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The Bowed Dulcimer | A Celtic Song for the Mountain Dulcimer
Luthier Spotlight: Jerry Read Smith Hammered Dulcimer Builder

I have always felt that singing works both as an expression of feeling and as a healer at the same time. Songs are indeed living forms as they express emotions that have always been part of the script of the human drama.

So what exactly is a folk song? In folk tradition, stories are often immortalized in song. What is interesting is that the same themes such as love lost, betrayal, jealousy, conflict, emigration, and the supernatural crop up in many traditions, demonstrating that singing has been a universal vehicle for the human condition.

One of the reasons why these songs have been with us for centuries is that within each person there is a longing for resolution, whatever the theme may be. This need transcends nationalities, religions, an race. Singing is a way to address this need with words and melody, a way to make us feel whole again. In a real sense songs are the windows to our emotional and spiritual history.

My criteria for the the music in my new Mel Bay, Celtic Songs & Slow Airs for Mountain Dulcimer, was wonderful prose and melodies from the Celtic tradition that have stayed with us for hundreds of years. I have arranged the compositions so that each will work both as an air and as a song.

Please open yourself to the feelings and melody and words of the following beautiful song, "The Bonny Light Horseman." The more receptive you are, the more the words and music will resonate with you--just as they have been resonating and will continue to resonate with us for as long as we can sing.

Lastly, don't be afraid to sing. If you need to be alone in the house with all the windows closed, that's OK! Allow yourself to be immersed in the emotion of the song. Music is not just a form of entertainment that we see on television or an item we purchase from a shop. Music is the poetry inside of you; please don't be afraid to give the ghost a living voice!

Bain sult as!
Enjoy!

"The Bonny Light Horseman"

Listen to "The Bonny Light Horseman"
Listen to "The Bonny Light Horseman"
as sung by Janet Herman
and played by Neal Hellman

I learned from the singing of Dolores Keane and John Faulkner from the album "Broken Hearted I'll Wander." This was one of the many ballads popular during the Napoleonic Wars. There seem to be many variations in the lyrical content. According to ballad collector Sam Henry, the melody is Irish and over 400 years old. Most Irish songs about Napoleon are in raise of him because the Irish saw him as their liberator. In this ballad, however, "Boney" is the source of grief. This ballad was popular in England, where it appears in many broadsides after 1790.

On the mountain dulcimer I like to use my thumb for chords such as 5(melody string)-3(middle string)-3(bass string).