‘The Quiet Man’ soundtrack: Victor Young’s music for a happy St. Patrick’s Day

The CD soundtrack to “The Quiet Man” arrived in my mail yesterday, just in time to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day today.

“The Quiet Man,” in case you don’t know, is John Ford’s 1952 masterpiece of a motion picture, filmed in Ireland and starring John Wayne and Maureen O’Hara. The movie won Ford the Academy Award for best director. (The 1952 best picture Oscar went to “The Greatest Show on Earth.”)

Music for “The Quiet Man” was arranged beautifully by Victor Young, who also provided the soundtrack to Ford’s Western “Rio Grande” two years earlier. If you compare the two musical tracks, you’ll notice striking similarities.

Not original track. “The Quiet Man” soundtrack CD isn’t the original score. I assume this is because the original recording was lost, and the engineers couldn’t separate the music from other movie’s other sounds.

But this re-creation of “The Quiet Man” score by the Dublin Screen Orchestra is remarkably true to the original, and it has a clarity and depth the movie can’t produce. The opening theme, dominated by the beautiful main strains of “The Isle of Innisfree,” is just a little off, but it’s close.

On the ride to Innisfree, we hear “The Kerry Dance,” an upbeat welcome. The music to Sean Thornton’s first sight of Mary Kate Danaher, like the accompaniment to their courting, is outstanding -- better than I remembered it. These movements also are anchored by “The Isle of Innisfree.”

‘Dum da, dum da, dum da, diddle didda.’ “The Rakes of Mallow” is another of the film’s recurring tunes. This is the bouncing jig that accompanies Sean’s dragging of Mary Kate from the railroad station, just before the epic fight between Sean Thornton and Will Danaher. Think “dum da, dum da, dum da, diddle didda,” and the tune should come to you. It’s a melody that “Quiet Man” viewers never seem to get out of their heads.

One flaw on the CD is the harp that gently plays “The Isle of Innisfree” as Sean (John Wayne) recalls his late mother's words (“Don’t you remember, Seannie, and how it was?”) about their old homestead, White O’Morn. The harp is so soft you have to strain to make out some of the key notes.

But the other tracks more than make up for the few imperfections. I imagine some violinists had a grand time playing these pieces. The horse race music is surprisingly exciting. I guess it was toned down in the movie. The fistfight score is powerful, too. For both the race and the fight, the music is influenced by the familiar Irish jig, “The Irish Washerwoman,” and yet the pieces are uniquely Victor Young’s.

No bagpipes? At the cheerful finale, the CD soundtrack is strong and lively and almost perfect, mixing “The Kerry Dance” and “The Pulse of an Irishman,” which is part of Beethoven’s “12 Irische Lieder.” What’s missing here? The original’s bagpipes. The pipes could be playing faintly in the background, but I doubt it.

The CD also includes a vocal, not in the movie, of a woman singing the words to the film’s central theme, “The Isle of Innisfree,” with the original lyrics by Dick Farrelly.

The Isle of Innisfree

I’ve met some folk who say that I’m a dreamer
And I’ve no doubt there’s truth in what they say
But sure a body’s bound to be a dreamer
When all the things he loves are far away.

And precious things are dreams unto an exile
They take him o’er the land across the sea
Especially when it happens he’s an exile
From that dear lovely Isle of Innisfree.

Maureen O’Hara sang a modified version of the song in the film. (It’s not on the CD.) The lyrics are credited to John Ford, Charles Fitzsimmons (O’Hara’s brother) and O’Hara herself:

Oh, Innisfree, my island, I’m returning
From wasted years across the wintry sea.
And when I come back to my own dear Ireland,
I’ll rest a while beside you, gradh mochroidhe.

[The last two words in Irish, which sound like “grah macree,” mean “love of my heart.”]

O’Hara also sang “The Young May Moon,” which is not on the CD. Here are the lyrics:

The Young May Moon

The young May moon is beaming, love,
The glow-worm’s lamp is gleaming, love;
How sweet to rove
Through Morna’s grove,
While the drowsy world is dreaming, love!

