Folk Tradition

Andy Irvine's Devoted, just released, is the culmination of his nearly lifelong passion for the songs of Woody Guthrie, a musical and personal hero since the late 1950s. It includes renditions of eleven Guthrie songs with support from longtime Irvine collaborators John Doyle, Dónal Lunny, Mike McGoldrick, Bruce Molsky, Nikola Parov, and Rens van der Zalm. The twelfth cut is a remastering of Andy's tribute to Woody, "Never Tire of the Road," which appeared on his 1996 album Rain on the Roof and sports a new fiddle track.

The most interesting selection may be the one here entitled "Wallace-Taylor Train / Bet on Wallace," which is actually a mash-up of two Guthrie songs with roots in both "The Wabash Cannonball" and the old horse-racing song "Stewball." "Wallace" is Henry A. Wallace, former vice-president and Secretary of Agriculture under FDR, whose 1948 run for president on the Progressive ticket energized the American left but garnered less than three percent of the popular vote; "Taylor" is his running mate, former senator Glen H. Taylor.

Guthrie had earlier (in 1942) adapted the melody of "The Wabash Cannonball" into a song called "The Farmer-Labor Train," alluding to Minnesota's Farmer-Labor Party; he updated the lyrics for the Wallace campaign. Andy's spirited bouzouki-based recording draws on a separate Guthrie lyric, "Bet on Wallace," which borrowed the phrase "He might win, win, win" from Leadbelly's version of "Stewball."

As for "Stewball," though the song has a long tradition in the US, it commemorates a famous horse race in Ireland in the eighteenth century. A version of the song, in a radically different version with a Balkan arrangement, appears on the eponymous 1976 Andy Irvine and Paul Brady album under the title "The Plains of Kildare."

Devoted is available from The Last Music Company, Ltd.

August Almanac

Are there ticks in Ireland? If so, Seamus Heaney doesn't mention them in his poem about foraging for wild blackberries. Here in Maine there are banner crops of both this summer. I walk along the disused gravel road just around the corner and pick the fruit that has "inked up," careful to avoid the thorns and not to wander too far into the brush lest I bring home unwanted hitchhikers concealed in my clothes. But the "rat-grey fungus" that spoiled Heaney's harvest isn't a problem for me, because every berry I can reach goes straight into my mouth.

The spring peeper above that I spotted nestling on a blackberry leaf is likewise a far cry from the "great slime kings" of another Heaney poem, "Death of a Naturalist." Below, a dapper grasshopper and a green darner dragonfly from the same stretch of road, both invertebrates substantially larger than the tiny frog.

Falling Slowly

Farewell, Glen Hansard, much too soon. (I've just watched Once again. It's even more heartbreaking, now.)

More at the Guardian.

Live Music (Gillian Welch and David Rawlings)

I first saw Gillian Welch (and David Rawlings) perform in 1998 at the Towne Crier Café, which was then located in Pawling, NY. The capacity there couldn't have been more than 150 or so, and as I remember I was seated with some friends at a table right next to the stage. I had heard at least one of the two records Welch had out at the time, and had liked it well enough to buy a copy, but even so I wasn't prepared for what I heard. Her singing and songwriting were brilliant enough on record, but seeing the two performers up-close, with David chiming in with tight harmonies and the extraordinary sounds he got out of a little Epiphone archtop acoustic guitar, was nothing short of a revelation. (Rawlings doesn't simply play brilliantly; he plays inventively, with wit.)

In time, the couple became too popular for tiny clubs like the Towne Crier, and though I bought most of their subsequent records I didn't have a chance to see them alive again until this week, in a sold-out show at the Portsmouth Music Hall in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, a venue that seats almost 900. In the ensuing twenty-eight years their repertoire has grown and broadened (a bit), but they still perform in basically the same manner, with the same or similar instruments and no additional musicians. The only major difference is that Rawlings, who has released a few records under his own name, now takes lead vocals on roughly half the songs, and the couple are billed, as they should be, as a two-person collaboration.

