DESCRIPTION:
Here's the two lovely mischievous Dublin Ireland born angels of song The Holohan Sisters singing a bitter sweet song from the Irish folk canon""When I was Single" Jane is a singer and Jenny is a singer and guitarist and together they create harmonies to die for.At the time I recorded them for my archive in the summer of 1996 they were both living in West Hampstead London working as Nannies. I haven't been able tio contact them much since then,but apparently they now both reside in Belfast Northern Ireland and are still singing together.Alas no more up to date information about them apart from my own entries here at youtube etc seems available via google. Jane's daughter Emir Holohan Doyle who is half Jordanian won the Miss Ireland competition in 1999 she is a chip off the old block in the beauty department with her mother Jane.

"The Water Is Wide" (also called "O Waly, Waly") is a folk song of English origin, based on lyrics which partly date to the 1600s. It has seen considerable popularity through to the 21st century. Cecil Sharp published the song in Folk Songs From Somerset (1906). It is related to Child Ballad 204 (Roud number 87), Jamie Douglas, which in turn refers to the ostensibly unhappy first marriage of James Douglas, 2nd Marquess of Douglas to Lady Barbara Erskine.

The inherent challenges of love are made apparent in the narrator's imagery: "Love is handsome, love is kind" during the novel honeymoon phase of any relationship. However, as time progresses, "love grows old, and waxes cold". Even true love, the narrator admits, can "fade away like morning dew".
The modern lyric for "The Water Is Wide" was consolidated and named by Cecil Sharp in 1906 from multiple older sources in southern England, following English lyrics with very different stories and styles, but the same meter. Earlier sources were frequently published as broadsheets without music. Performers or publishers would insert, remove and adapt verses from one piece to another: floating verses are also characteristic of hymns and blues verses. Lyrics from different sources could be used with different melodies of the same metre. Consequently, each verse in the modern song may not have been originally composed in the context of its surrounding verses, nor be consistent in theme.

This is the Irish version of this lovely song.....

The water is wide, I cannot get oer
Neither have I wings to fly
Give me a boat that can carry two
And both shall row, my love and I

A ship there is and she sails the sea
She's loaded deep as deep can be
But not so deep as the love I'm in
I know not if I sink or swim

I leaned my back against an oak
Thinking it was a trusty tree
But first it bent and then it broke
So did my love prove false to me

I reached my finger into some soft bush
Thinking the fairest flower to find
I pricked my finger to the bone
And left the fairest flower behind

Oh love be handsome and love be kind
Gay as a jewel when first it is new
But love grows old and waxes cold
And fades away like the morning dew

Must I go bound while you go free
Must I love a man who doesn't love me
Must I be born with so little art
As to love a man who'll break my heart

When cockle shells turn silver bells
Then will my love come back to me
When roses bloom in winter's gloom
Then will my love return to me

Kind Regards

Jim Clark
All rights are reserved on this video recording copyright Jim Clark 2013