Today I’d like to share with you another song from Clannad’s album Crann Ull, just like the Irish Gaelic one I shared a couple days ago. This one also features Enya, but this time as supporting vocalist.
Fun fact, it’s thanks to this song that I learned that there is/was such a thing as mushroom ketchup. When I first heard it and the bit “I am gathering mushrooms to make my mommy ketchup” it made me laugh ‘cause, like, what’s one thing to do with the other? I even thought I must have misheard/misunderstood something. It actually interested me enough that I decided to find out and I was really surprised, because, well, at least here, mushroom ketchup is certainly not a thing.
Today I have for you a traditional Irish song performed by Clannad, from the earlier years of their career. In the Wikipedia article about this song it’s translated as As I Went Down to the Harbour, but I decided to go with the title translation provided in the lyrics of the Clannad song for the title of this post. It is very possible that the Wurlitzer is played by Enya, who was still with the band when they were recording Crann Ull – the album from which this song comes – as keyboardist and backing vocalist, although it’s not explicitly stated anywhere that it’s her. The lyrics below come from Celtic Lyrics Corner.
I walked down by the sea Right wearily My heart, it was tormented From a northern sky the small clouds did fly And sorely I lamented
I’m sorry now I swear That I didn’t care To heed my mother’s caution She spoke to me fair saying don’t venture there Don’t go the road to Ballyhaunis
Yet dearly did I love My fair-haired girl In the garden that morning early Your lips as tender as the foam on the ocean’s rim And cheeks like red haw-berries
I put my arm around your waist But my mind knew no ease Though the small birds sang so gaily I wished we were going under white sails blowing Be it fair or stormy weather
My own heart’s dear If you’d come away To that land of ships from Ireland There’s no heartache nor there’s no pain That wouldn’t find a cure for certain
You are the one I’ve always loved So save me now from dying For without God’s grace I’ll never survive On this street in Ballyhaunis
What was the last book you read? Did you enjoy it?
My answer:
Village School by Miss Read. I’d been wanting for the longest time to read something from this author, particularly Miss Clare Remembers and No Holly For Miss Quinn, which are two books in her Fairacre series which inspired Enya (one of my faza people) to compose two pieces of music with the same names. Just listening to those songs I always thought that if they have book equivalents, they must be great, and reading their synopses made me think they were right up my alley, but there was no Polish translation, or at least I couldn’t find any, and it’s fairly recently, some two years ago I guess, that I’ve seriously started reading English-language books of all sorts more regularly and casually, that is not solely for learning the language and new vocabulary. GoodReads must have also figured that it would be right up my alley, because recently I’ve found the first book from this series (the aforementioned Village School) in my recommendations on there, and since now I have access to different places where I can get English books and I read them regularly, I figured I really need to give this series a go now. It took me some time to get into it properly, but I really did enjoy this book and I felt really at home in it by the time I finished. It was really sweet and charming and I absolutely loved her way of describing characters, I love authors whose characters I can actually imagine and who seem life-like, her way of describing things in general is amazing, and I liked her sense of humour.
At more or less the same time I happened to learn that a guy I used to follow quite regularly some years ago, who teaches Swedish online and is a Swede himself and generally seems quite crazy about languages, has written a handbook for Swedish learners, called A Lagom Guide To Swedish. I figured I could really use some good Swedish offline resource that I wouldn’t need to scan or anything, so I bought the ebook right away. And while it’s a handbook, so generally not something you’d just read like from cover to cover, that was precisely what I ended up doing, in just a few sittings. 😀 I was quite curious how much of the things in this book I would have already known, so I started just skimming through it, but then got positively surprised that I actually know SO much of the stuff he covered in it, and even more surprised and happy whenever I came across something I didn’t know or realise, that I just didn’t want to put it aside. It really boosted my self-esteem in terms of Swedish, because ever since my English has leapt so much forward, I’ve been feeling less confident about my Swedish than I was before, even despite I managed with it quite well in Stockholm and I can get along with people just fine, I always have an impression that my Swedish, compared with my English, feels kind of clunky and it’s not as easy for me to express everything in it as it is in English, even though there was a time when my Swedish was waay better than my English. So I’m really glad I came across that book, even for this one reason. And it’ll definitely still be useful in different situations.