[The song is interrupted in the movie while Mary Kate (O’Hara) talks with Michaleen Oge Flynn (Barry Fitzgerald). Mary Kate finally says, “Well, you can tell him from me that … that I go for it.” The next four lines of the song are skipped.]

[Then awake! -- the heavens look bright, my dear,
’Tis never too late for delight, my dear;
And the best of all ways
To lengthen our days]
Is to steal a few hours from the night, my dear!

The CD also gives us the songs, “The Wild Colonial Boy” and “Galway Bay”:

The Wild Colonial Boy

There was a wild colonial boy,
Jack Doogan was his name.
He was born and bred in Ireland
in a place called Castlemaine.
He was his father’s only son,
His mother’s pride and joy.
And dearly did his parents love
The wild colonial boy.

At the early age of sixteen years
He left his native home,
And to Australia’s sunny shores
He was inclined to roam.
He robbed the wealthy squireen.
All arms he did destroy.
A terror to Australia was
The wild colonial boy.

[These next verses are not in the movie.]

One morning on the prairie
as Jack he rode along
A listening to the mockingbird
a singing a cheerful song
Out stepped a band of troopers,
Kelly, Davis and Fitzroy
They all set out to capture him,
the wild colonial boy.

“Surrender now, Jack Doogan,
for you see we’re three to one
Surrender in the Queen's high name
for you're a plundering son.”
Jack pulled two pistols from his belt
and he proudly waved them high
“I’ll fight, but not surrender,”
said the wild colonial boy.

He fired a shot at Kelly,
which brought him to the ground
And turning ’round to Davis,
he received a fatal wound
A bullet pierced his proud young heart
from the pistol of Fitzroy
And that was how they captured him,
the wild colonial boy.

In the movie, Ken Curtis leads the singing of “The Wild Colonial Boy.” Curtis, a tenor with the Sons of the Pioneers, also had sung “I’ll Take You Home Again, Kathleen” in John Ford’s “Rio Grande.” In “The Quiet Man,” a harp plays a short refrain from “I’ll Take You Home Again, Kathleen,” just before Mary Kate Danaher says, “Ever since I was a little girl, I’ve dreamed of havin’ my own things about me.”

* * *

Galway Bay

If you ever go across the sea to Ireland,
Then maybe at the closing of your day,
You will sit and watch the moon rise over Claddagh,
And see the sun go down on Galway Bay.

[These last verses are not in the movie, because Sean Thornton (John Wayne) interrupts the pub singers with a demand to talk with Will Danaher (Victor McLaglen).]

Just to hear again the ripple of the trout stream,
The women in the meadow making hay.
Just to sit beside a turf fire in the cabin,
And watch the barefoot gosoons at their play.

For the breezes blowin’ o’er the sea from Ireland
Are perfumed by the heather as they blow
And the women in the uplands diggin’ praties
Speak a language that the strangers do not know.

Yet the strangers came and tried to teach us their way.
They scorned us just for bein’ what we are.
But they might as well go chasing after moon beams,
Or light a penny candle from a star.

And if there’s is going to be a life hereafter,
And somehow I am sure there’s going to be,
I will ask my God to let me make my heaven,
In that dear land across the Irish sea.

Missing mush mush. The “Mush Mush” song is not on the CD. I don’t know why. It’s a lovely bouncing waltz:

Mush-Mush-Mush Tural-i-addy

It was there that I learned all me courtin’
Many lessons I took in the art
Till Cupid, the blackguard, while sportin’
An arrow drove straight through me
Mush, mush, mush, tural-i-addy
Me mush, mush, mush, tural-i-ay

So I lathered him with me shillelagh
For he trod on the tail of me
Mush, mush, mush, tural-i-addy.
And just like the Dingle for gold,
I lathered him with me shillelagh
For he trod on the tail of me coat.

