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The Northern Ireland actor, broadcaster, film maker, concert singer, travel writer and dialect collector Richard Hayward (1892–1964) was also a popular singer. He had a successful career recording traditional and popular Ulster songs on 78s from the 1930s into the 1950s, and later on vinyl discs. His recordings spanned the different English-language song traditions of the North, with a leaning towards the humorous, as well as comic sketches and recitations, but he was the leading singer in his time of Orange lyrics and ballads. These described and celebrated the activities of the Orange Order, a Protestant organisation founded in Co Armagh in 1795. A selection from Hayward’s more than 30 recorded Orange songs are presented here.
Hayward, born in Lancashire, was brought to Ireland at the age of two and was reared in Larne and Belfast. He took an early interest in Irish traditional songs and published a book of song texts Ulster Songs and Ballads of the Town and the Country in London in 1925, following this with two undated songbooks with music published in Glasgow: Ireland Calling and Orange Standard. He was also a player of the Irish harp and published The Story of the Irish Harp in Dublin in 1954.
On his recordings, Hayward was careful to negotiate the Orange and Green divide and to soften the more extreme songs, as can be seen from his very first 78, recorded in London for the Columbia Company in January 1929. This featured on one side a comic favourite ‘The Ould Orange Flute’ and on the other ‘The Bonny Bunch of Roses’, a Napoleonic ballad associated with Irish nationalism. As well as the playlist of Orange songs and his first 78 reproduced here from the collections of the Irish Traditional Music Archive, there is also a copy of Hayward’s famous comic political sketch ‘Hands across the Border’, made in 1934 with the Dublin comedians Harry O’Donovan and Jimmy O’Dea.
With thanks to Paul Clements (author of Romancing Ireland: Richard Hayward 1892–1964, Dublin: Lilliput Press, 2014) and Bill Dean Myatt (author of The Scottish Vernacular Discography 1888−1960, Hailsham: City of London Phonograph & Gramophone Society, 2013).
Nicholas Carolan & Danny Diamond, 1 December 2014
