There's a particular kind of Irish song where a fella struts up to a woman, lays out his whole sales pitch — his land, his cows, his fine prospects — and she stands there and takes him apart, line by line, until he's left standing in the road with nothing but his own face. The Maid of the Sweet Brown Knowe is the GOLD STANDARD of that kind of song. And I love it for one simple reason. She wins. She wins so completely that the lad more or less admits it himself by the last verse.
If you've never heard it, here's the shape of the thing. A "bold farmer's son" — and isn't it always a bold farmer's son — comes courting. He tells your one she's the loveliest thing he ever clapped eyes on, he'll marry her, he'll set her up grand, he has acres and beasts and a name. And she just... is not having it. Not even slightly.
Now here's the bit I want to talk about, because people get it wrong all the time. The song is called The Maid of the Sweet Brown Knowe and people see "knowe" written down and don't know what to do with it. Is it her name? Is it a place? Is it a typo? (I've had THREE emails over the years asking if it's a typo. It is not a typo.)
A "knowe" — sometimes written "know" or "knowse" depending on who wrote it down — is just a little hill. A knoll. A wee rounded rise in the land. It's an old word, the kind that survives in songs and in field-names long after people stopped using it in ordinary talk. So "the sweet brown knowe" is a soft brown hillside, and the maid of it is the girl who lives there. That's the whole mystery. It's a girl from a nice bit of high ground, and the song's named for her townland the way half the women in Irish song are named for the place they're from. Once you know that, the title goes from baffling to lovely. A brown hill. You can picture it.
Right, back to the demolition.
What makes this song crack along is the DIALOGUE. It's not a fella singing ABOUT a girl, the way Carrickfergus is a man singing about a woman who's already out of reach. This is the two of them, live, in real time, and you can practically hear her arms folded. He boasts about his money and she tells him she'd sooner have a man with sense than a man with land. He says she'll be sorry when she's old and alone and he's married someone else. And she — God, this is the line — basically tells him she'd rather die an old maid than be tied to a clown like him. (Some versions are even sharper. I've heard one where she more or less calls his cattle better company than he is.)
He doesn't get the girl. He doesn't even get a maybe. And the gas thing is the song KNOWS it. It's written for the laugh. Whoever shaped this one over the years wanted the room to be on her side, and the room always is.
Where's it from? Honestly — the usual answer, which is "we're not totally sure." It's a 19th-century broadside ballad, the sort that got printed cheap and sold in the streets, and it travelled. You'll find it sung in Ireland, in Scotland, away across in the Appalachians where so many of these tunes washed up. Different singers, different verses, the odd different ending. That's normal. A song like this isn't a fixed text, it's a conversation that's been going on for two hundred years, and every singer adds their own little twist of the knife. I don't trust anyone who tells you the ONE true version. There isn't one. There's just the one you grew up with.
I'll be honest with you about why I'm fond of it beyond the wit. So many of our love songs are mournful. Beautiful, but mournful — the lost girl, the emigrant ship, the grave. (You go through the songbook and you'll see what I mean, there's a fair amount of weeping in there.) And then along comes this one and it's just two people having a row in a field, and she's winning, and nobody dies. It's a RELIEF. It's funny. It's got bite.
It pairs gorgeous in a session, too — slot it after something heavy and watch the room lift. If you're building a set, I've rambled on about the cheerful-versus-mournful balance over in my piece on Irish wedding songs, because you do NOT want all your love songs to be funerals.
So if you only take one thing from me today: it's a hill, lads. The knowe is a hill. And the maid of it is not, under any circumstances, marrying your man. Learn the words (the full set lives near the rest of the lyrics corner of the site) and give the last verse a bit of relish. She earned it.
Slán go fóill, BogLord2002
P.S. — I sang a verse of this in the kitchen the other evening and Rattlin sat on the windowsill staring at me the whole way through with this look of total disapproval, like the maid herself. Withering, so it was. I think he's a critic.