And by popular demand, here are the words to the “Quiet Man” wedding song, “The Humour is On Me Now.” This song also is missing from the CD:

The Humour is On Me Now

Oh, as I went out one mornin,’
It being the month of May
A farmer and his daughter
I spied upon me way.

And the girl sat down quite calmly
to the milkin’ of her cow
Sayin’ I will an’ I must get married,
for the humour is on me now.

Oh, the humour is on me now,
Oh, the humour is on me now
Sayin’ I will an’ I must get married,
for the humour is on me now.

[Father Lonergan (Ward Bond) takes over at the piano.]

So at last the daughter married,
she married well-to-do
And loved her darlin’ husband
a month, a year or two.

But Sean was all a tyrant
and she quickly rued her vow
Sayin’ I’m sorry I ever got married,
for the humour is off me now.

Oh, humour is off me now,
Oh, humour is off me now.
Sayin’ I’m sorry I ever got married,
for the humour is off me now.

* * *

Village of Cong. By the way, there is no town in Ireland called Innisfree, but there is an uninhabited island in Lough Gill (a lake) with the name Innisfree, in County Sligo. (William Butler Yeats wrote his poem, “The Lake Isle of Innisfree,” about this tiny island.) Most of the movie was filmed in the summer of 1951 in a village called Cong, in County Mayo -- much of it on the grounds of Ashford Castle hotel and golf course. A few segments were photographed in County Galway.

“The Quiet Man” soundtrack is a monument to the genius of Victor Young. The brilliance of his work is all the more obvious in this CD because, for context, the recording includes a few extended versions of the Irish tunes that Young drew from. You can hear what he used, and more interestingly, you can hear the weak pieces he was wise enough to leave out.

Young was Polish and American, but his music for “The Quiet Man” helped define the Irish spirit. His many movie scores exhibited a skill and intelligence rivaled by few. Unfortunately, he won his only Academy Award shortly after his death in 1956. That was for “Around the World in Eighty Days.”

A beating heart. In “The Quiet Man,” Innisfree is a populated and charmingly real place. Wayne, O’Hara and a fine supporting cast are its soul. Victor Young’s music is its pounding Irish heart.

Frank Warner

* * *

Click here to see the whole script of the movie.

Maureen O’Hara’s address is:

Maureen O’Hara
P.O. Box 27428
Tempe, AZ 85282

She lives in St. Croix, in the Virgin Islands.

If you have corrections or other information to add on “The Quiet Man” soundtrack, please click on Comments and leave a message.

Comments

[Rodney Kincaid]

I want the words to the

Mush Mush song?

Kincaid in Ohio
balmoral@columbus.rr.com

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[Frank Warner]

OK, Rodney:

"Mush-Mush-Mush Tural-i-addy"

-

It was there that I learned all me courtin’
Many lessons I took in the art
Till Cupid, the blackguard, while sportin’
An arrow drove straight through me
Mush, mush, mush, tural-i-addy
Me mush, mush, mush, tural-i-ay

So I lathered him with me shillelagh
For he trod on the tail of me
Mush, mush, mush, tural-i-addy.
And just like the Dingle for gold,
I lathered him with me shillelagh
For he trod on the tail of me coat.

[June Beck]

About 10 years ago after researching the life and career for a magazine article I was writing, I decided to build a website to honor Maureen O'Hara. The site became very popular and evolved into the "official site" and a friendship with Ms. O'Hara and her family. With Maureen's input I was able present accurate historical information. It has truly been a labor of love. I can't believe that this many years have passed and we still get many visitors to the site from all over the world. Maureen O'Hara has a film legacy that has endured and "The Quiet Man" is a classic that becomes more dear with each generation.

[Frank Warner]

Thanks, June. I hope Maureen O'Hara is in good health.

[TBIRD]

I always wanted to married a woman like Maureen O'Hara. I think her other roles with John Wayne were just as equally important. I didn't realize she was still alive?

