Songs of the Scribe

About ‘Songs of the Scribe’

This new album is set in a world of woods, water and birdsong, lamentation and the divine, mystical incantation and love songs, and is inspired by ancient lyrics from scribes and hermit poets of early Ireland. Early wire strug harp, vocal drones and contemporary arrangements weave through word and melody recreating a world of simplicity and stillness, contemplation, and delight in nature.

Early lyrics in Old Irish, written by poet-scribes on the margins of manuscripts from 6th to the 12th centuries, include the first examples of personal poetry in Ireland, and are written in strict elegant syllabic metres. They continue to be a source of inspiration for many contemporary poets, including Seamus Heaney and Ciaran Carson, whose works are included here. Some express a sensuous enjoyment of the visual natural world, and Heaney has praised ‘the tang and clarity of a pristine world of woods and water and birdsong’ they are capable of imparting. Others are song-poems and dramatic incantations and chants from an earlier tradition, and are in re-imagined song form here.

Setting these inspirational pieces to music has proved a harmonious balance between traditional singing and contributing to the rich contemporary creative output of the Seamus Heaney Centre for Poetry, where I am based. At readings and concerts, with colleagues from the Centre and with harpist Helen Davies, these songs have been heard in Delhi, Paris, Calcutta, Carlingford, Zurich, Roskilde, Dublin, Hyderabad and, frequently, in Belfast, where it all began.

– Pádraigín Ní Uallacháin
Winter 2011

Musicians

Tracklist