Doherty, Norah, and Ma

Episode 91-Doherty, Norah, and Ma
Boldly tracing song origins and bit characters
This Irish Music Stories episode aired Monday April 1, 2026
https://shannonheatonmusic.com/Episode-91-Doherty-Norah-and-Ma

Speakers, in order of appearance
>> Shannon Heaton: flute player, singer, composer, teacher, and host of Irish Music Stories
>> Niamh Parsons: Singer, educator, activist from Dublin

[ Music: “Bold Doherty,” intro from In My Prime
Artists: Niamh Parsons, Graham Dunne ]

>> Shannon: I’m Shannon Heaton, and this is Irish Music Stories. The show about traditional music, and the bigger stories behind it. Like how dance tunes are for dancing: the rhythmic patterns and melodic shapes of jigs and reels are based on, well, jigs and reels. Even if the connection to the dances isn’t always on display.

But many dance melodies are also for singing, even if many of the words have been forgotten.

>> Niamh: If you couldn’t be bothered to learn words (back in the day) and the tune was always played, it fell into the tradition as a tune only. And it may not be known that there are lyrics to it.

[ Music: “Heartstring Theme,” from Production Music Made for Irish Music Stories

Artist/Composer: Matt Heaton ]

>> Shannon: Dublin born singer Niamh Parsons comes from a musical family and quickly developed a passion for collecting songs. She started her music career with Dublin band Loose Connections, toured with Arcady, performed at the Clinton White House, and went on to perform and record a stunning repertoire of songs with guitarist Graham Dunne. And she’s been actively fighting for musicians’ rights as President of the Musicians Union of Ireland (MUI) since her 2021 election.

No matter where she’s performing, or teaching, or trying to make more space for music and for artist, if she hears a song that grabs her, it sticks. For her, sometimes it’s just the melody.

>> Niamh: Every song is different. I mean, like, sometimes it’s lyrics, sometimes air, sometimes it’s a combination. But  sometimes it’s a song you didn’t even realize was in your head. And you wake up and it’s an ear worm.

>> Shannon: In the case of Bold Doherty, which Niamh recorded on her 2000 album In My Prime, it was the air. And the way it hit her when she sang it when she recorded it with accordion player Josephine Marsh

>> Niamh: So Josephine suggested the song. She knew the tune. It’s known that it’s both a song and a tune

[ Music: Bold Doherty verse one ]

>> Niamh: I love the recording. I only listened to it—and I was in college yesterday, and I was thinking what will I say about this song. And I just said “class, listen to this. Tell me what you think.” So they listened to it, then it was break, and they never told me what they thought. But I listened to it myself, me singing it. And I just thought, yeah, that accordion playing is just delicious.

[ Music: Bold Doherty accordion tune ]

>> Niamh: Let me be honest about this: I learned it, I sang it. I recorded it, and  promptly forgot about it. Until yesterday when you mentioned it.

>> Shannon: Yeah, as can happen! And what do you find appealing about the song?
>> Niamh: I love the tune of it. I like words as well. My dad used to love it too. You know it mentions Norah McGlynn.

>> Shannon: It’s so typical of these old songs—even the bit characters can get a memorable name. Norah McGlynn—maybe she’s some floozy, maybe she runs the pub. Whatever. It’s an unnecessary detail. And I love that Niamh’s dad loved that detail. Norah McGlynn. And the very bold Doherty.

>> Niamh: He’s a bit of a rogue, I think. And he slips out. He tells his mother he’s going out to get some nails to rivet his shoes. And he goes off drinking.

>> Shannon: And then she bars him from the door.
>> Niamh: He says it’s okay. I can get lodgings from Nora McGlynn. You’re grand. You’re grand, ma.

This was the end of the 80s. And I got the words from Fran McPhail.

[ Music: “E Chimes,” from Production Music Made for Irish Music Stories

Artist/Composer: Matt Heaton ]

>> Shannon: Fran McPhail is a singer from Drogheda, in Louth. He’s probably best known for The Voice Squad, a vocal trio he created in 1985 with fellow Drogheda singer Gerry Cullen and Phil Callery from Wicklow. They performed unaccompanied traditional Irish and English songs with really inventive harmonies. They were really active for almost 30 years, into the mid 2010s.

