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AMHRÁN MHAÍNIS / THE SONG OF MWEENISH John Beag’s voice is powerful and compelling and this performance bears witness to his emergence as one of Gaelic music’s most popular and important ambassadors. No surprise then to learn that he has been the Connemara King of Song since the 1980s. ‘Amhrán Mhaínse’ (also known as ‘Amhrán Mhuínse’) – gut churning and heart rending in its extraordinary emotional power – has become popular around the Connemara area in the last fifty to sixty years. It is not known to me or to anyone else as far as I can see, who wrote the mighty words, who composed the grand melody, Be that as it may, the song expresses the longing and wish of a woman from Maínis, who was married on the other side of Cuan Chill Chiaráin in a place called Leitir Calaidh, to be buried amongst her own people in the graveyard in Maínis. It is now sung at funerals where they replace the name of Maínis graveyard with the name of the graveyard where their deceased is being buried. In the first verse the unknown woman says that if she was three leagues out to sea, or on faraway hills, with no earthly being, or with no shelter in a blizzard but could just could talk with her Taimín Bán (fair Tommy) she would not feel the night pass by. The song goes on to express her wish that Páidín Mór (Big Paddy) would bring her remains to Maínis in his sailboat and that her coffin be made of the finest pale wood, and that, if he is still living there, the coffin be made by the hands of Seán Ó …

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