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Here I blend together the spirit of Irish Sean Nos with Central Asian throat singing, and the instrument is a Sruti box. People always ask about the thing they see in the video, and not the sound itself, but that thing is a Sruti box, which is a drone producing instrument used typically for Indian music. This is a terrifying, horrible old ballad from "the old country" as me Nannie used to say. Lyrics below here:
CRUEL MOTHER
She leaned herself against a thorn
All alone and a lonely, Oh
And there she had two pretty babies born,
Down by the bonny greenwood side-ee-Oh
She leaned her back against an oak
All alone and a lonely, Oh
She pushed and she pushed til her back near broke.
Down by the bonny greenwood side-ee-oh
And she took off a length of her ribbon belt,
And there she bound them by the hand and leg
“Smile not so sweet, by bonny babes,
If you smile so sweet, you'll smile me dead.”
She had a dagger long and cold and sharp,
And she pressed it through their tender heart.
She's taken her blade and held it to the sky
And she twined them of their earthly life.
She digged a grave far far beyond the sun,
All alone and a lonely oh
And there she's buried her sweet babes withun.
Down by the bonny greenwood side-ee-oh
She wiped her dagger on the ground of green,
Yet the more she rubbed the more blood was seen.
She threw the dagger far far away,
Yet the further that she threw the nearer it came.
Years went by and she was going by the church,
All alone and a lonely Oh
She seen two pretty little babies on the porch.
Down by the Bonny greenwood side-ee-oh
As she looked at the ghosts over the churchyard wall
She saw two bonny boys a playing at a ball.
“Oh babes, oh babes, if you were mine,
I'd dress you up in silk and scarlet fine.”
“Oh mother, oh mother, we once were thine,
All alone and a lonely oh
You didn't dress us up in scarlet fine.”
Down by the bonney greenwood side-ee-oh
“You took a dagger long and cold and sharp,
“Pressed the blade right through our tender heart.”
“You dug a grave far far beyond the sun,
And buried us beneath a marble stone.”
“Oh babes, oh babes, what have I to do,
For the cruel thing that I did to you?”
“Oh bonny boys, come tell it now to me
What sort of death I'll have to die?”
“Seven long years as a bird in the wood,
All alone and a lonely Oh
And seven long years as a fish in the flood.”
Down by the bonney greenwood side-ee-oh
“Seven long years as a tongue of the warning bell,
All alone and a lonely-Oh
And seven long years in the deeps of hell
Down by the bonny greenwood side-ee-oh