Dear Friends of Folk Music,

In this book you'll find love and drinking songs, songs about emigration and famine, songs about rebellion and war and also songs that sing the praises of a fancy-free and vagabond lifestyle.

Each song includes a simple picking pattern for chordal accompaniment and an arranged solo guitar version nota ted in its entirety. On the CD you'll find a band version of each song including vocals and all the verses. In addition, a short and interesting piece of background information is provided on each song.

The folk songs in this collection are living documents of a primarily oral tradition whose roots become blurred somewhere in the gray fog of prehistoric and Celtic history.

Whereas some melodies are many hundred or even a thousand years old, the lyrics were altered again and again into versions that corresponded to current events of the time.
During the occupation by the English island neighbors and their rigid colonial rule over the once rich Ireland, everything seminally Irish and culturally-defining for Ireland was relentlessly subject to persecution and fought against and this for several centuries. Providing that the old Irish folk melodies were not forgotten, many of them were outfitted with new, relevant English lyrics.

The transformation from the primarily unaccompanied »sing-song« tradition (sean-nós) to a performing of the Anglo-Irish ballad tradition by a group or small folk ensemble transpired in the 18th and 19th centuries as English appeared to be gaining acceptance as the official language. Most of the songs presented here are from this time. This is also when they were written down for the first time and they represent an interesting artifact of Irish history.

Irish music can't be separated from Irish history. The music is still vibrant and alive because it's performed a little differently wherever you go. Offering a multitude of possibilities for interpretation, the music has been successfully fused in interesting and innovative ways with rock and pop music, several different ethnic styles and even with techno music. Classical musicians are also warming to this rich and timelessly beautiful music. Musicians from the protest years of the last century (1970s) were especially attracted to Irish music. For some time they have associated the vitality and freshness of their rebellious character with its lively melodies, driving rhythms and melancholy mood.

All For Me Grog
Four Green Fields
Henry Joy
I’ll Tell ma Ma
In Dublin’s Fair City
Johnny, I Hardly Knew Yeh
Only Our Rivers Run Free
Red Is The Rose
The Greenland Whale Fisheries
The Praties
The Shores Of Amerikay
The Wild Rover
Whiskey In The Jar