Copperhill Books

Sigerson Clifford was an Irish poet and playwright. I took a line from his poem The Boys of Barr Na Sraide, the line that goes “And when the hills were bleeding and rifles were aflame…”, to use it as the title for my book The Bleeding Hills. The research for my also revealed that there is not a lot of information available that would describe the person Sigerson Clifford in more detail, and that is the reason I created a web site in the hope that people all over the world find it and possibly add more data.

Sigerson Clifford (1913 – 1985)

Clifford was born at #11 Dean St, Cork City, and was christened Edward Bernard Clifford. His parents, Michael Clifford and Mary Anne Sigerson, were from County Kerry, and they returned there in the following year, to Cahersiveen, where he was raised on the Ring of Kerry. He attended the Christian Brothers school in that town.

At the age of six, he went to live with his paternal grandfather, Ned Clifford, on the Old Road in the town. Ned was a gifted storyteller, and his influence encouraged Eddie to write poems and stories while at school. As a writer, he adopted the first name Sigerson in honour of his maternal family, although he continued to be known as “Eddie” to family and friends. At nineteen, after finishing secondary school, he joined the Civil Service, and worked for several years in unemployment exchanges in Cork and Kerry. In 1943 he moved to Dublin.

In 1945 he married Marie Eady from Cork. Clifford continued to write, but he did not leave work, and retired from the Civil Service in 1973.

Sigerson Clifford died in Glenageary, County Dublin on 1 January 1985, aged 71, and was interred in Kilnavarnogue Cemetery in his native Cahersiveen, with a graveside oration by his fellow Kerry author and playwright, John B Keane. A monument in memory of Sigerson Clifford is located in Cahersiveen.

Clifford wrote a number of poems and plays, including The Great Pacificator, which was staged at the Abbey Theatre, Dublin, in 1947. Clifford is best remembered for his poem, The Boys of Barr na Sráide, which was named after a street in Cahersiveen. The poem recalls the life of his boyhood friends starting from when they were young children through to the Black and Tan period, and up to the civil war. The poem speaks of the Irish tradition of “hunting for the wran” (wren), a small bird, on St. Stephen’s Day, 26 December. Later set to music, the song has been recorded by numerous traditional and folk singers including Christy Moore and Tim Dennehy.

Contribute to the Sigerson Clifford web site

If you can contribute any information on the life and work of Sigerson Clifford please have a look at the web site I created to honor his life and work. Unfortunately, there is not a great deal of information on Sigerson Clifford, and I would love to show photos and a more detailed biography.

The web site is located at SigersonClifford.com.

There has been a great deal of commotion about Google’s controversial and potentially anti-competitive plans to digitalize millions of books, or the pricing war going on between Walmart, Target, and Amazon. It is surprising that only little attention has been paid to an even greater threat to authors and publishers by Scribd.com, a web site allowing the distribution of copyrighted documents, including digitalized versions of popular works such as J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, and The Tales of Beedle the Bard.

J.K. Rowling used the power of her legal team to have her works removed, but her focus was the protection of her intellectual property, not the financial damage. While big publishing houses or successful authors like J.K. Rowling can easily dismiss the financial loss, the situation becomes quickly explosive for small publishing businesses. For instance, BookLocker.com noticed more than 13,000 scribd.com users had “read” their best selling book, Cancer-Free, before the author was able to have his copyrighted material removed. Two of my books were listed for roughly six months – without my knowledge – and the loss of sales is roughly $20,000, with no chance to tackle a heavyweight like Scribd.

Scribd.com is not the only document-sharing web site, but with more than 50 million users and more than 50,000 document uploads per day, it appears they aim to be the YouTube for print. Scribd.com can most certainly be helpful for authors, publishers, and bookstores. They can upload their documents in their entirety and sell them for a good profit, or they can upload only an excerpt to wet the appetite of potential readers. The content on Scribd.com ranges from a majority of dull documents to a number of copyrighted books, fiction and non-fiction alike.

There are two sides to the problem: First, Scribd.com provides the means to upload copyrighted material without “editorial interference or approval”, thus creating financial damage to the publishing industry. Add to this that the majority of authors and publishers are still unaware of the issue.

Secondly, there are a number of publishing businesses – sleeping with the enemy – who believe in a strange marketing policy of allowing the free-of-charge viewing, reading, printing, and downloading of their published books for “a limited time”.

The absence of “editorial intervention and approval” in combination with a highly flawed sign-up process, however, encourages the crime. Scribd.com makes it very easy to sign up with a fake e-mail address. For instance, a user can sign up as johnmccain@thewhitehouse.com and then upload the latest Dan Brown, provided it exists in an electronic format. Scribd.com does not actively verify the users’ authority, and, in case of an illegal upload, they are usually unable to identify the perpetrator. Of course, they pop up a dialog window asking to confirm the rights to the document in question. But, seriously, criminal minds don’t care, and there are a great number of users who may be unaware of the consequence of their actions.

Removing copyrighted documents from the Scribd.com web site is easy, though – they promote this heavily as one of their “helpful features”. Scribd.com provides an e-mail template and the author or publisher fills in the appropriate information. It usually takes only a few days to process the request, but it also means that the document is still available for view, print, or download until the verification process is completed.

And even then, Scridb is still holding on to the document, meaning it is still stored in their database, which posts yet another legal problem because they store copyrighted documents without explicit authorization by the document’s owner. Officially, they use the existing copy to verify it against new uploads and thus prevent further copyright infringement.

