Annotation:Vive La!
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VIVE LA! (THE FRENCH ARE COMING). Irish, March (2/4 time, "with spirit"). D Major (Roche): C Major (Stanford/Petrie). Standard tuning (fiddle). AB (Stanford/Petrie): AAB (Roche). The tune is a march version of the air usually known as "Loch Erroch Side," "I'm O'er Young to Marry Yet (3)," "Over the Hills to Glory," "Lass o' Gowrie (1) (The)," or "Lakes of Sligo (The)." The title refers to the hoped-for intervention of French troops on the side of the Irish in the rebellion of 1798.
Vive la! the French are coming!
Vive la! they're all in view;
Vive la! the Saxon's running--
What shall our poor yeomen do?
The tune is very close to the melody used for Davis's 20th century historical song "Clare's Dragoons." However, the tune has been used for centuries for various songs. Robert Burns set songs to two of the earlier forms of the melody, "A Song. -On Miss P- K-" (AKA "Loch Eroch Side") in 1784/5 and "I'm o'er Young to Marry Yet" in 1788. A song sheet at the Bodleian Library was issued (by "Haly Printer south Main street Cork, 18--") with the "Vive la" air set to a song called "The Irishman" James Connolly penned a song called "Human Freedom" set to the "Clare's Dragoons" version of the air.
This mixture of French and Spanish is a reference to the Scottish song, “Vive la! The French are coming”, which also provided the melody for another song, found during a body search of the mother of a combatant killed in the 1798 uprising: (4) Vive la, United heroes, Triumphant may they always be; Vive la, our gallant brethren, That have come to set us free. (Zimmermann 2002: 160)
We have often had people inquiring about the influence and nature of Scotch-Irish music. Peter Gilmore has an article on Scotch-Irish Identity and Traditional Ulster Music on the Pennsylvania Frontier. He appears to establish that the dances done in the Ulster-American communities on the PA frontier were the same as done in Ireland. These included three and four-handed reels and jigs, and something called the "Irish Trot". Apparently this wasn't a form of disease to which the Irish were prone <grin>. These were danced to reels In 16 bars in 4/4 time) and jigs (32 in 6/8 time). One of the problems you have in the diaspora is establishing that a particular phenomena came from ONLY a particular locale in the British Isles. This is the case with music and dance. Ie even back in Ulster, many of the tunes are also found in Scotland, so it is probably impossible to say categorically that the tunes had to come by way of Ireland. Very possibly, they arrived in multiple ways. He identifies a number of early sources for tunes including "Paddy's Resource: being a select collection of original and modern patriotic songs, toasts, and sentiments compiled for the use of all firm patriots". This was produced by the United Irish movement in Belfast in 1794. Other editions appeared in Dublin and the USA. The first American edition was in Philly in 1796. OF 43 tunes it contains, many are of Scottish origin as well as Irish, Popular English melodies also were used for lyrical expressions of Thomas Paine's philsophy.
Gilmore also mentions that the Bard of Ballycarry, James ORR, immigrated to Pennsylvania in 1799 but only stayed a few months.
A volume of his poetry prescribes 10 tunes for singing. According to Philip Robinson, who wrote the introduction to "The Country Rhymes of James Orr, the Bard of Ballycarry", most of the tunes are Scottish in origin, with a sprinkle of Irish and English airs. To illustrate the re-use of tunes and names, Gilmore describes a tune collecteed by Bayard in "Dance to the Fiddle, March to the Fife" (1982), the most extensive record of instrumental folk music of western PA -- 651 tunes collected from 1928-1963. Most of these are Irish, Scots, or both in origin. One tune called "The Rocky Road to Dublin" is unrelated to the Irish folk slip-jig of the same name. It instead descendes from a Scots air "Loch Erroch Side", which has been used as a reel, strathspey, and song melody. The tune appeared in pring in 1758 as "I'm O'er Young to Marry Yet" (also familiar to those who follow Scottish folk music) and was first published as "Loch Errock Side" in 1876. It became in Ulster "Vive La! The French are Coming" in Bayard, p 258) and serves as the melody for "Virtue's Cause" in the PHilly edition of "Paddy's Resource". Orr also uses in for his song "The Irishman".
Source for notated version:
Printed sources: Stanford/Petrie (Complete Collection), 1905; No. 996, p. 254. Roche (Collection of Traditional Irish Music, vol. 3), 1927; No. 46, p. 13.
Recorded sources:
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