WHEN I was a youngster I admired the songs of Percy French that were most familiar to Co Clare. Sweet Mariewas the most important one, I think, because the parish had a certain connection with horses. Or, you might call it, with the farmer's horse. This was the time when breeding horses was democratic and before breeding had become monopolised by a very narrow number of people.
Spancil hill was just up the road and in a way "Hold your holt, Sweet Marie", and so forth captured the melodic rhythm of the movement of the horse. Also I remember very distinctly Slattery's mountain foot, or as Percy French had it, "Slattry's Mounted Fut", which was much more popular than the more structured Clare Dragoonswhich had made its way into the school syllabus.
The interpretation of the songs is significant to understanding the extent to which Percy French recorded the language. He recorded it as he heard it. When you read James Healy's book, The Songs of Percy Frenchand you look at the notes, for example, to Whistlin' Phil McHugh, Healy highlights the notion of all of the underlying language like fluthering and sluthering.
It is useful to contrast the relationship between Percy French and what he did and achieved to the project that was taking place in Coole with Yeats and Lady Gregory. It is important for a number of reasons to listen closely to the run on the lines in Beautiful Miss Bradys and their Private Ass and Cart. You find there is a musicality in the fall of the language.
Percy French was born in 1854 and it is interesting to look at what was happing in Ireland in that period and in the decades before. That century was very significant in terms of the loss of the language and it is credible to suggest that the music was surviving through the new words and through the new language.
Music expressed a form of culture that had been driven down through the new language, which was English. What happens in many cases is that one language does not neatly replace the other. The Irish liked English and particularly long words, which they used to capture the language and in doing so they were inventing something entirely new.
It is a great tribute to Percy French that he had that intelligence to be able to relate to the musicality in the language around him. There was not any simple division in Ireland between land-holding landlords and landless tenants. This was and is a complete fiction.
There were as many distinctions between labourers who had nothing at all (who were most of the people who died in the Famine), and those who had plots of land and were able to survive the Famine.
The Famine was just a development of the clearances which had started long before, but it completely eliminated the agricultural labourers and those who were without a plot.
There is no doubt that Roscommon can be proud of somebody that had an advanced sensibility, who was deeply human, qualified in different ways, cycled all over the country and who never gave in to any exclusion.
I think he would like in many ways that we would keep our sense of humour and see the irony of our existence, but also its positive humanity and remember that we not only belong to one small place but to a big world, as illustrated in his paintings of Ireland, Canada, United States, Hudson River, The West Indies and Switzerland.
I hope as The Percy French Summer School opens, we will think of him; and as we hear the songs we will not be afraid to laugh at our pretensions exposed. Indeed, Tim Pat Coogan in his talk, Sure We're not Right Michael Sure We're not: a reflection on the contemporary political and economic crises with apologies to The West Clare Railwayby Percy French, will certainly invoke this aspect of our nature as well as provoking lively debate.
Michael D Higgins is Honorary President of the Percy French Summer School, which runs at Castlecoote House near Roscommon from Wednesday July 13th until Friday. Details at www.percyfrench.ie