Today I’d like to share another song by Enya with you. I think if I were to make a ranking of my favourite songs by her, it could get into the top 10 or not far below. I really like the overall, reflective but at the same time light and soothing feel of this piece. Hope you’ll enjoy it too. 🙂
I think this is my favourite out of Enya’s more popular songs. I have so many positive feelings and associations related to it. This song was meant to be very daydream-y, and it feels right away, which is why I’ve always used it for some bigger daydreaming, relaxing visualisations and stuff. It has really helped me through so many situations and it is so relaxing and nourishing for the imagination.
As always in Enya’s case, when this song was created, the music came first, and then, when Enya’s lyricist – Roma Ryan – heard it, it made her think of the Caribbean, hence the title. It’s not as popular as Orinoco Flow, Only Time or May It Be, but people who aren’t Enya geeks yet at the same time know some more of her music than just these three songs, will typically remember hearing Caribbean Blue somewhere and able to tell that it’s Enya, or will even be well acquainted with it if they either have a bit of liking for Enya or generally 80’s music that is not necessarily disco. In Europe, it can also be heard in radio stations which play some light pop or a bit older stuff, here in Poland for example an oldies station called Radio Plus plays it regularly. So maybe you have also heard Caribbean Blue before, even if you are not a crazy Enya fan? In any case, if you are an escapist, I reckon you’ll like it even if you haven’t heard it before.
I’d like to share another song by Enya with you today. An incredibly popular one. So popular, in fact, that it doesn’t even have as much of that special Enya feel to me as most of her music does. In a way I’m glad that her music isn’t totally obscure, that at least a lot of people know who she is, that you don’t have to be some real quirky individual to come across her music and enjoy its beauty and that it can speak to many people. But sometimes I feel like it really sucks that she’s so popular. Because as someone who’s had a faza on Enya and her music and has a special and very strong connection to it, it doesn’t sit right with me to know that people often listen to her music randomly without thinking much about it, call it new age when even Enya herself says it’s not, just because it reminds them of new age music, that some of her music is played in any of your average light pop radio stations often squeezed in between some rather mediocre tracks, and her most popular singles are often made into totally cringeworthy and sacrilegious – in my humble opinion – remixes which make my brain shrink and indeed, at least in my perception, ironically make her music have more of a feel akin to these sort of new age/pop/ethno fusion projects like Enigma, Era or Deep Forest. Yeah, I know I’m weird, but I can’t help the way I think about this. 😀 I just find it a bit yucky simply because I have a very personal relationship with her music and it feels like a prophany but I realise it’s just me. And, oh yeah, there’s that one song, only one single song by Enya that I dislike, to be more exact I actually hate it, not for any other reason than just because it doesn’t sit right with my brain and causes me sensory anxiety – so paradoxical given that her any other music has exactly the opposite effect, I don’t know why that is and I wish I liked this song, I really tried, but I just do not and trying to like it only makes it worse. – This song is Orinoco Flow, the single from her 80’s album Watermark, which got insanely popular and appears to be her most well known song. Such an irony.
With this song, Only Time, there is an awful, pop-y, cringey remix which as far as I remember was the first song by Enya that I’ve ever heard (no wonder that my first impressions of her music were very negative and I used to think I dislike her music in general, only later a friend convinced me and infected me with the faza on her ). You could hear this cringey remix in some stations here and I guess even more often than the original song.
So, after I’ve realised how much I actually love Enya, I never really had big feelings for Only Time just because it’s so normal, so popular, so overheard. I did like the original version but just not quite like her lesser known music. I still don’t have huge love for this song like I do for example for Dreams Are More Precious, but I try not to be unfair and disqualify it just because it’s popular. After all, it’s still very good and became popular for a reason.