Nowadays Fran, who gave Niamh Parsons the Bold Doherty song, performs and hosts singing sessions around his adopted home of Galway. Fran told Niamh he got that song from Mary Ann Carolan. Not from a book, not from an online lyric search—because you couldn’t really do that back then. But also that doesn’t really give you the full feeling of a song the way you do when you learn it from someone… who learned it from someone… who learned it from someone.

>> Niamh: So Mary Ann Carolan—her maiden name was Usher. That’s where we got Broken Hearted I’ll Wander. She was an amazing singer and concertina player. So she would have been featured on those old recordings. You know, Voice of the People?

>> Shannon: yes

>> Shannon: Mary Ann Carolan is featured on some of those Voice of the People anthologies, that was the Topic Record series with songs organized by theme.

[ Heartstrings theme reprise ]

American folklorist and guitarist Roly Brown first recorded Mary Ann Carolan singing Bold Doherty at her home in Louth in 1978. Four years later the song ended up on her own solo recording, which is called Songs from the Irish Tradition. And she also sang it on Voice of the People Volume 13, That album was called They Ordered Pints of Beer and Bottles of Sherry.

Mary Ann Carolan had a rich repertoire. Music she would have learned from her dad Pat Usher, and from other singers around County Louth. Songs like Bold Doherty, which she would have learned at house dances at her family farm before 1920.

Herbert Hughes had published a much longer version of Bold Doherty back in 1903. His source was a guy called Daniel Dempsey, who used the first part of the Connachtman’s Rambles jig for the melody. Mary Ann’s version has just four verses. She sang it slower, with this more mournful air. And she is the first documented person to sing or play that particular minor-key melody. It’s assumed that the air was floating around Louth, and Mary Ann probably learned it from her dad. But there’s no earlier print notation or named singers that mention her minor slow jig air

>> Niamh: Mary Ann Carolan is the source. Now I was aware as well that Norma Waterson, she had recorded it years ago. She got it from Mary Ann Carolan. She has Traveller blood. She’s a settled Traveller.

[ Music: “Travel Theme,” from Production Music Made for Irish Music Stories

Artist/Composer: Matt Heaton ]

>> Shannon: Legendary English singer Norma Waterson’s parents died when she was 11. She and her two younger siblings went to live with Grandma Eliza Ward who was half Irish, half Traveller. Granny Eliza raised them in a settled working-class neighborhood in northeast England. She taught them Traveller songs, but she didn’t use the Shelta language or congregate with the caravan community.

>> Niamh: Norma spent a lot of time in Ireland over the years.

>> Shannon: So, Irish Travellers are indigenous Irish people with a typically nomadic lifestyle. They speak their own language (Shelta), they live in caravans (which they now usually park in halting sites that government councils starting carving out in the 1960s). And the world of Irish music would be in a different place without the legacy of Travellers—like historic figures like Johnny Doherty and Felix Doran (who was the topic of Episode 29 of the Irish Music Stories Podcast, Trad on Canvas.

There have been formidable Traveller singers like Margaret Barry, Pecker Dunne. And modern day heroes like Paddy Keenan, Finbar Furey, Mickey Dunne: iconic musicians who have shaped the Irish music tradition.

[ Music: “After Hours Theme,” from Production Music Made for Irish Music Stories

Artist/Composer: Matt Heaton ]

Settled Travellers are ethnically the same group who shifted to permanent housing, usually because of the pressures from these racist assimilation policies, fewer roadside camp sites, general social discrimination. Norma Waterson famously sang Ewan MacColl’s Moving On Song about displaced and persecuted Travellers. She also sang the Raggle Taggle Gypsy which is a more romantic/broadside love story between a rich lady who abandons her husband and kids to run off with a pile of carefree wanderers. And she recorded Bold Doherty. It was the opening track on the Waterson:Carthy debut album Norma made with her husband Martin and daughter Eliza and fiddle player Nancy Kerr in 1994.

Niamh Parsons met Norma Waterson in 2002 at a BBC awards show. Norma’s husband Martin Carthy was being awarded Folk Singer of the Year. (Norma had gotten it the year before.) And Niamh’s In My Prime album was nominated for Album of the Year.

