Sí Do Mhaimeo Í
She Is Your GrannyThis is a traditional Irish song from Connemara arranged by Atlan. It appears on their third studio album Harvest Storm, released in 1992. Also known as Cailleach An Airgid (“The Hag With The Money”). This brisk and energetic comic song tells the story of an old woman who will marry a young man – the cautionary element being that if they do marry he will drink all her money.
Joe Heaney Archives
Do you have any further information about this song? Edit this page and help us expand this section. ^closeJoe explains that the ‘hag with the money’ was his great-grandmother, his mother’s grandmother, a woman named Máire Ní Cháthasaigh (Mary Casey) from Mynish, an island near Carna. He says he learned it from his father, and that the song was known by everybody in the village. Indeed, this is still the case – and by a great many more besides, thanks largely to the popularity of Joe’s recordings of it.
This is a wonderful recording, because despite the lack of a large audience Joe gets up a good head of steam (no pun intended) and sings with great energy and conviction. At the same time, the domestic setting – cups of tea with Lucy in Joe’s kitchen – approximates the sort of environment that would have been natural for these songs when Joe was growing up.
Among other recordings of this song, those recorded by the late Dara Bán Mac Donnchadha are of particular interest, as Dara Bán was a son of Seán Choilm Mac Donnchadha, whose house still stands next door to Joe’s family home in Áird Thoir, and from whom Joe learned a number of songs when he was growing up. Dara Bán sings a total of six stanzas, seven counting the refrain; three of these have nothing whatever to do with the proposed marriage, but deal rather with fishing and the treatment of fishing-nets. See Rogha Amhrán (Cló Iar-Chonnachta 1999). Interestingly, none of the commercially-recorded performances I’ve heard, including Joe’s, involve lilting as Joe’s does here.
Irish
English
Chorus:
She is your granny, she is your granny
She's your granny, the hag with the money
She is your granny, from the town of Nishmore
And she would put coaches
On the roads of Cois Farraige
If you'd see the steam
Going past Toin Ui Loin'
And the wheels turning
speedily out from her flanks
She'd scatter the stoor
nine times to the rear
But she'd never keep pace
with the hag with the money
(Chorus)
Do you reckon he'd marry,
Do you reckon he'd marry
Do you reckon he'd marry
The hag with the money?
I know he'll not marry,
I know he'll not marry
'Cause he is too young
And he'll squander the money
(Chorus 2x)
We'll soon have a wedding,
We'll soon have a wedding
We'll soon have a wedding,
By two in the village
We'll soon have a wedding,
We'll soon have a wedding
Between Séan Shéamais Mhóir
And Máire Ní Chathasaigh
(Chorus 3x)
Can you provide a better translation?