrangement of the song, a three piece traditional act that featured in Glengarry County [Ontario] a number of years ago. The subtitle on the track listing in brackets says “For Ger”, which is a tribute to their fiddler, a good friend of ours, born in Derry City who now resides in Glengarry in Eastern Ontario, named Gerry O’Neill. I actually heard them perform the song live before I obtained a copy of their recorded version. I then managed to get a copy of “Last Night”, which was an ‘only released on cassette’ recording of Gerry and another friend from Dublin, Brendan Nolan, live at the Old Dublin in Montreal [Ed: The Old Dublin was a legendary Irish pub in Montreal, located in an old carriage house at the back of a parking lot.  It was a victim of gentrification and the editors of Politics/LettersLive refuse to acknowledge the new traditional storefront ‘pub.’] Add to that, The Dubliners version, and our arrangement is an amalgamation of all of those influences. We mainly write and record original material now, but we wanted to include a traditional track on the last album that reflected our reverence for the genre, our appreciation for Gerry and other Glengarry musicians, and harkened back to our roots in The Peelers.
 
P/L:  How does one go about arranging a traditional Irish song for non-traditional instruments, like electric guitars and bass, etc.?
 
DB: It’s really not as difficult as it may seem. My first introduction to traditional Irish music was listening to Tommy Makem & The Clancy Brothers in the car with my dad, when I was very young. I could sing all those songs from an early age, ‘Courtin’ in the Kitchen’, ‘The Moonshiner’, ‘The Parting Glass’, etc… Growing up in the shadow of the Canadian Gaelic enclave of Glengarry, Ontario, only served to heighten my love for the genre. Now, I was also a punk rocker growing up, listening to The Ramones, The Clash, Sham 69; I fell in love with the rebellious nature and insurgency of punk, which, like Irish trad, is notorious for its political and social awareness. My issue was, I couldn’t figure out how to combine the two effectively, I simply didn’t have the foresight. And then in 1985, in a car, in a parking lot at a shopping mall in Plattsburgh NY, on the tape deck, my whistle player Eric and I heard an album called ‘Red Roses for Me,’ by The Pogues. It sounds cliché, but that effectively changed our lives. There it was, the answer to how it’s done. Traditional, and original London Irish influenced folk punk with a rhythm section, and a snarling lead vocal. It was the Clancys, but the material was rife with references to drug use and other vices, modern political issues, and urban decay. A little more than five years later, I would first meet my long time friend and fellow Canadian Finny McConnell and his band, The Mahones, who showed me that not only could the marriage of punk and trad be accomplished, but you didn’t have to be a native of the island to do it! Although, in fairness, Fintan was born in Dublin. We started the first true incarnation of The Peelers shortly after that, in the early 90s, as a three piece. The full band wasn’t established until 1999, but we already had so many influences at that point in Shane & The Pogues, The Mahones, The Waterboys, The Men They Couldn’t Hang, Flogging Molly, and others. I learnt from the best how to arrange traditional songs for modern performance. With Cúnla specifically, it’s arranged around the five part tune played so well by our fiddler, Jonny Moorman.
 
P/L: When I first approached you, you said you weren’t sure that you, as an Irish Canadian, are the right person to speak to this song.  Why?
 
DB:  Did I say that? I don’t remember, but it’s certainly possible. My insecurities over singing traditional Irish tunes, as an Irish Canadian are strong. My ancestry is there, but I didn’t grow up with the hardships associated with Irish identity, i.e. the Troubles, the Famine, religious persecution, etc. I’m often accused of having a lilt in my voice which I’m sure comes from learning those Clancy Bros tunes at such an early age. At that point, I was imitating, rather than carving out my own identity. I’ve become less sensitive to this over time, thinking about all the Irish and British bands who historically attempted to mimic American rhythm and blues, not to mention, country singers from the Canadian prairies who sound like they just hopped off the bus from Oklahoma. There’s nothing wrong with any of it; you are who you are, and art is a personal experience. But there are people with much more insight into trad Irish music than I will ever have. I just hope, that whatever I do, I do it justice. My greatest fear is being accused of mockery. In that vein, we were once accused of being Plastic Paddys, by a girl from Galway, a pejorative term for someone who pretends to be Irish. Instead of being offended, we understood, and ran with it, recording a song with that title on our second album. It’s very tongue in cheek, and I think, represents the way I feel about my place in the genre. These days, I write original songs, for the most part about my own personal experiences. And as a history major, I do it from the point of view of the phenomenon of the North American diaspora. I have great reverence for my ancestry, and tremendous respect for tradition as it’s played out on this side of the broad Atlantic.