>> Niamh: That album was nominated for BBC awards. And that was the first time I met her, actually, was at that awards ceremony in London. And she sang that song. And I said “oh, I just recorded that,” She said I know, that’s why I sang it, Niamh. We recorded it years ago. Where did you get it? And I said, Fran McPhail. And she said Drogheda. Mary Ann Carolan.

>> Shannon: Mary Ann Carolan had no Traveller heritage. But as the wife of a farmer in rural Louth, her life featured small-scale farming: manual tools, a hand-pumped well, kerosene lamps—pretty self-sufficient, fairly low-tech. And very neighborly. They had planting parties; they bartered for goods; and they hosted house dances where Mary Ann played concertina and shared ballads. Not unlike the Travellers’ communal systems and roadside gatherings. The Carolans could obviously relate to this neighborly, communal way of Irish Travellers and the way they built tight-knit bonds through music..

Mary Ann recorded one Traveller song called “The Tinker’s Old Budget” AKA “The Baby in the Kitbag,” about a family hiding their baby in a peddler’s bundle to keep the child safe from being taken. It’s been sung often within Traveller communities. It’s about Travellers’ fears of child-snatching and general challenges of nomadic life.

Bold Doherty tells a milder story. But it’s still got a narrative

>> Niamh: There is a story to this song. It’s not rubbish. It is a little story about a guy going on the tear. He doesn’t want to tell his mother he’s gone off drinking because she’ll give out to him. “Beware and bring none of your fancibles home.” And I suppose that would be ladies or girlfriends. Or even just friends coming home for more drinks.

>> Shannon: Yeah, but even the songs that are kinda silly, that are kind of light—oftentimes there’s a little message in there, or a metaphor. That can speak to things that are difficult to talk about. A great way to put things out there and talk about them

>> Shannon: So it’s about a grown man living with his mom, going out drinking every night. Maybe that’s all there is. Or maybe there’s a little enabling and resentment. These lasting old songs usually have really identifiable, universal situations.

[ Music: “John’s Theme,” from Production Music Made for Irish Music Stories

Artist/Composer: Matt Heaton ]

>> Niamh: And you know, the air of this tune, it’s just a beautiful air. So it’s a beautiful tune, in its own right. As are many songs, in their own right.

>> Shannon: The melody of Bold Doherty really is beautiful. And it’s just so simple, Just a bit of an ascending scale on repeat. I play and teach it frequently.

[ Music: “Bold Doherty,” from An Traidisiún Beo

Artist: Angelina Carberry ]

It’s probably banjo player Angelina Carberry and her dad Peter with whom I associate Bold Doherty the most.

[ Music: “E Minor Chimes,” from Production Music Made for Irish Music Stories

Artist/Composer: Matt Heaton ]

So, in September 2001 my husband Matt and I were wrapping up a visit to Ireland. We were there in late summer in Galway, at a friend’s home without any internet. The day before we our flight was supposed to head back, we headed out to the nearest Internet cafe in Loughrea to check our email. We passed the electronics store, we noticed a disturbing image across rows of TVs in the window display. It was a loop of an airplane crashing into the World Trade Center. It took us a while to realize this wasn’t a movie. This was news coverage.

[ Music: “Dark Low Jig,” from Production Music Made for Irish Music Stories

Artist/Composer: Matt Heaton ]

We raced home and called our families. We tried all our friends in New York. And later that afternoon the parish priest stopped by to check on us, which was so kind. We called Aer Lingus. They told us our flight would need to be rescheduled. Everybody was so gracious. And we just felt numb, didn’t know what to do.

So we went into Galway City for some tunes.

Angelina Carberry was there on the banjo with her dad Peter on the accordion. There were just a few of us, and nobody was really talking much. For once. Eventually Angelina shrugged and started playing Bold Doherty.

[ Music: Bold Doherty from Angelina Carberry ]

>> Shannon: There are just a few players that I associate with this. It would be Angelina Carberry on the banjo. It would be Josephine Marsh on the box. And it would be yourself singing it.

There’s a big history of this? There are fun little songs dandling songs for kids that have words, like Cucanandy. And like… [sings Fair Haired Canavans]. Or the Hair Fell of My Coconut.

