Planxty 1: Little Musgrave

Some songs can be played on repeat all day – a summer hit, a dance tune, maybe a long ambient piece. Then there are a few songs that can only be listened to rarely: they demand total attention and reward you with a gut-wrenching emotional journey. Planxty’s ‘Little Musgrave’ is one of those songs and this version turns up toward the end of their discography, on the Live 2004 album. That record documents their reunion after a twenty-year hiatus. Following a documentary on the band’s history the various members of Planxty acknowledged the overwhelming public response to the programme. Perhaps they also sensed that time was marching on and, given there had never been an antagonistic break-up, this would be a great opportunity to see what they sounded like together. Just to be sure, that chemistry was tested in a few private and semi-private gigs first and, finding the magic was still there, they booked an expanding set of dates in Dublin which were filmed and recorded. The live album - Planxty Live (2004) - is full of wonders from the beginning with Liam O’Flynn’s ‘The Starting Gate’ immediately drawing deep into a familiar Planxty landscape. There’s both virtuosity and wildness in the playing here and it’s almost possible to hear the audience’s pleasure in discovering that the band not only sound as good as in their heyday but possible better.

The introduction to ‘Little Musgrave’ is casual. It’s prefaced with Christy Moore’s account of how he found the lyrics to the song in Reilly’s auction house in Dublin during the 1970s and then welded them to a tune Andy Irvine had picked up from Nic Jones. There’s some comic relief as Christy and Donal haggle over the tempo before Moore falls into an almost trance-like telling of the song’s story.

It turns out that the tempo is important. This version of ‘Little Musgrave’ is slower than their first attempt on The Woman I Love So Well in 1980 and much quieter. It isn’t a song being sung as much as it is a confession or a hushed remembrance.

This is something that separates Moore’s long ballads from versions by other singers. Take ‘The Lakes of Pontchartrain’, for instance. The general consensus seems to be that Paul Brady’s version of this ballad on 1978’s Welcome Here Kind Stranger is definitive. On that record and in live performances he sings it (beautifully) in a formal style, the narrative is delivered at an emotional distance, shaped by the melody and a bardic storytelling quality. Moore had sung ‘Pontchartrain’ four years earlier on Planxty’s Cold Blow and the Rainy Night (1974) achieving a very different effect. Brady’s formality is missing, that sense of a public recitation for all to hear: instead, Moore slows the song and softens his voice to achieve a dream-like remembering of the creole girl who gives him shelter. His introduction of a harmonium adds another layer of trance to the piece, conjuring images of a primitive lake-side church beyond the confines of civic life.

He does something similar in the 2004 rendition of ‘Little Musgrave’ where he almost whispers the song at times. As he modifies the dynamics of the lyrics and his voice, he creates a cinematic telling of the story. We can watch Lady Barnard reassure Little Musgrave that the sounds he hears outside are just a shepherd with his flock, while she hugs him closer to ward off the cold. When they wake later they are surrounded by Lord Barnard and his men. We watch again as Lord Barnard almost gently invites Musgrave to rise, arm himself and die:

Rise up, rise up, Little Musgrave, rise up and then put on.
It'll not be said in this country I slayed a naked man.

So slowly, so slowly he got up, so slowly he put on.
Slowly down the stairs, thinking to be slain.

There are two swords down by my side, and dear they cost me purse.
You can have the best of them, and I will take the worst.

And the first stroke that Little Musgrave stroke, it hurt Lord Barnard sore,
But the next stroke Lord Barnard stroke, Little Musgrave ne'er stroke more.

The images are already in the lyrics but it is Christy Moore’s delivery that brings us so close to the action. The images are already in the lyrics but it is Christy Moore’s delivery that brings us so close to the action. The hushed intimacy of his voice draws us into the scene and renders that world of knights and sword fights credible, part of a wider cinematic landscape which holds all of the songs in Planxty’s recorded repertoire.

All of that band’s landmark albums were recorded during the Troubles in Northern Ireland and Christy Moore as a solo artist or as a member of Moving Hearts has never been shy of articulating political positions. Planxty however has a consistently curated selection of songs and tunes that could be described as world building. The band describe a fictional world constructed from the folk songs and myths of older versions of Ireland spanning the medieval world through to the late 19^th century. Contemporary political realities and contemporary images of the Troubles were referred to obliquely if at all.

In many ways Planxty created a safe space for an Irish cultural renaissance, something like Field Day Theatre Company’s fifth province of the imagination.