Irish Ballads & Songs of the Sea (1999)

About this title: To commemorate the 150th anniversary of the Great Potato Famine, singer Dan Milner compiled this collection of Irish sea songs originally recorded between 1982 and 1997. The lyrics generally deal with topics related to the emigration of the Irish in the wake of the Famine, but not all of them are glum -- there are the tragicomic "Yellow Meal" (in which a helpful citizen's Irish accent is responsible for a passenger's misdirection from a swift mail ship to a slow-moving grain carrier) and "Paddy West" (an account of an informal school designed to teach young would-be sailors how to talk the ... read more

Tracks:

1. Paddy West [Traditional]
2. The Banks of Newfoundland [Traditional]
3. Billy O'Shea [Traditional/Milner]
4. The Loss of the Ship Jane Maria [Traditional]
5. The Harp Without the Crown [Traditional]
6. The Nightingale [Traditional]
7. Rosemary Lane [Traditional]
8. Poor Old Horse [Traditional]
9. Lovely Ann [Traditional]
10. Row Bullies Row [Traditional]
11. Yellow Meal [Traditional]
12. Lord Bateman [Traditional]
13. The Girls of Valparaiso [Traditional]
14. The Lily of the West [Traditional]
15. LLeave Her Johnny, Leave Her [Traditional]

Note: This is a general synopsis. Each listing is further described below.