Three Hail Marys

Every family has its myths, and one of ours is that my grandfather was excommunicated from the Catholic church for hitting a priest. My father always swore that it wasn’t true, but at his funeral, it was the main topic of conversation.

The story goes like this: the priest knocks on the door of their home, and my grandmother hides in the toilet in the garden, but my uncle, who was about seven years old, lets him in. The priest wants to know why they haven’t had children for five years, and whether they’re still sleeping in the same bed. My grandmother doesn’t come out of the loo, and the priest is banging on its door, when my grandfather comes back from the pit for lunch. Now my grandfather was a huge bear of a man, not known for his patience, and he grabs the priest, saying “if I see you back here again, I’ll punch your teeth down your throat”. The next week, the priest comes back again. And my grandfather comes back from the pit, and… punches his teeth down his throat.

My grandfather was buried a Methodist.

Three Hail Marys was basically the first song that I wrote, based on an exercise to write something about your family, and helped by a folk singer from Newcastle, Eric Sharp. It was part of the Moniack Mhor writing course that I’d been given as a birthday present. I couldn’t write a note of music at the time, and Eric’s patience and craft in forming this really helped me along the way.

And of course, as the first song I wrote, I ignored it for over a year. How could it possibly be any good?

But then, and this is a theme in my work, I found it in a note book, and started playing it, and it took on its own life. It became the first song that the audiences repeatedly asked for, and my father’s favourite.

Musically, this was helped a great deal by some amazing folk musicians. Tanya Brittain of the Changing Room, another member of the Moniack Mhor songwriters, came in to play the accordion with us, and then helped with getting Jamie Francis on banjo and Evan Carson on bodhran to add their magic from the same band. The final icing on the cake was John McCusker agreeing to provide violin and whistles.