>> Niamh: The Hag with the money. That’s kind of nonsense-ish. But then there are serious ones. Like Lannigan’s Ball. Or The Wounded Hussar.

And I remember the Wounded Hussar. I was in Milwaukee. It was something o clock in the morning. 2, 4? Can’t remember. Late. There was a crowd of us sitting down. And Joe Burke started playing the Wounded Hussar. And Fran McPhail started singing words to it. And I went oh!

[ Music: After Hours reprise ]

And he said he’d give them to me when I got home.  And what he did is when he got home to Ireland, he phoned me on my house phone. But I didn’t answer so he could sing into my answering machine. So I wrote down the lyrics from a tape from my answering machine of the Wounded Hussar of Fran MacPhail singing it.

>> Shannon: Would you be keen to sing a verse, right here right now? Zoom is kind of like an answering machine…

>> Niamh: Well, okay!

[ Song: “Wounded Hussar,” verse one from Zoom meeting

Artist: Niamh Parsons ]

>> Niamh: So that was written by Thomas Campbell around 1790s. He was a Scottish man. And it was put to an Irish ar.

[ Music: “D Chimes,” from Production Music Made for Irish Music Stories

Artist/Composer: Matt Heaton ]

>> Shannon: Campbell used a melody called Captain O’Kane (maybe written by harpist Turlach O’Carolan, that’s disputed). But Campbell’s words—and this melody—have totally transformed, as the Wounded Hussar has been passed from one singer to the next.

Same deal with Bold Doherty. I recently heard my friend Jenny Baird sing it in her little cottage in Leitrim. Yet another association I have with this song. It was such a beautiful afternoon that we had together. Her version was different still. And that’s how it goes with these old tunes and songs. Airs and hornpipes turn into jigs or reels, entire parts get added or condensed, melodies change, words alter or they’re forgotten altogether until the song becomes just a tune.

Now it’s easier to find and document all this stuff. To trace the songs back, and compare versions and performances. But this practice of Irish music is still centered on playing, and singing, and dancing, and sharing your favorites with other people—on recordings and in a little cottage on a hill. It’s a living tradition. And most of the music making and passing on is done outside of the libraries and online homes. Even though now we can quickly search for the words and music and history, these old classics (and new ones) are still passed around directly. Just like they were when Niamh was learning the Wounded Hussar and Bold Doherty.

>> Niamh: This is way back in the early 80s as well. We had no internet. We didn’t even have the traditional music archive. That only started 85.

[ Music: Heartstrings Theme reprise ]

So the way I found songs was to listen a lot. There was only one singing session! There was also the Forkhill Mullabawn Singing Festival. And I taped everything in sight. And I would just listen.

It’s something that I’m not doing as I get much older. I do listen. But am listening with my with students in mind. Oh, Mairead would love that. And Francisca would love that one. That’s the way I think of songs these days. I’ve kind of forgotten about myself. It’s a mothering thing, it’s really annoying.

>> Shannon. Well, you’re also thinking of who to pass this on to.

>> Niamh: Well there’s that. There’s that. Yeah, I suppose

Listening, I think, is one of the most important assets you can have. To be able to listen and to be able to hear the song within the musicality of it—whether it’s with music or without music. Whether it’s an amazing singer, or a singer that’s not that great but tells the story. Just to be able to find the story in the song.

[ Song: “Bold Doherty” (Norah McGlynn verse) from Zoom meeting

Artist: Niamh Parsons ]

Irish Music Stories was written and produced by me, Shannon Heaton. Thanks to Niamh for the great chat, and for the beautiful version of Bold Doherty. Thanks to Matt Heaton for the production music. And thank you to the generous supporters who continue to kick in to help me make this show, so that I can keep it free and available for everybody.

There are plenty of other IrishMusicStories episodes. Hope you’ll give some of them a listen or a re-listen, and share them with friends and family. For more information about this podcast project, for playlists, or to kick in to help build the show, just head to IrishMusicStories.org. Thanks for listening.

>> Niamh: Back in those days I was so hungry for songs. Now I’m hungry to teach songs, as opposed to learning them.