I guess Enya is much less popular and known in America than in Europe, but this song is probably quite well known to American people as well, since it was used as a tribute to 9/11 victims, and in connection with that events the lyrics take on an entirely new meaning. So is the case in our current, weird times.
to list some things I’m grateful for, as a sort of follow-up to my earlier post about ways of showing gratitude.
Here’s the list of things I’m thankful for.
That we are all in good health, me and my family. I think that’s a huge thing to be grateful for any time. I’m not just talking Covid, but this, of course, too. It’s one of these things you typically only start to appreciate when something goes really wrong, so I’m trying to be grateful in advance.
My room. It’s my recharge place and a place I feel very strongly emotionally attached to so I don’t know what I would do if I didn’t have my own room. Especially that mine is really beautiful, cosy and Mishful. I got to particularly appreciate it yesterday when Sofi was having a party that I mentioned earlier today, but Misha and I could just lock ourselves here and be oblivious to all that.
Great music and interesting books! I always make sure I’m not short on either and both these things are of tremendous importance for me every single week, making my life richer. Right now, I am listening especially much to Enya’s music – Enya was my very first major faza (or music fascination) and even though she’s more in the background now, still, every year, when it gets colder outside, I feel like listening to a lot of her music. –
Everything to do with MIMRA (My Inner MishMash Readership Award). That I am able to do MIMRAs, that I have my Mum to help me out with them, as she always helps a lot and although she’s not my reader she probably deserves a MIMRA herself 😀 that I have my loyal and supportive blog readers, that I have some cool ideas for MIMRA this year (although it all still needs to be polished)… There’s so much to be grateful for about MIMRA.
Kefir! A lot of people who aren’t really as huge fans of kefir as I am but do drink it sometimes might argue that it’s a distinctly summery drink. Well I drink it all year round and this week I’ve been drinking tons of it.
My Mum yet again! For all the other things beyond MIMRA she does for me. I feel really grateful that we have such strong relationship and can talk about lots of things, and also that we have relatively similar views on a lot of things – would be difficult otherwise living together, so it’s really a big plus. –
That we’ve been having pretty good weather this week. Today’s especially nice and sunny out there.
My iPhone and all the stuff I can do with it that I couldn’t before I got it, and that I’ve learnt to use it despite the touchscreen challenges well enough. This week, I’m especially grateful for being able to play BitLife when I had not much constructive stuff to do, especially at nights, as my sleep cycle was all over the place this week because of migraines, but at the same time I had too little energy to actually do something more useful. I’ve lived about 6 lives in Bitlife now and I always bond so closely with the character I’m playing.
All my penfriends, especially the ones with whom I’ve been writing for a longer time, their interesting emails, care, support, and all the conversations we have.
And Misha!!! How come I didn’t put him higher on the list? Misha slept with me in my bed last night, I mean really in bed, not on the bed or in his bed on my bed but properly under the duvet beside me, which happens very rarely, and I loved it. I am also grateful for that he spends a lot of time in my room now during the days, sleeping in a basket on the windowsill, so he can look out the window, smell the fresh air, feel the sun and wind, and the radiator beneath it. Sadly the radiator itself is way too narrow for Misha, otherwise I’m sure he would have preferred sleeping there. I’m always so grateful for having such a beautiful Mishball in my life, I’m insanely lucky in this regard.
So, these are the ten things I’m grateful for this week.
If you could spend the day with a celebrity, who would you choose?
My answer:
I’m not particularly oriented nor interested in celebrities overall. I have my fazas but you could hardly call any of them a celebrity. Enya is well-known around the world but she’s way too private to suit that term and you don’t really hear much about her as herself, and Cornelis was a bit like a Swedish celebrity in that all sorts of more or less trashy magazines would tattle about his private life, and he became very well-known shortly before his death, but I’m not sure this term suits him that well either, plus he’s no longer alive. But if that would count, and if he’d be alive I think I’d choose him. If not, I quite like Helena Bonham Carter lately, and although I’m not crazy about her, perhaps it would be really nice to meet her.
