{"id":8092,"date":"2020-04-18T17:28:52","date_gmt":"2020-04-18T16:28:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cassandravoices.com\/?p=8092"},"modified":"2020-04-18T17:28:52","modified_gmt":"2020-04-18T16:28:52","slug":"bob-dylans-new-song-and-ballinalee-county-longford","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/casswp.eutonom.eu\/index.php\/2020\/04\/18\/bob-dylans-new-song-and-ballinalee-county-longford\/","title":{"rendered":"Bob Dylan&#8217;s New Song and Ballinalee County Longford"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Butterflies continue to fly from septuagenarian\u00a0<span style=\"color: #0000ff;\"><a style=\"color: #0000ff;\" href=\"https:\/\/cassandravoices.com\/society-culture\/culture\/review-bob-dylans-murder-most-foul\/\">Bob Dylan\u2019<\/a><\/span>s cocoon. Last week the Bard of Duluth released yet another song \u2018I Contain Multitudes\u2019 after his long hiatus. The opening lyrics piqued our curiosity:<\/p>\n<p><em>Today and tomorrow and yesterday, too,<\/em><em><br \/>\nThe flowers are dyin\u2019 like all things do,<br \/>\nFollow me close, I\u2019m going to Ballinalee,<br \/>\nI\u2019ll lose my mind if you don\u2019t come with me.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Why does Ballinalee, a remote village in County Longford in the Irish midlands, feature in the song? One of our correspondents has a theory.<\/p>\n<p>He suggests it is a reference to the early nineteenth century, Irish-language poet\u00a0Antoine \u00d3 Raifteir\u00ed\u2019s\u00a0(<a href=\"http:\/\/kiltimagh.ie\/anthony-raftery\/\"><span style=\"color: #0000ff;\">Anthony Raftery<\/span><\/a>) poem \u2018The Lass from Ballynalee.\u2019 Raftery was a contemporary of James Clarence Mangan, beloved of Irish songster Shane MacGowan, the resident Bard of Ballsbridge.<\/p>\n<p>Rumour has that <span style=\"color: #0000ff;\"><a style=\"color: #0000ff;\" href=\"https:\/\/entertainment.ie\/music\/pic-just-a-hoodie-wearing-bob-dylan-hanging-out-with-shane-macgowan-in-dublin-254791\/\">the Bard of Duluth met the Bard of Ballsbridge<\/a><\/span> for dinner in the Intercontinental Hotel a few years ago and talked poetry all night.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Bob Dylan - I Contain Multitudes (Official Audio)\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/pgEP8teNXwY?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Conceivably, the Bard of Ballsbridge, who is\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.independent.ie\/woman\/celeb-news\/a-spirited-macgowan-wakes-the-dead-26412362.html\"><span style=\"color: #0000ff;\">a great admirer of James Clarence Mangan<\/span><\/a>, suggested his fellow Bard take a look at Raftery, who was blinded as a child after a dose of smallpox. We\u2019re actively pursuing comment from the Ballsbridge citadel.<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s known that Dylan spent three days in Ardmore Studios, Bray, during the same trip, working on an as-yet unnamed project with his touring band. Was he inspired by Shane to write some new songs and then record them straight away?<\/p>\n<p>The link might sound fanciful, but another <span style=\"color: #0000ff;\"><a style=\"color: #0000ff;\" href=\"https:\/\/expectingrain.com\/discussions\/viewtopic.php?f=6&amp;t=99229&amp;start=275\">online sleuth<\/a><\/span> has noticed that a line in the final verse of the same song, \u201cKeep your mouth away from me\u201d, matches a line from Lord Longford\u2019s translation of the seventeenth-century Irish poem, \u201cKeep your Kiss to Yourself\u201d.<\/p>\n<p>The latter is anthologised in Se\u00e1n \u00d3 Tuama and Thomas Kinsella\u2019s <span style=\"color: #0000ff;\"><a style=\"color: #0000ff;\" href=\"https:\/\/books.google.co.uk\/books\/about\/An_Duanaire_1600_1900.html?id=xTuRngEACAAJ&amp;redir_esc=y\"><em>An Duanaire, 1600-1900: Poems of the Dispossessed<\/em><\/a><\/span> (Bord na Gaeilge, 1981). Did the Bard of Ballsbridge reach to his shelf and grab a copy to present to Bob on their meeting? And what did Bob give Shane?<\/p>\n<p>Our operatives are tracking down the book to check if Raftery\u2019s poem is in there too.<\/p>\n<p>We know that in recent decades Dylan has littered his lyrics with <a href=\"http:\/\/swarmuth.blogspot.com\/\"><span style=\"color: #0000ff;\">quotations and allusions<\/span><\/a> to sources as diverse Ovid, Chaucer and Homer and the obscure Civil-war poet, Henry Timrod, as well as the usual panoply of blues and folk sources, often within the same stanza. Can we now add an anthology of translations of Irish-language verse to his reading list?