I love his Fairground songs most notably 'She Moved Through the Fair' which is, I think, an old Irish song going back to the sixteenth century.
My young love said to me,
My mother won't mind
And my father won't slight you
For your lack of kine.
She stepped away from me
And this she did say,
"It will not be long love
Till our wedding day".
She stepped away from me
And she moved through the fair
And fondly I watched her move here
And move there.
And she went her way homeward
With one star awake,
As the swan in the evening
Moved over the lake.
Last night she came to me,
My young love came in.
So softly she entered,
That her feet made no din.
And she came close beside me
And this she did say,
"It will not be long love
Till our wedding day".
And here's a great version: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=afAjt0E250E
This is the eeriest song he ever did, on 'Celtic Heartbeat' as the returning girl is clearly a ghost making a tryst for the afterlife. We can only make a horrified guess as to what has happened in the interim. As with Goethe's 'Heidenroslein' the pathos lies all in the silences.