Perhaps you remember that I was sharing a lot of Enya’s music last year around Christmas with you. I was sure I must have shared this song, but looks like I haven’t, so I think it’s the right time to do it now, since this is primarily an Advent hymn! And I think in Enya’s version it sounds so extremely beautiful. Both full of some silent, secret euphoria, as well as nostalgia. I hope you like it too. 🙂
Celtic Woman are one of my most favourite Irish/Celtic groups, yet I’ve only shared one song with you so far. I’ve recently seen that they released something new, including a newer version of “Orinoco Flow” that they also sang before, but I decided I like the older version more and will show it to you. It comes back from the times when they had their good old line-up, with Lisa Kelly, Meav and such, I liked them best at that time in the history of the band, though I still do like them a lot.
The song was originally song and composed by ENya and appeared on one of her earliest albums back in the eighties – “Watermark”. – If you know me and my blog at least a bit, you probably already know Enya has been one of my major music crushes over the years. Curiously however, “Orinoco Flow” is the only song of hers that I really, really don’t like, as much as I love all her other songs and compositions. It was played a lot and is still one of the most recognisable songs by Enya, I believe, and I knew it way before I started loving Enya and discovering her music. In fact, at the beginning I thought I disliked all of her music, it had to grow on me and it did very suddenly. But “Orinoco Flow”, despite my brave attempts to like it, remains the only song of Enya’s that I do not like, and almost hate. Why is that? I don’t even exactly know. 😀 Perhaps I have some bad associations with it that I don’t realise, which is very possible, in any case, for some reason it makes my sensory anxiety come up. Weird, given how relaxing Enya’s music is and how normally it’s very soothing to me. Anyway, I do like it by Celtic Woman, so maybe it depends on an arrangement or whatever. So, here it is. I hope you enjoy. 🙂
Who was your first crush, celebrity, or non-celebrity?
My answer:
My very first childhood crush was probably my Dad’s friend, I really have no idea why. I only have a vague recollection of him now and can’t see anything interesting about him. 😀 And then there are my famous, intense music crushes, and the first one was Enya. I guess I was about 11-12 when it started. It wasn’t a romantic crush. Enya was someone in between my idol, a kind of soothing presence with her music in my rather chaotic life, a replacement mother figure, like I thought about her that she’s my secret second mummy or something like that, and she was my fascination, like all my music crushes are, and the very first flame which started my whole Celtophilia and all that. She’s no longer my dominant crush since years, but is still there in the background very strongly, like all my music crushes!
Here’s another Enya’s sort of winter themed song I have for you this month. I think it’s one of my most favourite wintry but non Christmassy songs by her for some reason. 🙂
I’ve shared with you quite a couple Christmas carols by Enya so far. Today, I’m also sharing a song by Enya, though this one doesn’t have much to do with Christmas, but it’s still very wintry and cosy, and I love it because of it. 🙂
We still have the Christmas tree in our living room and will be taking it down on Friday, and as you already know Christmas season in Poland can theoretically last until the 2nd February. While such very long celebrations would certainly drive me crazy, I am really happy it’s so long because I can relish Enya’s Christmas music, which I only save it for this time of year to make it more pleasurable. So here’s another Enya’s Christmas themed song, and it is just so beautiful. I simply love it!
I have a niggling feeling that despite my love for Irish language there hasn’t been much Irish language music that I posted here actually. So here’s the Irish version of “Silent Night” in ENya’s exquisite performance. I just love it so, so much!
OK, time to catch up on some music. 🙂 There is so much great Christmas music out there, and since it’s still Christmas season, and will be until 2nd February, I will throw in some Christmas songs/carols once in a while, and because I love Enya so much, and she has so much great Christmas or simply winter themed music, this winter I’m going to focus particularly on her music when it comes to my Christmas favourites. Hope you’ll find them enjoyable as well. Also I must say that at times like these, when I feel particularly anxious, and can’t do much about it, I find Enya’s music very helpful and soothing. So here’s the beautiful Christmas song, or maybe carol actually, called “Journey Of The Angels”. 🙂
My Inner MishMash 