<\/p>\n<p>But Dylan may have come across Raftery way back in early-60s New York, via his <span style=\"color: #0000ff;\"><a style=\"color: #0000ff;\" href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=nzT3q-1YnUo\">ballad-singing idol<\/a> <a style=\"color: #0000ff;\" href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=te5TUg1bdqM\">Liam Clancy<\/a><\/span>, who loved to <span style=\"color: #0000ff;\"><a style=\"color: #0000ff;\" href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=GbkwCidPlzg\">recite his poems<\/a><\/span>.<\/p>\n<p>Or maybe Bob actually sings, \u2018I\u2019m goin\u2019 to Balian Bali\u2019. He\u2019s off surfing, and we\u2019re barking up the wrong tree.<\/p>\n<p>If you can help solve this mystery leave a comment below.<\/p>\n<p>Here is the Raftery poem itself:<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #0000ff;\"><a style=\"color: #0000ff;\" href=\"http:\/\/lovepoems.inrebus.com\/2009\/04\/antoin-o-raifteiri-maire-ni-eidhin-the-lass-from-bally-na-lee.html\">The Lass from Bally-na-Lee<\/a><\/span><br \/>\n(translated from the Irish)<\/p>\n<p>On my way to Mass<br \/>\nTo say a prayer,<br \/>\nThe wind was high<br \/>\nSowing rain,<\/p>\n<p>I met a maid<br \/>\nWith wind-wild hair<br \/>\nAnd madly fell<br \/>\nIn love again.<\/p>\n<p>I spoke with learning,<br \/>\nCharm and pride<br \/>\nAnd, as was fitting,<br \/>\nAnswered she:<\/p>\n<p>\u2018My mind is now<br \/>\nwell satisfied,<br \/>\nSo walk with me<br \/>\nTo Bally-na-Lee.\u2019<\/p>\n<p>Given the offer,<br \/>\nI didn\u2019t delay,<br \/>\nAnd blowing a laugh<br \/>\nAt this willing young lass,<\/p>\n<p>I swung with her over<br \/>\nThe fields through the day<br \/>\nTill shortly we reached<br \/>\nThe rump of the house.<\/p>\n<p>A table with glasses<br \/>\nAnd drink was set<br \/>\nAnd then says the lassie,<br \/>\nTurning to me:<\/p>\n<p>\u2018You are welcome, Raftery,<br \/>\nSo drink a wet<br \/>\nTo love\u2019s demands<br \/>\nIn Bally-na-Lee.\u2019<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/cassandravoices.com\/society-culture\/culture\/shane-macgowan-and-the-riddle-of-ballinalee-in-bob-dylans-i-contain-multitudes\/\"><span style=\"color: #0000ff;\"><em><strong>This article contains contributions from Dr Francis Leneghan.<\/strong><\/em><\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Butterflies continue to fly from septuagenarian\u00a0Bob Dylan\u2019s cocoon. Last week the Bard of Duluth released yet another song \u2018I Contain Multitudes\u2019 after his long hiatus. The opening lyrics piqued our curiosity: Today and tomorrow and yesterday, too, The flowers are dyin\u2019 like all things do, Follow me close, I\u2019m going to Ballinalee, I\u2019ll lose my [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":25,"featured_media":8088,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[590,613,779,780,805,806,1043,4261,8941,9140,9141],"class_list":["post-8092","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-culture","tag-anthony-raftery","tag-antoine-o-raifteiri","tag-ballinalee","tag-ballinalee-county-longford","tag-bard-of-ballsbridge","tag-bard-of-duluth","tag-bob-dylan","tag-i-contain-multitudes","tag-the-bard-of-ballsbridge","tag-the-lass-from-bally-na-lee","tag-the-lass-from-ballynalee"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/casswp.eutonom.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8092","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/casswp.eutonom.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/casswp.eutonom.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/casswp.eutonom.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/25"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/casswp.eutonom.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8092"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/casswp.eutonom.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8092\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/casswp.eutonom.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/casswp.eutonom.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8092"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/casswp.eutonom.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8092"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/casswp.eutonom.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8092"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}