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Píobaire, An, Volume 9, Issue 4, Page 12

Píobaire, An, Volume 9, Issue 4, Page 12
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periodical Publisher
Na Píobairí Uilleann
periodical Editor
Chairman, NPU
periodical Title
An Píobaire
volume Number
4
issue Content
Píobaire, An 9 4 12 20130930 12 ~ SEANCHAS ~ The Siege of Guingamp John Murphy G UINGAMP is a small town (population about 7,500) located in the Côtes- d’Armor region of Brittany. A dozen or so years ago I purchased the CD “McMahon from Clare” which features Tony McMahon on accordion and Barney McKenna on banjo. The title of one of the tracks rather intrigued me; it is called “The Siege of Guingamp”. In due course I invoked the services of Mr. Google to try and locate further information about this exotic- sounding tune. Unfortunately, all that I could dis- cover at the time was that (a) Guingamp had indeed been under siege in the year 1488 and (b) that tune is sometimes called “The Breton Wed- ding March”, due no doubt to the “Here Comes the Bride” sound of the initial few notes. Unfor- tunately, at the time I failed to glean any other in- formation of any significance. It’s a fairly simple catchy tune – and for a time it became part of what could be called my ‘ses- sion repertoire’. Unfortunately, it isn’t com- monly heard at trad music sessions and so I eventually tired of having to play it solo. Over time I gradually forgot all about the tune. Now fast forward to Easter 2013 when I spent a very enjoyable week in Brittany on a Twin- ning trip with a group of friends. While there my memory was jogged by the sight of road signs pointing to the town of Guingamp. After returning home I once more set about search- ing online to find more details of the siege and in particular to find out how it came to be com- memorated in the title of what I had assumed to be just an obscure trad-session tune. Since my previous foray into locating informa- tion about the tune there has been an enormous growth in the quantity of online resources avail- able to anybody wishing to delve into ‘matters historic’. In particular, the advent of the Google Books service has resulted in the content of a vast number of books being digitised and made freely available online. This time around I came across several refer- ences to a skirmish that took place in Brittany in 1758 between the English and the French and which was known in the Breton tongue as Em- gann Sant-Kast (The Battle of St Cast). The French contingent was made up largely of Bre- ton speakers and apparently the English con- tingent consisted mostly of soldiers from rural Wales, all with Welsh as their mother tongue. It was claimed that the opposing sides squared up against each other while singing the words of two very old march-time ballads – on one side a Breton song called “Seiziz Gwengamp” (“The Siege of Guingamp”), and on the other side a very old Welsh song called “Rhyfelgyrch Cabden Morgan” (“Captain Morgan’s March”). Bizarrely, both songs are sung to an almost identical air – and thereby hangs a tale… I also located an online copy of a relatively old but nonetheless very interesting book about folk-songs and their origins that was published in 1914. It contains the following little snippet which I’ve copied-and-pasted below: In September, 1758, an English force effected a descent upon the Breton coast, at Saint-Cast. A company of Lower Bretons, from the neighbor- hood of Treguire and Saint-Pol de Leon, was
issue Number
9
page Number
12
periodical Author
[Periodical]
issue Publication Date
2013-09-30T00:00:00
allowedRoles
anonymous,guest,friend,member

An Píobaire, Volume 9, Issue 4

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