I strongly suggest that each author and publisher check out the Scribd.com web site and search for names and titles. If your work is listed on Scribd.com, send an e-mail to copyright-at-scribd.com using the legal form they recommend. You will receive an automated response stating that your request has been received. They also encourage you to leave comments, and I dared doing just that, without being insulting. As a matter of fact, the person in charge at Scribd.com, their Customer Care Director, did not appreciate my feedback and closed the request immediately. I had to re-apply, and my book was finally removed from their web site.

The law firm of Camara & Sibley has decided to take on Scribd, seeking class action status against the site in a lawsuit filed in a Texas federal court. The charge: “Like YouTube, Veoh, and other user-generated content sites, Scribd makes it just too easy to upload copyrighted content without permission.”

Ironically, a copy of the lawsuit is available through the Scribd.com web site (Search for Scott v. Scribd Complaint).

For further information on Scribd.com, log on to my web site at http://www.frogenyozurt.com.

Wilfried F. Voss was born and raised in Germany, but for the past twenty years his home and his heart have been in beautiful New England. He shares his birthday with celebrities like THE KING (Elvis Presley) and David Bowie, which is January 8 (not the same year, though). He has published three books on technical topics and is currently exploring another genre of writing, namely fiction writing. In Septmber of 2009 he published his first novel “The Bleeding Hills.”

Growing up as a teenager in the late 1960s and early 1970s, and loving contemporary pop music, I saw the release of a great number of songs that have not lost their popularity up to this day. One of these songs is Catch The Wind by Donovan Leitch.

Donovan (Donovan Phillips Leitch, born 10 May 1946, in Maryhill, Glasgow), is a Scottish singer-songwriter and guitarist. Emerging from the British folk scene, he developed an eclectic and distinctive style that blended folk, jazz, pop, psychedelia, and world music. Donovan came to fame in the United Kingdom in early 1965, and his popularity spread to the USA and other countries. He scored a string of hits in the UK, the USA, Australia and other countries, including several British and American #1 hits and million-selling records.

He became a friend of leading pop musicians including Joan Baez, Brian Jones, Bruce Springsteen, and The Beatles. He influenced both John Lennon and Paul McCartney when he taught them his finger-picking guitar style in 1968. Some of his most popular songs are Catch The Wind, Sunshine Superman, Colours, Universal Soldier, and many more.

His first hit song Catch The Wind was used just lately as background music for a car commercial, which is remarkable, because the original version they used in the commercial was from 1965. This original version is very basic, just Donovan, his guitar, and his harmonica. Later the producers added some strings. That is the reason why most Donovan compilations contain two versions of the same song.

There is, however, a forgotten third version, which was released a few years later. It is a more romantic version, and it is quite longer than the original. For many years I have been trying to get my hands on this version, but it seems it got lost in history. The only version I did find and which comes closest to the last release is on Donovan’s record Donovan: Best of Live. So, the search will continue.

The CD also contains a live version of Hurdy Gurdy Man, one of his more psychedelic songs, and this is where we come to Donovan, Four Beatles, One Beach Boy, and Mia Farrow. During the song Donovan explains how George Harrison suggested a verse for Hurdy Gurdy Man, but he never recorded it. His exact description, with his strong Scottish accent, is as follows:

“When I wrote this song I was in India with four Beatles, one Beach Boy, and Mia Farrow. We were gathered together one day in Maharishi’s bungalow, these four Beatles, one Beach Boy, and Mia Farrow. There was an embarrassed silence in the room. Maharishi, he sat cross-legged on the floor. And John Lennon, the wit and the humorist, he decided to break the silence. So, he walked up to Maharishi as he sat on the floor, and he patted him on the head and he said, ‘There’s a good guru!’ We all laughed! And Maharishi laughed the loudest. Later that night, as we were gathered together, on the roofs of our bungalows under the tropical Indian stars we brought out the guitars, and I started to write this song. And George Harrison, he turned to me, and he said, ‘I could write a verse for this song, Don.’ And he did. But I didn’t record it.”

And here is the long lost verse of George Harrison:

When the truth gets buried deep
Beneath a thousand years of sleep
Time demands a turnaround
And once again the truth is found

Hurdy Gurdy Man
by Donovan Leitch

Thrown like a star in my vast sleep
I open my eyes to take a peep
To find that I was by the sea
Gazing with tranquillity.

‘Twas then when the Hurdy Gurdy Man
Came singing songs of love,
Then when the Hurdy Gurdy Man
Came singing songs of love.

Hurdy gurdy, hurdy gurdy, hurdy gurdy, gurdy he sang.
Hurdy gurdy, hurdy gurdy, hurdy gurdy, gurdy he sang.
Hurdy gurdy, hurdy gurdy, hurdy gurdy, gurdy he sang.

Histories of ages past
Unenlightened shadows cast
Down through all eternity
The crying of humanity.

‘Tis then when the Hurdy Gurdy Man
Comes singing songs of love,
Then when the Hurdy Gurdy Man
Comes singing songs of love.

Hurdy gurdy, hurdy gurdy, hurdy gurdy, gurdy he sang.
Hurdy gurdy, hurdy gurdy, hurdy gurdy, hurdy gurdy, hurdy gurdy.
Hurdy gurdy, hurdy gurdy, hurdy gurdy, gurdy he sang.
Hurdy gurdy, hurdy gurdy, hurdy gurdy, gurdy he sang.

Here comes the roly poly man and he’s singing songs of love,
Roly poly, roly poly, roly poly, poly he sang.
Hurdy gurdy, hurdy gurdy, hurdy gurdy, gurdy he sang,
Hurdy gurdy, hurdy gurdy, hurdy gurdy, gurdy he sang