As far as I could tell, the lone song they performed from their first two records, the only one that would have been in the 1998 set, was "One More Dollar." Other than that they performed a mix of new material and songs from their 2001 album Time (The Revelator) through last year's Woodland. There were several songs from the David Rawlings Machine album entitled A Friend of a Friend, and I have to say I enjoyed those a lot more live than I did on that record. There were several encores, notably a rousing sing-along version of "Look at Miss Ohio" from Soul Journey, and, at the very end, a lovely cover of "Long Black Veil" for which the sound system was switched off and Welch and Rawlings stood at the edge of the stage and performed without a mic to a hushed and delighted house. From what I understand they play Portsmouth regularly, and I'll make every effort to catch them next time around.

Digging in Orkney

The producers of Time Team have released a 75-minute video covering the excavations at Orkney's Ness of Brodgar, which were conducted over a twenty-year period ending in summer 2024. Rather than the typical Time Team episode, in which a team of archaeologists swoop in and excavate a site in real time over a limited period, this is more of a straight documentary, and a very good one at that. The only recognizable Time Team regulars here are Tony Robinson, who contributes some voice-over, and the geophysicist John Gater, who has longstanding connections to the site. The other archaeologists seen on camera, including the site's director, Nick Card, are veterans of the dig at the Ness.

Orkney prehistory is fascinating. The Ness complex, dating to roughly 3000BC, is one of the most important Neolithic sites in Britain. Despite Orkney's isolation, it was no cultural backwater. In addition to the Ness, the islands are home to important stone circles, the chambered tomb at Maes Howe, and the settlement of Skara Brae. Whoever the ancient Orcadians were, they had sufficient time and energy to devote to craftsmanship and public architecture; the impressive fine stonework at the Ness is featured in the documentary.

When the excavation concluded, the site was reinterred to protect it, but during the final stages of that work a geophysical survey revealed an intriguing circular feature outside the limits of the original excavation, and the investigation of that feature (rumored to be a large Neolithic hearth) will be the subject of a future Time Team episode. The analysis and publication of the finds at the Ness is expected to go on for many years.

In Memoriam

Johan Sebastián Durán Guerrero, murdered by the federal government of the United States in Biddeford, Maine on July 13, 2026.

More information:

The Guardian
Associated Press

The Missing Phoenix

As soon as I finished my last post I hauled down my copy of V. S. Pritchett's massive Collected Essays to see what if anything Pritchett had to say about Jonathan Wild. I soon discovered that not only had he anticipated (and amplified) much of my argument but that he had even used essentially the same title: "An Anatomy of Greatness." Since his piece was included in a collection published in 1942, the parallels he found between Fielding's criminal "Great Man" and modern political sociopaths focused on a different generation, but the underlying idea was the same.

There's no shame in ceding priority to Sir Victor, but the end of his essay held a surprise.

Mrs Heartfree's sea adventures, in which there is hardly a moment between Holland and Africa in which she is not on the point of losing her honour, are not so much padding but give a touch of spirit to her shopkeeping virtues and also serve the purpose of satirizing the literature of travel. It is hard on Mrs Heartfree; perhaps Fielding was insensitive.

All well and good, until Pritchett goes on:

Without that insensitivity we should have missed the adventure with the monster who was 'as large as Windsor Castle'; an episode which reminds us that the spirit of the nine o'clock news was already born in the 1700s:

I take it to be the strangest Instance of that Intrepidity, so justly remarked in our Seamen, which can be found on Record. In a Wood then, one of our Mucketeers [sic] coming up to the Beast, as he lay on the Ground and with his Mouth wide open, marched directly down his Throat.

He had gone down to shoot the Monster in the heart. And we should have missed another entrancing sight. Mrs Heartfree perceived a fire in the desert and thought at first she was approaching human habitation.

... but on nearer Approach, we perceived a very Beautiful Bird just expiring in the flames. This was none other than the celebrated Phoenix.

The sailors threw it back into the Fire so that it 'might follow its own Method of propagating its Species'.

My reaction to this was bafflement. Had I read Jonathan Wild so carelessly that I had breezed past a Monster and a Phoenix? Was V. S. Pritchett even reading the same book? As it turns out, he wasn't, exactly. The earliest version of Jonathan Wild was in a 1743 collection entitled Miscellanies. According to Fielding scholar Peter Jan de Voogd, the colorful chapter that described the Monster and the Phoenix was included in that edition, but Fielding apparently later decided it was too farfetched and left it out of a 1754 reprint. My Hamish Hamilton edition from 1947 followed the later version; Pritchett read the original text.