Appears On - Covered By - Annotated Lyrics
Blindman
Man of straw
Shuffling down the night
Going to visit little girls
who never do things right.
Scarecrow Wooden heart
Finds it hard to love
Dressing up in deadmen's clothes
to charm the stars above.
Do you ever feel like dancing
When the evening turns to gold?
Or does life's simple melody
Make you blood run cold?
Blindman
Halfway there
Empty as a nun
Your tears turn into diamonds
at the eclipse of the sun.
Scarecrow
Out alone
Play your pantomime
I'd join you for the Late Late Show
But haven't got the time.
Do you ever feel like crying
When swallows leave the rain behind
Or does some crazy rhythm
Drive your spirit wild?
Blindman...tell me
Tell me tell me do
Can't you see that I'm a blindman
Just like you?
Scarecrow
In the wind
Let your thoughts blow free
Got to tell the others what you once told me.
Paul McCartney (for it is he) used to talk about segueing a lot. Mad Pat seques into Blindman, not without arpeggios. It's about Turlough O'Carolan, the blind harpist. But only on one level.
Notes on Horslips, The Best Of..., Edsel Records
Blindman, a character in an aspect of The Táin narrative as retold by Mr. W.B. Yeats didn't make the album cut but wound up gracing Dancehall Sweethearts where it came disguised as another wandering minstrel, the blind harpist Mr. Turlough O'Carolan.
Notes on Treasury, The Very Best of Horslips, Horslips Records
"Blindman"Blindman was originally intended for inclusion in The Táin. Unsure of how best to tell the Táin story, I over wrote. Much of the stuff quickly became redundant, and didn't become songs, as the narrative jigsaw pieces slotted together. Blindman, as we later recorded it, remained in our live repertoire. The lyric would have been amended as it had gone through the process.How could it ever have been intended for The Táin? One of the great iconic images of Irish pre-history is the bronze of Cuchulainn by sculptor Oliver Sheppard in which the hero is bound to a rock with a raven (Morrigan) perched above his lifeless body. It's situated in the GPO on O'Connell Street in Dublin. The Death of Cuchulainn has an enormous totemic resonance. W.B. Yeats dealt with the legacy of the hero myth most effectively in his Cuchulainn cycle of plays. He, more than most, could transmute the power of the ancient mysteries.
My reading of the Blind Man character in Yeats is of complex, mysterious and ironic presence. In the plays, it's his evidence that CuChulainn had killed his own son that drove the hero mad (On Baile's Strand). And he's also an ominous figure presiding over CuChulainn's final moments (The Death of CuChulainn).
While he wasn't required in our re-telling of The Táin, he survived to make his mark on Dancehall Sweethearts. That's genuinely weird.
Eamon Carr, Interview to the site, 2005 and 2010
Segments of both On Baile's Strand and The Death of Cuchulainn can be read online at The Collected Works of W.B. Yeats, Volume II: The Plays, David R. Clark and Rosalind E. Clark, eds.
"visit little girls who never do things right"
The "little girls" reference was double-edged. The Blind Man had been in the Queen's tent! ("A blind old beggar-man...somebody said I was in Maeve's tent....") And, yes, there's a hint of something that might have been heard in a bawdy old blues song. Overall, the intention was to create something that made the listener feel slightly uncomfortable. This in the context of The Táin.
Eamon Carr
Obviously, I was unashamedly borrowing from Yeats' iconography. His Fool became my Scarecrow (it a Joycean-style pun on the Morrigan).Eamon Carr
Though the armed combat is between Cuchulain and the stranger who will not give his name, the real struggle is between the warrior Cuchulain, instinctively loving and hating, and the crafty kind Conchubar who forces Cuchulain to slay unwittingly his own son. Cuchulain's tragic fate, like Yeat's own, is caused by his listening to the voice of apparent reason; instead of following his impulse to make friends with the unknown warrior, he allows Conchubar to persuade him that the cry of his heart is witchcraft; and discovers too late the identity of his opponent. Yeats never explaining this meaning of the play, said in fact that had forgotten what his symbols meant except that the fool and blind man, who constitute a kind of chorus to the main action, are the shadows of Cuchulain and Conchubar. Thus he divided himself into four parts: the warrior and his opposite, the fool; the wise man and his opposite, the helpless blind man; and put all his raging bitterness into blind man and fool who stead the bread from the ovens while Cuchulain, overcome with grief at what he has done, battles madly with the waves.
Richard Ellmann, Yeats: The Man and the Masks, 1948
I assume the Late Late Show verse was an add-in to give a quick-hit of topicality and entertainment to the meanderings of a blind harper/rock band. And also to move the narrative away from the horror story on hand. Mind you, "late, late show" didn't have to be specific. But, conveniently, it hinted at a dark drama.Eamon Carr