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about
Our new song is a dark, compelling love story set against the backdrop of a real historical event.
Over the course of three days in October 1621, two vast armies fought in the skies above Cork City. Recorded in a pamphlet of the time as 'The Wonderfull Battell of Starelings', witnesses spoke of streets littered with dead and dying birds, beaks and talons impaled in each other. Seen by citizens as a portent of ill things to come, the following year Cork burnt to the ground in a fire caused by a lightning strike.
"I have a grá for the arcane, unearthing lost historical moments. The Battle of the Starlings is one of the strangest. We cannot know how it must have felt to stand in the streets of Cork City, watching the skies above as events unfolded. The song imagines a couple on their wedding day who bear witness to this terrifying battle. As witnesses, they must ultimately face the consequences."
Ciarán Ruby.
400 years later, for the anniversary of this strange war of the birds, The Diviners are proud to release 'Battle of the Starlings.'
lyrics
Battle of the Starlings
Twelfth of October 1621
they wed on a hill by The Lee,
she danced when he sang, sweet tide waters ran
full of promise for them to the sea.
He kissed her and told her this day I will hold
to my breast for the rest of our lives,
leaves gold on the trees in a late autumn breeze
I am proud now to call you my wife.
From the sun rising high in a deep eastern sky
comes a shadow more sudden than night,
lock your doors, bar the windows, the townspeople cry,
skye daemons are marching to fight.
Then the dark wind they heard was the wings of the birds
when over Corke Citie they rose
a black storm of sea surging over The Lee,
a strangeness on all of our homes.
Hold me close darling,
I dream of starlings.
They ran from the hill through a gathering wind
down a path to the streets far below,
the flowers she wove, he had picked from a grove,
curled and died in a coldness of snow.
M’ éanín, mo stór, níl aon rud ach fuar,
tá eagla an domhain i mo chroí,
a sorrow of war has darkened our door,
there are shadows behind you and me.
In Corke Citie skyes, the deafening cries,
a storm breaks when two armies meet,
ten thousand fall dead on the day they are wed
and the sun sets blood red on the streets.
For two days and more there rages a war
and townspeople say it’s a sign,
knowe that Corke will be strucke with a run of ill lucke
if we don’t mend our ways in good time.
Hold me close darling,
I dream of starlings.
A year later she died on an outgoing tide
where the river gives back to the sea,
he searched for his bride in the wilds far and wide
from their home on the banks of The Lee.
Cá bhfuil tú a éanín mo chroí?
Ghosts for so long, doomed to roam in some song,
by new walls, old quaysides, unfree,
the lost and the found, broken streetlights, a sound,
there are shadows behind you and me.
There are shadows behind you and me.
credits
released October 23, 2021
Ciarán Ruby: Vocals; Guitar; Low Whistle; Tin Whistle; Shruti Box
Eoin Jordan: Bouzouki; Bodhrán
Ilse de Ziah: Cello; Djembe
Written and arranged by Ciarán Ruby.
Beautiful suggestions, decisions and additions made ensemble.
Recorded and mixed by Ilse de Ziah, Studio Ion, Co. Cork.
Mastered by Brian Casey and Sarah O'Mahony at Wavefield Studios, Clonakilty, Co. Cork
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