[Frank Warner]

Last I heard, she was living in Dublin, but in "The Quiet Man" commentary, she sounds as if she's living in the United States and visits Ireland often.

June Beck's Web site might have the answer.

In her commentary, Maureen O'Hara says that, of all the adult characters in the film, she is the last alive, "thank God." (She meant she's thankful to be alive, not that the others are dead.) She's 86 years old.

And yes, O'Hara and Wayne were good in other movies, most especially "Rio Grande." (And remember, before she did anything with Wayne, she was Esmeralda in "The Hunchback of Notre Dame," the 1939 classic, and she was the skeptical mother in "Miracle on 34th Street," the 1947 classic.)

I remember Tom Snyder's TV interview of Maureen O'Hara about 10 years ago. Snyder got to talking weirdly about that bed in "The Quiet Man," and about O'Hara's bed today. The questions were borderline bad taste, and Snyder went on and on as O'Hara gracefully dodged his nonsense.

[TBIRD]

I'm surprised she didn't knock the fool on his arse. There are certain liberties you can take with an Irish woman and some you can't. Cross the line and you'll know it.

I think a few of our American ladies could take some lessons from the Irish in lady manners.

Oh I forgot...bare commando is the new wave.

[Frank Warner]

June Beck has written me.

She says Maureen O'Hara lives in Tempe, Arizona.

[Kit Joslyn]

Hi! Thanks for the words to the songs although some are missing I remember most. My dad 1st generation US from irish parents loved this movie as well as McClintock. He also loved Irish music and once while traveling on business in Juno Alaska found an old timer "Klondike Katie" who played it in a bar for him. I love Maureen OHara and think she is a real Leading Lady in every sense on the word. Too bad there are so few like her in todays Hollywood.
KJ

[Kit Joslyn]

I meant to post the song was MUSH MUSH MUSH.
KJ

[Frank Warner]

Oh, I get it. Klondike Katie played "Mush Mush Mush" for your dad. Great!

[Xavier]

Shouldn't the last verses of the song 'the humour is on me now' be "the humour is off me now"?

[Frank Warner]

Xavier has a good point! I seem to recall a line like that in the movie version of the song.

Man, you can't keep track of everything.

I'll have to check!

[Frank Warner]

Thanks to Xavier's comment, I took another look at "The Quiet Man" and found that the song "The Humour is On Me Now" does end up saying "The humour is off me now."

Apparently, the farmer's daughter of the song ultimately regretted her marriage. The humour was off!

[Mark]

Hey! Does anyone happen to know what book the priest is reading from to Dan Tobin (old man)when he pops up out of bed towards the end of the film?

[Frank Warner]

The story may be referring to the prehistoric Irish king, Conn of the Hundred Battles. But I can't find a specific book.

It also might be from the writings of Homer.

A good question. I'd call it a trivia question, but it seems better than that.

[Frank Warner]

Here is what is being read in that scene:

“... hands of a hundred battles, eye on a thousand besides...”

“... stood alone on the victorious field, his buckler bent...”

“... his broken sword clutched in his mighty hand...”

“... the blood of a thousand wounds oozing from his open veins...”

Who is that about? I don't know.

[Bruce]

Hello-- I was wondering, could you name the traditional tune that is repeated ever-faster to the crescendo in the "Finale And End Title" to THE QUIET MAN. The whole score is one of my favorites in all of Victor Young's output (right up there with THE UNINVITED), and I've heard that tune a million times without knowing its name -- it's quoted about 1:10 into the Finale and End Titles and repeated ever more vigorously through to the end. Thank you!

[Frank Warner]

Bruce, I believe that is Beethoven's "The Pulse of an Irishman."

I'll have to give it another listen.

[bobbywickham]

Fr Paul is reading about "Conn of the Hundred Battles" to the old man in bed. Check Wikipedia for more, there is a lot about it.

[Frank Warner]

What's the link to Wikipedia? I don't see any Wikipedia mention that "Conn of the Hundred Battles" was quoted in "The Quiet Man."