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This is a traditional Irish song arranged by Michael McGlynn. It appears on Anúna’s 1997 album Behind The Closed Eye (remastered in 2003).
Ceann Dubh Dilis is one of the oldest love songs in the Gaelic song tradition. It has a plaintive quality that is increase by its nebulous nature. In fact the very general and indefinite background makes it a song that expresses at once individual pain and the universal spirit of human love. It was first published as a instrumental piece with a set of harper variations in 1724 by the Neal brothers of Christchurch Yard along with numerous other harper-airs, and it is that version which is performed here. A variant of it was also collected by Edward Bunting at the Belfast harp festival in 1792 from Denis Hempson who was by then in his nineties. This Air and Variations more than any of the other Irish melodies on the cd, has a marked Elizabethan character.
This is the ending of an anonymously composed Irish folk song, usually referred to by its Irish title, Ceann Dubh Dílis (`My Own Dark Head’ or `Dear Dark Head’), as it appears in Kinsella and Sean O Tuama’s classic 1981 collection, An Duanaire 16oo—1900: Poems of the Dispossessed, along with Kinsella’s modern translation. Printing the stanza in 1789 in a Gaelic font, Brooke’s gloss simply went thus: ‘I need not give any comment upon these lines; the English reader would not understand it, and the Irish reader would not want it, for it is impossible to peruse them without being sensible of their beauty.”
A chinn duibh dhílis dhílis dhílis Cuir do lámh mhín gheal tharam anall A bhéinlín meala, 'bhfuil boladh na tíme air Is duine gan chroí nach dtabharfadh duit grá
Tá cailín' ar an mbaile seo'ar buile 's ar buaireamh Ag tarraingt a ngruaige 'sá ligean le gaoith Ar mo shonsa, an scafaire is fearr ins na tuatha Ach do thréigfinn an méid sin ar rún dil mo chroí
Is cuir do cheann dílis dílis dílis Cuir do cheann dílis tharam anall A bhéinlín meala, 'bhfuil boladh na tíme air Is duine gan chroí nach dtabharfadh duit grá
My sweet, sweet, sweet dark-haired love Put your pale, soft hand around me now Mouth of honey that has the smell of thyme It is a heartless man that would not love you
The girls of this town are furious Pulling their hair and letting it blow in the wind For me, the best man in the countryside But I would dump them all for my heart's love
Lay your sweet, sweet, sweet head Lay your sweet head on me Mouth of honey that has the smell of thyme It is a heartless man that would not love you
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