The Holy Ground
Posted in Folk Music on Jul 27th, 2008 2 Comments »
When I first went to University in 1964, I immediately joined the “Ballad and Blues” Club. It was actually a folk club, but the title was I suppose, meant to show wider sympathies. There I got to see Ewan MacColl, Peggy Seeger, Guy Carawan, the Liverpool Spinners (rather good but somewhat disdained later for their commercialism), the Clancy Brothers and more. Tony Rose was a stalwart of the club at the time.
One of the popular songs at the time was the Irish song “The Holy Ground”. This usually came in after “The Whiskey in the Jar” or some other roaring song, to lower the temperature. Like all the best Irish songs, it’s about longing for home - always the exile’s holy ground - here through the eyes of a girl longing for her lover to return from sea.
Here’s Mary Black singing it.
