MARY O’HARA - SONGS OF ERIN
DECCA / BELTONA RECORDS (1957)
THE WEAVING SONG (trad. arr. Mary O'Hara)
THE QUIET LAND OF ERIN (trad. arr. Mary O'Hara)
I WISH I HAD THE SHEPHERD'S LAMB (trad. arr. Mary
O'Hara)
THE BONNIE BOY (trad. arr. Mary O'Hara)
AILILIU NA GAMNHA (trad. arr. Mary O'Hara)
SHE MOVED THROUGH THE FAIR (UNACCOMPANIED)
(trad. arr. Hughes; Colum)
THE SPANISH LADY (trad. arr. Hughes)
EILEEN AROON (trad. arr. Mary O'Hara)
THE SPINNING WHEEL (Waller; Murphy)
DILEEN O DEAMHAS (trad. arr. Mary O'Hara)
LONDONDERRY AIR (trad. arr. Weatherly)
I HAVE A BONNET TRIMMED WITH BLUE (trad. arr. Mary O'Hara)
CASTLE OF DROMORE (trad. arr. Mary O'Hara)
NEXT MARKET DAY (trad. arr. Mary O'Hara)
MY LAGAN LOVE (trad. arr. Mary O'Hara)
CEOL AN PHIOBAIRE (trad. arr. Mary O'Hara)
FILL, FILL A RUN O (O COME BACK, MY LOVE) (trad. arr. Mary O'Hara)
A BALLYNURE BALLAD (trad. arr. Hughes)
Below: Mary O’Hara EP
(her first record release)
(Vocals with Celtic harp accompaniment)
Mary’s first recording contract was signed in 1955 with Decca Records.
In October 1955 she completed her first recording sessions: a test recording comprising four
songs with harp accompaniment. These songs were released as an EP (2 songs each side)
and this became Mary’s first record release. Decca were very pleased with the EP as it sold
2000 copies in the first few days of release in Holland alone. They then requested that Mary
record an LP album of 18 songs.
The resulting album, Mary’s debut LP entitled ‘Songs of Erin’, was recorded in the Decca studios in London in
1956 with Mary’s husband, Richard Selig, at her side. He wrote the sleeve notes for the album. Tracks from the
album were also issued at the time in a series of 3 EPs entitled ‘Songs of Erin Part 1, 2, and 3’.
The ’Songs of Erin’ album contains traditional Irish material.
It was released in the UK, Ireland, USA (under the ‘London’ label), Europe, New Zealand and South Africa and
later would become part of the 1960’s folk boom. It was re-issued in stereo in Holland in the early 1970s. By then,
Mary (having given up singing) had been a member of an enclosed monastery in England for eight years. She
had not been keen to have her records listened to in the monastery but did eventually give permission for a
visitor to loan one of the nuns a copy of ‘Songs of Erin’. After coming across it herself, by accident, Mary asked to
listen to it and was moved to tears by the performance and the memory of the recording sessions with her now
late-husband present. It was then that she finally realised that her singing did indeed give pleasure to people. She
then agreed for her records to be played in the monastery and this incident, combined with her discovery of
Sydney Carter’s ‘Lord of the Dance’ slowly awakened her interest in singing with the harp.
Tracks from ‘Songs of Erin’ and Mary’s next Decca album were issued as a 2LP Decca compilation entitled ‘Focus
on Mary O’Hara’ in 1978 to coincide with her return to singing.
Fifty-five years after it was first issued, ‘Songs of Erin’ is still available on the internet as a digital download.
On BBC Radio Four’s ‘Desert Island Discs’ broadcast on the 22nd May 1971 Joyce Grenfell selected ‘She Moved
Through The Fair’ from this album as her 4th choice of disc.
Mary’s harp arrangements as performed on this album are now available to buy in 5 volumes of her ‘Travels
With My Harp’ music books.
Mary’s first EP reviewed in the Gramophone magazine September 1956 by W.A.Chislett:
“Equally authentic sounding and very charming is my solitary 45 on which Mary O'Hara sings The Spanish
Lady, Eileen Aroon, Ceol an Phibrough and Spinning Wheel. The first three are arrangements of traditional songs
and the last is by J. F. Waller. Miss O'Hara accompanies herself on the harp. A delightful disc (Beltona IEP41)”
‘Songs of Erin’ reviewed in the Gramophone magazine February 1957 by W.A.Chislett:
Mary O'Hara's artistry may fairly be likened to that of Richard Hayward, although he was singing and even
recording long before she was born, for she is only twenty-one now. But those who have heard her at the
Edinburgh Festival will know that already. In 1955 as a member of one of the unofficial productions with which
the Festival proper is surrounded she stole much of the thunder which others expected and in 1956 she was an
official guest artist in "The Pleasure of Scotland ". In "Songs of Erin" (Beltona LBEI3) she sings eighteen traditional
songs and accompanies herself on the Irish harp. In mood the songs range from grave to gay and love songs to a
child's "dandling" song with nonsensical words. Six are sung in Gaelic; The Weaving Song, which is occupational
in origin, Eileen Aroon, the well-known love song, Fill, Fill a Run O, which is an appeal by a mother to her son to
return to the Church, Dileen O Deamhas, sung while bouncing a baby on the knee, Ceol an Phiobaire, a piper's
love song, and Aliliu Na Gamnha, in which a peasant girl regrets leaving her native countryside for city life in
England. Miss O'Hara has a voice that is small in tone but very sweet and attractive in quality and uses it with an
artistry that is almost uncanny in one so young.”