Ger Wolfe: Cork singer gives voice to songs collected in Baile Mhúirne over 100 years ago
Ger Wolfe is originally from Mayfield but has been living in Múscraí for many years. Picture: Eamon Ward
An outsider’s eye often provides insights unseen by those close to their subject, but it was Alexander Martin Freeman’s ear for Cork’s Irish language singing that made the English scholar the unlikely custodian of sean-nós songs that might otherwise have been lost.
London-born Freeman collected songs in Baile Mhúirne in 1913-14, using staff notation and transcribing the Irish words phonetically, with English translations. Among many song collectors to visit the Múscraí area, Freeman’s use of phonetic spellings has been suggested as a cause of his collection remaining in relative obscurity until drawn upon by Seán Ó Riada and latterly singers including Iarla Ó Lionáird.
Now, it is Cork city-born singer-songwriter Ger Wolfe who breathes new life into 12 of Freeman’s Songs from Ballyvourney, from the 84 published by the Folk-Song Society of London in 1920-21.
From Mayfield, Wolfe has since the mid-1990s lived near the Curra road made famous by his song, only a few miles from Baile Mhúirne, his wife Nóra a Gaeilgeoir from nearby Béal Átha ’n Ghaorthaidh.
“Bíonn Gaoluinn eadrainn. I’m here nearly 30 years – I’d want to be picking up some bit,” says Wolfe. “I didn’t grow up with Irish, though we had it at school. I wasn’t a great student but I always enjoyed learning songs, in English and Irish.
“The first time I came across sean-nós, I was up the country in the '80s and I had a cassette with Bess Cronin [Baile Mhúirne singer 1879-1956] when I didn’t even know where Baile Mhúirne was. That was in Dublin and I joined the music library in the Ilac Centre. I started looking into sean-nós when I was up there and one of the first songs I came across was Carraig Aonair and I remember not having a glimmer what half of it meant,” he adds.
“When I came back to Cork I started learning a little bit more Irish, then coming out to live here I was going to the national schools. I was there to teach a bit of tin whistle but I was learning from the children. Going to the schools made the biggest difference because I was listening to the children.”
While Freeman had studied Irish under German linguist Kuno Meyer, Wolfe took his own scholarly route when he began researching Múscraí’s sean-nós songs with Gaeltacht group Acadamh Fódhla.
“It started really with going to the Acadamh Fódhla 12 or 13 years ago, and all the encouragement I got from them. Máire Ní Cheocháin was there, Áine Uí Chuill, Peadar [Ó Riada], Máire Ní Chéileachair… I wasn’t a great scholar but I got the love of it from that,” he says.
“A couple of years before covid, I got my hands on a copy of [Freeman’s collection] on pdf. During covid then I really got into it and starting unearthing the songs for myself. There’s so much to learn because I don’t come from the tradition and I’m still not fluent in reading music theory so it was a challenge, but enjoyable.
“Freeman wrote down the songs phonetically, which is brilliant, once you decode it. It’s gobbledygook when you start at it first because the way it’s written is counterintuitive to the way we were taught to read Irish in school. But he must have been a great scholar because he wrote things down so carefully and gave plenty of variants. It was encouraging as well knowing that he came from Surrey and he was in the Gaelic Texts Society with Kuno Meyer - and he had no 15 years’ schooling as Gaeilge, so it was a great inspiration for me.”
Wolfe, whose nine previous albums include and applies his gentle touch to sean-nós songs including and the first single from the album,
Among the Freeman songs, Wolfe was drawn in particular to those collected from Peg Ní Dhonnchadha of Baile Mhic Íre, in her 70s when Freeman met her in 1914. Her songs, including (“Her version is ridiculously beautiful”, says Wolfe) comprise the majority of tracks on the album, which has accompaniment by Paul Frost, Edel Sullivan, Mick O’Brien, Richard Lucey, and Kevin Murphy.
Characteristically self-effacing, Wolfe says of his recordings: “I’m no expert at all and I’m sure I’ve made loads of mistakes. I’m not even a sean-nós singer; I wasn’t brought up with it. But hopefully some few people will think my versions are good enough to learn [the songs] because there are a few that aren’t commonly sung.”
- Máire Ní Chéileachair will launch on Wednesday at Cork City Library, with Wolfe playing a short tour including Kinsale, Kenmare, Dublin, and Clonakilty and bringing the songs full circle to Baile Mhúirne after over a century, at An Gadaí Dubh on November 22. See: gerwolfe.com
