Stealing From a Blind Harpist

This is a busy Roses and Hope day.

I play once a week with a Celtic band called Annie's Romance. We've had a couple of gigs and there are a few more popping up on the calendar. Rob Macdonald plays authentic pipes, whistles, and banjo, Annie Rosevear plays blazing flute and occasional whistle, Liz Manwaring plays tasty fiddle, and I thump along on the guitar, trying to keep up. It is so fun.

One of the tunes Rob handed out to us is "O'Carolan's Welcome." Turlough O'Carolan was a blind Irish harpist who composed in the early and mid-seventeen hundreds, and he wrote melodies to break your heart. I used one on my Christmas CD "By the Virgin Born" as a setting for a "Joseph's Lullaby."

I'm robbing from the well again. This afternoon I want to come up with a kind of descant lyric to lay over the top of Annie's Romance playing "O'Carolan's Welcome." So here goes:

Hope, like smoke, scatters wild on the wind,
a scent on the breath of the evening.
Hope, like smoke, will arise, dance, and spin,
die away then and leave me a-grieving.


Welcome me home. Bring me out of the night,
out of stirrings and struggles and striving.
Welcome me home. Let us cherish the light--
warm our hands 'round a hope hushed and thriving.