“And one day at dawn, with her nightdress on / He slit her bloody throat…”

I have a vivid memory of singing this song at the top of my lungs, with my brother, when we were about 8 and 9 years old. Our house was full of Clancy Brothers albums, of course, and we loved this one the best. It’s still one of my favorites. The image of two children bellowing the lyrics of this bloodthirsty political song is frightening, although our appearances certainly make us look like orphans of the Troubles. We had no idea what was happening in the song, but we thought it was hilarious. “Hahaha, he wanted HER to die, but he messed it up, and HE died!” We sang at the top of our lungs: “AND HE HANGED HIMSELF FROM THE PANTRY SHELF. TWAS AN EASY END, LET’S HOPE!”

What on earth did the neighbors think.

This clip here is an extended version of the song, it has a couple of verses I hadn’t heard before (not on either of the clips I have in my own collection). And the last line is interesting in numerous ways: On one of the recordings I have, he sings “for the razor blade was German made…” This may be a relic from the hostilities of the First World War, but once the political situation in Ireland heated up, and after parturition, the lyrics have shifted about with the breeze. I have also heard it sung “foreign made”, but here in the clip it is “Japanese made”, the point being: “NOT IN IRELAND. THEREFORE, NOT AS GOOD.” The Clancy Brothers have also sung it as “English made”, making far more of a political point (William Bloat is clearly an Orangeman, note his address sung in the first line), but under certain pressures, at certain times, the Clancy Brothers have sung it otherwise. They were political boys, to be sure, and they were coming up at a very tense dangerous time in Irish history. I have also heard that last bit sung as “Irish linen”, but it is also sung as “Belfast linen”, reflecting, perhaps, the Ulster Irish wanting to delineate themselves, separate themselves. You can see the whole history of 20th century Ireland in the shifting-language of that last line.

All of this is very fascinating, but what I love most is seeing Tommy Makem in action, on his own turf. The banjo is superb, and I love the random “whoops” that he does, giving the folk song a very tribal and call-to-arms feel, despite the fact that it is actually just a ridiculous song about a loser who makes a sorry mess of killing his wife.

One of my favorite parts of one of the recordings I have is the raucous present energy of the audience, something that is missing here. The clip above shows a polite studio audience. But on my iPod, you can hear an entire vast audience erupt into laughter, repeatedly, throughout the song, before bursting into cheers at the end. An exhilarating sound.

This music isn’t part of my childhood. It feels like it is my childhood. Liam Clancy passed away last December. One summer, a couple of years ago, we were on Cape Cod, and he was playing at a local club, but it was going to be after we had all left. As a child I was afraid of Tommy Makem, and found him slightly distasteful, for such rational and logical little-girl reasons as: Why was his name different? What an INTERLOPER, I thought, as I stared at the Carnegie Hall album cover. Here’s something I wrote about Mr. Makem, when he passed away, and when he passed, it felt like something precious, rare, had left my own life. A thread of connection with youth, who I was then, the entire culture into which I was born. Despite the fact that, as a little girl, I resented Makem’s different last name and was angry at him for not being a Clancy, too, I will never forget coming right out and announcing to my father, staring at the Interloper’s face on the album cover, “I don’t like Tommy Makem!”, and my father replying, “Ah, but he’s the real singer.”

Watching him here, on the RTE clip, rockin’ out with that banjo, the sideburns, the vest, the war whoops, and the mischievous little grin when he knows the song is taking a turn … I think of my dad’s words. Yes.