“Sheila Nee Iyer”

Description

Singer meets Sheila Nee Iyer. She tells him to leave off flattering and go away. He claims he would never prove false. "O had I the wealth of the Orient ... I would robe you in splendour"

Notes

As in "Lough Erne Shore" and "The Colleen Rue," there is no resolution for the Tunney-StoneFiddle version.

"Sheila Nee Iyer, is surely a brilliant parody of the hedge schoolmaster aisling." (source: _For Want of Education:The origins of the Hedge Schoolmaster songs_ by Julie Henigan - 19.8.99 originally published in Ulster Folklife No 40 (1994): pp 27-38, reproduced at the Musical Traditions site).

Tunney-StoneFiddle, in a chapter titled "Gael meets Greek," writes "In the whole corpus of traditional song couched in the borrowed Bearla [English], there are none to compare with the high-minded effusions of our hedge-school-master poets. These songs are readily recognisable by the plenitude of classical allusions they contain and by the adaptation of the Gaelic assonantal rhyme, used extensively by the Gaelic Aisling poets of the eighteenth century." The songs in that chapter, illustrating his point, are "Lough Erne Shore," "Sheila Nee Iyer," "Colleen Rue" and "The Flower of Gortade"; the most extreme example among those is "Sheila Nee Iyer." - BS

For discussion of aislings, see the notes to "Eileen McMahon" and "Granuaile." For a list of songs in the Index meeting the definition of the Aisling, see "Granuaile."

Cross references

References

  1. Tunney-StoneFiddle, p. 117, "Sheila Nee Iyer" (1 text, 1 tune)
  2. Roud #3108
  3. BI, TSF117

About

Alternate titles: “Sheela na Guira”; “Sile Ni Ghadhra”
Author: unknown
Earliest date: 1979 (Tunney-StoneFiddle)
Found in: Ireland