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Neil Gillard reviews...
Love Death and Whiskey – 40 Songs
Patrick O‟Sullivan
Patrick Pinder Publisher, Bradford, 2010
ISBN 978-0-9567824-0-3
This book of song lyrics is pure poetry from the introduction, where Patrick compares a song to a 3-legged stool, to the last line of the final song where 'Pierre wasn‘t there in Pierre's special way.'
Irish to the core, the lyrics are also truly international, as perhaps the Irish are too, having penetrated every corner of the World in their search for something better than their own piece of paradise. The dreams of the girls in The green hills of Australia put a neat twist on the oft-repeated traditional longing of the emigrant for home. Autobiography of a Navvy where the Irish 'work on every man‘s land, but not their own', is a surprisingly non-sentimental look at the life of a man forced from his own country by the lack of work, while the wonderful opening line of To Be Irish – 'You don‘t know you're Irish till you‘re Irish no more' – is a poignant, but not mawkish, reflection on emigration. Perhaps my appreciation of these songs was heightened by my recent maiden visit to Ireland which presented many opportunities to learn much more about the potato famine and emigration, against the background of the current economic crisis, which may yet tweak the seemingly never ending emigrations yet again.
Internationally, following my visit, I turned eagerly to I met my love in Baltimore to find that it was the more famous city of that name in the USA, rather than the little piece of heaven in West Cork, that was featured as well as Carolina, Savannah and New Orleans, while the quirky almost-Latin lover from the deep south of Tooting Bec(compared to the far north of Walworth), caused me much more than a slight smile.
Perhaps my favourite lyrics though – very hard to make an absolute choice – were those to You taught me to cry, though inevitably that choice may well say more about me than the song. This really is a book about life, love and longing, and an affirmation of those things despite the pain.
These lyrics made a great impression on me, and I found fragments of melodies popping into my head as I read them, although I was also aware that many have already had their own tunes and performances. Rest assured, however, that the first leg of each song-stool is very strong, and if you have the desire to set great lyrics to your own tunes and perform them, I can strongly recommend them - there would be few better places to start.
Neil Gillard
March 2011
This review appeared in AUTOHARP NOTES, Volume 10, Issue 1, March 2011, page 16.
Neil Gillard is current President of UK Autoharps.
Autoharp Notes is the journal of UK Autoharps.
Our thanks to Neil Gillard for permission to display this book review on the SongLyric web site.
To find our more about UK AUTOHARPS, the starting point for information on the autoharp in the United Kingdom, go to
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