80th birthday greetings to Christy Moore

Legendary singer songwriter's mother was Nancy Power from Yellow Furze

Today, Wednesday 7th May may be the opening day of a papal conclave, but it also marks the 80th birthday of our own high priest of folk singing and songwriting, Christy Moore.

While he grew up in Newbridge in Kildare, where his father, Andy, was an Army man (who sadly died young), Christy had close connections to the Navan area – and in particular Ardmulchan and Beauparc-Yellow Furze, where his mother, Nancy Power, was from.

“The ways my mother could sing,” Christy wrote in his memoir, 'One Voice’.

“As a small boy, I listened to her play the piano and sing old songs and new songs.”

Nancy Power grew up on the banks of the Boyne, he wrote. Her father, Jack Power, worked at Ardmulchan, a large Georgian estate near Navan, in the parish of Seneschalstown or Yellow Furze. Her mother was Eily Sheeran from the cotton mills.

“Mammy had one brother, Jimmy, who died in hard circumstances in Birmingham,” Christy wrote. “Nancy had an idyllic childhood, and from what I can gather was a very happy and much-loved young girl. The older people of the parish still remember her from 70 years ago and tell me of her beautiful voice and her zest for living.

"The estate which Jack worked on was owned by Sir Alexander Maguire, an absentee landlord whose fortune was made from boxes of matchsticks. She sang in the church and school choirs, and also became a renowned soloist as her fine soprano voice developed. She knew about lyrics and melody and voice projection and communication.”

This writer recalls the late parish priest of Dunsany and Kilmessan, and Rathkenny Revels founder, Fr Michael Murchan, saying that it was his aunt, Julia Elmes, a teacher in Yellow Furze National School along with her husband Frank, who inspired this love of song and music into the young Nancy Power, and who recognised her talents.

Julia was from a family with a long tradition of school teaching, as a daughter of Johnstown school teachers Pat and Elizabeth Sheridan, and had also taught in Cannistown for a period.

Christy writes: “All of my early memories of mammy are musical. I can imagine myself as a baby sitting at her feet by the piano as she played and sang. Old Irish songs, hymns in Latin, bits of opera, light and classical, pop songs and lullabies. She loves to play and sing. She instilled music in all of us.”

Christy's brother, Luka Bloom, is also a well-known performer. Both Christy and his mother, widowed at 37, experienced difficulties with alcohol and were estranged for a while.

But he wrote: “Much later on, when we both had our drinking behind us, we grew very close again. We would drive out again across the Curragh, down by the Liffey, up the Hill of Allen, over by Father Moore’s Well, below the Red Hills through the Sandy Hills, once of twice heading off to the Boyne Valley to see the Boyne meander past Ardmulchan, and she would sing gently again, and we’d drive in silence and the world seemed perfect.”

In 1993, Christy wrote the song 'Wise and Holy Woman' with Wally Page for his mother, also known as 'Yellow Furze woman.

In a cover note on his website, he writes: "Nancy sang all her life. Old songs at first, then hymns, light opera, musicals, parlour songs, popular songs and traditional ballads in English and Irish. When she sang in the church on Sundays she had an enormous and beautiful deep soprano voice which emerged miraculously from deep within her diaphram.

"When she sang parlour and pop songs at the piano her Meath accent would peep out, when she sang the old songs, Eamon an Cnoic, Sean O’Duibhir an Gleanna or The Three Flowers it would be in a small quiet lonesome voice that often stilled my night. Writing these few words here in Belfast this morning, my tears are tears of joy for her memory and sadness for her passing. I feel no mourning for she remains a constant presence in my life and we all still cherish her. I wrote this song for Nancy Power."

'Wise and Holy Woman'

Christy Moore\Wally Page

I met a wise and holy woman near the town where I was walkin’

We both sat together down below the Yellow Furze

She closed her eyes and started singing

A song about the light that shines and the wonders of the world

She sang of the forests on the high high mountain

The pure clear water and the fresh air we breathe

Of the bounty we gain from natures abundance

And how the mighty oak tree grows from a little seed

Chorus:

She had an everlasting notion

The wise and holy woman had a neverending dream

As she called out to the stars glistening on the ocean

Shine a light , shine a light on me

She sang a song from the streets of Sao Paolo

For the homeless street children who never learned to smile

She sang of the shrine they built to Chico Mendez

Where the plantation workers laid his body in the soil

She sang of the greed we display before our altars

The oil soaked cormorant drowning in the tide

She sang of the halting site way out beyond Clondalkin

Where Ann Maughan froze to death between the dump and the railway line

Chorus

(outro verse same shape and melody as chorus)

She sang of the eagle flying high above the mountain

The otter that swam through rivers and streams

Of the lilies that bloomed and the countless wild flowers

and the rainbow that rose in the valley of tears.