The longtime singer laureate of Ireland, activist on Palestine, and a primordial love song.

As one youtube comment noted, so grateful to have discovered him—if only I’d done so many decades earlier.

Sitting here on a cool nearly cold August Sunday, outside the Athenaeum in Indianapolis, reading the Sunday Times (belatedly, but I’d refused to toss it in the recycling bin), I came across a great story about this great voice.

So I started listening to his songs, mostly from an album mentioned in the story. And it often takes time to get to kow, and then feel, a new musical artist, new songs, new lyrics. But this one got me.

Chills, 3/4s of the way through:

Black Is The Colour
(Traditional)

Black is the colour of my true love’s hair.

Her lips are like some roses fair

She has the sweetest smile and the gentlest hands

And I love the ground whereon she stands.

I love my love and well she knows
I love the ground whereon she goes
I wish the day it soon would come
When she and I could be as one

I go to the Clyde and I mourn and weep
For satisfied I ne’er can be
I write her a letter just a few short lines
And suffer death a thousand times

Black is the colour of my true love’s hair.
Her lips are like some roses fair
She had the sweetest smile and the gentlest hands
And I love the ground whereon she stands.