Celtic Doom: The Vein of Sadness in Celtic Music

When I listen to Celtic music, I find my emotions veer towards melancholy. The most upbeat jig can miss a note you feel should be there, leaving you alone in the very absence of it. Celtic music abandons the rhythmic and harmonic suspensions characteristic of most Western music, and so can sound alien, or perhaps more aptly put, otherworldly. It has properties that no other musical culture possesses, and a particular obsession with death, loss and hardship.

 “Who could blame me, crying my fill?” Muireann Nic Amlaiobh asks in ‘Johnny Has Gone for a Soldier,’ a song lost to Ireland and rediscovered in America. The re-translated melody narrates the life and death of Johnny’s widow. The song is also about homecoming, and through collective memory and care, it returned to Ireland 200 years after it was written. When I am sad, I listen to Amlaiobh’s album Foxglove and Fuschia to wallow and truly feel it. For Celtic and trad musicians, depression is just as worthy and important as the happiest moments of human life. 

Your typical Celtic ballad’s tragic inspiration might seem obvious; from the first invasions of the islands to the expansion of the British Empire and its hellbent campaign against our native languages, the horrors that have punctuated the histories of the Celtic nations over the last 2,000 years have been akin to apocalypse. Of course, the music of these cultures reflects their near-constant oppression — the many lost to the fight live on through the delicate voice, the hum of the fiddle and the breathlessness of the Celtic drum.

One might conclude this article here: Celtic music is sad and full of death because Celtic history is sad and full of death. However, these tunes personify sadness in a way that transcends their earthly context. Inspirations such as the death of a lover, or the loss of a son in war, do not signify the end of life, but the beginning of a journey towards existence on another plane, whether that be Christian or pagan. Celtic culture has always cared deeply about the human spirit and its journey onwards, and in music, it is a journey that never ends. 

Captain Edward Burt, in 1726, described the practice of the highland Scots like this: “The upper class hire women to moan and lament (keen) at the funeral of their nearest relations. These women cover their heads with a small piece of cloth, mostly green, and every now and then break out into a hideous howl and Ho-bo-bo-bo-boo; as I have often heard is done in some parts of Ireland.” The wake, or the coronach, is transformed from the stuffy Anglo-Saxon custom, from the stiff-upper-lip to a loud and drunken brawl, full of music and facing death head-on. The traditional Irish funeral song, the ‘amhrán na marbh,’ is a melancholic melody most often sung in the Irish language. The rites performed at death are inherently musical. In the Christian context, the funereal song honours the blurring of boundaries between heaven and earth, life and death.

Songs like ‘The Parting Glass’ represent Ireland’s profound respect for the dead and dying — in the Celtic world, one cannot be allowed to die without dignity. These melodies defy the passing of time and the loss of loved ones to oblivion. The vein of sadness that runs through Celtic music, from ‘Danny Boy’ to ’The Fields of Athenry,’ is a vein that runs through all of our lives. The music speaks of the worst times and softens them. It is an art form without fear. 

Illustration by Clemmie Swiffen