iii.

I Dismiss You

Act I — What They Left Me Released Approx. 3:16

About this track

1566. Gráinne Ní Mháille marries Risdeárd an Iarainn Bourke — Iron Richard, a man who wore mail to the table — and she does not marry him for a bed or a name or his mother’s good opinion. She marries him for a tower that stands in the tide: Rockfleet, four floors of grey stone with the sea at the door. She puts her own men on the stair one by one, and when the year is up she is at the parapet and he is below, and the bar is on the inside.

This is the album’s dry joke and its shortest track, and the joke is in the flatness. The failure mode is playing it funny, so the mezzo stays near-spoken through the verses and turns contemptuous, never gleeful, on the choruses. Richard is the only first name sung on the whole record — he is a man she can address and dismiss, which none of the album’s real antagonists are. The bridge is the hinge into Act II and the only moment she concedes she is not clean: He is not the worst thing I have done.

Driving Celtic folk metal in minor Dorian — a hard bodhrán pulse, a fiddle swaggering on its low strings (the album’s only fiddle-forward track), an Irish bouzouki strum bed, uilleann pipes on the choruses only, and a half-time drop to a lone fiddle for the bridge. Short and compact on purpose. The outro is two lines and a shrug: He shouted a while from the strand below, and the wind took most of it.

Track 03 of 8 Act I — What They Left Me Cadence Driving Celtic folk metal in minor Dorian — swaggering low fiddle and bouzouki over a hard bodhrán, pipes on the choruses only, a dry near-spoken mezzo turning contemptuous, never angry. The album’s shortest track

Verse 1

Two lines spoken dry, then sung with a swagger — fiddle forward, bouzouki underneath.

I did not come for a bed or a name,
I did not come for his mother's good opinion—
I came for a tower that stands in the tide,
four floors of grey stone with the sea at the door,
and a man who wore mail to the table each night
and never once asked what I wanted it for.

Pre-Chorus

Fiddle climbing, bodhrán hardening.

One year is a year, and a year is enough,
I put my own men on the stair, one by one—

Chorus 1

Full band, the pipes entering. Contemptuous.

Richard, I dismiss you,
the bar is on the inside now,
I kept the tower, you keep the mail,
go and be iron somewhere else.

Verse 2

Relentless, double-kick, the fiddle locked to the riff.

He drank in the hall while I counted the doors,
he hunted in autumn, I mended the wall,
he never once climbed to the top of his tower
to see whose boats were tied under it.

Pre-Chorus 2

Bouzouki driving, pipes rising.

One year is a year, and the year is now up,
I am at the parapet, he is below—

Chorus 2

Bigger, the pipes forward, galloping.

Richard, I dismiss you,
the bar is on the inside now,
I kept the tower, you keep the mail,
and the tide came in behind you.

Bridge

A sudden drop to a lone fiddle, half-time, exposed.

It was a contract, and he signed it drunk,
and I am not sorry, and I never was,
he got a year of my fleet at his back
and I got a tower the sea can't take.
He is not the worst thing I have done.

Final Chorus

Biggest. Pipes and fiddle trading over the full band.

Richard, I dismiss you,
the bar is on the inside now,
I kept the tower, you keep the mail,
and the tide came in behind you—
and the door has been shut ever since.

Outro

The fiddle falls away to a bare bodhrán. Hard cut.

He shouted a while from the strand below,
and the wind took most of it.

The history

1566 · Rockfleet (Carrigahowley), on the tide line of Clew Bay · a second marriage made for a tower

Source: English state papers on Connacht; Anne Chambers, Granuaile: Grace O’Malley, Ireland’s Pirate Queen; popular tradition for the one-year marriage and the dismissal; Gaelic (Brehon) law on marriage and divorce

Named figures

Gráinne Ní Mháille Widowed, already running galleys out of Clew Bay, and in need of a harbour stronghold. Rei carries her voice
Risdeárd an Iarainn Bourke “Iron Richard,” lord of Burrishoole and holder of Rockfleet; later The MacWilliam Bourke and knighted. The only man named on the album — closed-mouth throughout

What this song renders

The marriage and the tower are real. Gráinne married Richard Bourke around 1566; Rockfleet, a sixteenth-century tower house standing in the tide at the head of a Clew Bay inlet, came into her hands through him and became her base for the rest of her life. Their son Tibbot — Tiobóid na Long, “of the ships” — was born around 1567, traditionally at sea.

The dismissal is a legend, and the album uses it knowingly. The story says they married under a Gaelic trial marriage of one year, that she garrisoned the castle with her own men, and that when the year was up she locked him out and shouted down from the battlements that he was dismissed. No contemporary source records it, and the fixed self-ending one-year marriage is not attested in the law tracts — though Brehon law did recognise several forms of union and allowed divorce far more readily than English law. The marriage itself lasted, as an alliance at least, until Richard’s death in 1583.

So the track stages the dismissal as the story she let them tell about her. What is true underneath it is the shape of the deal: a seafarer who needed a harbour fortress, a lord who gained a fleet at his back, and a tower that stayed hers long after him.

Verdict

The c. 1566 marriage to Richard Bourke and her possession of Rockfleet are documented. The one-year trial marriage, the barred gate and the shouted dismissal are folklore, and the real marriage lasted until his death in 1583. The song tells the legend on purpose and this page marks it as one.

See the full Truth, Saga & Legend entry →