March 17th, 2020. (HAPPY ST. PATRICK’S DAY).
I am presently 77 years old and in all my life, I have never known a St. Patrick’s Day where the public streets of Ireland are not thronged with cheerful revelry and rowdy drinkers, toasting our Emerald Isle. Instead, the pandemic Coronavirus has shut down the country’s streets and pubs. But the Government of the day will never shut down an Irish person’s love of their country, stop an Irish man flying their flag, revere their national saint or sing their song.
Today is St. Patrick’s Day, and as a born-and-bred Irish man it would be remiss of me not to dedicate my song today to all people of Irish nationality in whichever part of the world they rest their head tonight. I particularly extend my dedication on this most special of Irish feast days to all the residents of County Waterford, Portlaw (the village of my birth) and Carrick-on-Suir (the place where my lifelong friend, Tony Walsh of Collins Park, took me many times, and where he lives today with his lovely wife, Lily).
There can only be one song that is the most appropriate of Irish dedications, ‘Danny Boy’. This song is capable of reminding all fellow Irish men and women where they were born, under which flag they stand proud, and where their hearts will reside until the day they are living another life at the other side of the green sod. ‘Danny Boy’ reaches that Irish part of the nation’s soul that no other song can reach, and it puts the green into all Ireland.
I also jointly dedicate today’s song to two Facebook friends; Paul Wilson from Haworth in West Yorkshire and Cameron Poole from Hobart, Tasmania. Both Paul and Cameron celebrate their birthday today. Have a smashing day chaps and leave some room for lots of cake and ale. Thank you for being my Facebook friends. Bill.
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Todays’ song is a very old Irish version of ‘Danny Boy’. It is a version of the song you will not have heard before as I have changed some of the words and ‘recomposed’ part of the melodic introduction, construction and conclusion of some very old Celtic lyrics I recently came across.
‘Danny Boy’ is a ballad set to a traditional Irish melody. In 1913, English songwriter, Frederic Weatherly wrote the lyrics that are more commonly recognised today. He then rearranged the lyrics in order to better suit the accompanying melody of ‘Londonderry Air’ after a copy of the tune was sent to him from the United States by his sister, Margaret (affectionately known as 'Jess'). Another account talks about his sister-in-law, Margaret, singing him the ‘Londonderry Air’ as he reportedly modified the lyrics of ‘Danny Boy’ to fit the rhyme and meter of the haunting tune.
Jane Ross of Limavady (a market town in County Londonderry) is credited with collecting the melody of "Londonderry Air" in the mid-19th century from a musician she encountered. The first recording of the song was by Ernestine Schumann-Heink in 1915. Various suggestions exist as to the true meaning and story of ‘Danny Boy’. Some have interpreted the song to be a message from a parent to a son going off to war or an uprising (as suggested by the reference to ‘pipes calling glen to glen’). However, I find the old Gaelic story of the mid-19th century that I discovered more romantic and plausible. This account deals with the mass of migrants leaving Ireland in search of a more prosperous life overseas, as part of the Irish diaspora (the dispersion of many common people from their original homeland).
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As an Irishman born into a rebel Irish family in County Waterford, and whose maternal grandfather supported and was a part of the Irish uprising of the early 20th century, I have always been acquainted with the song, ‘Danny Boy’. It was an Irish song that my mother sung often as she went about her busy life as a mother of seven children, of which I was her firstborn. Ever since I started my daily singing practice in 2018 and began delving into the background of all the songs I choose to sing (700 songs videoed up to press on my YouTube Channel), I have come across so many facts I never knew. My love for digging out historical fact and folklore (especially Irish folklore) is only surpassed by my love of a good story and a haunting tale composed within one song.
The very first time I heard a different version of 'Danny Boy' being sung was when I heard the Roy Orbison version that was prefixed by a melody and words I hadn’t heard before. I started to research into the Irish background of the song and came up with a few additional verses that were in a different meter and tune than the more common version of ‘Danny Boy’ which most of us have come to know, and which was not the alternate version that Roy Orbison sang. As I had no sheet music to these words to guide me as to how it sounded, I decided to re-arrange my own melodic introduction, construction and conclusion of the song (not too dissimilar in overall structure to that which Roy Orbison sung) but different enough in tune and composition to ‘make it genuinely my own restructured version.’ I do hope you enjoy my version, as I have tried to keep to the mid-19th-century background story I unearthed.
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One mid-19th-century story (the one I chose to recompose the song around) went as follows.
‘Danny Boy’ was the oldest son of a poor Irish tenant farmer, with a large family who worked the land in Western Ireland. After the ‘Potato Famine’ (1845-49), Ireland experienced the failure of over half of the potato crop by infestation, followed by the loss of 75% of the potato crop for the next seven years. Between one and one and a half million people would die in consequence of this potato blight. With no food or viable means of sustenance, many families emigrated in search of a better life. For those families who had not the means to migrate as a family to more prosperous lands, the eldest males would often travel across the sea so that they could work and send money back to their poor parents and younger siblings who’d been left behind to farm the land, salvage the seaweed and dig the turf.
The most popular new lands they settled in were, Liverpool in England (where they worked on the docks, or on the roads as a navy) or (in the steelworks of Pittsburgh in Pennsylvania in the U.S.A.) and in the mines of Australia.
‘Danny Boy’ was forced through poverty to leave his Irish homeland. As the oldest son, ‘Danny’ left both the famine and his family behind him when he left home in search of a more prosperous life. Each year he was away, Danny would recall the vision of his father waving goodbye to him from the top of the hill as he watched his son walk on with heavy heart, not knowing if his firstborn would ever return home again. Both father and son cried out their loss at their point of separation, but neither knew the pain each endured. Danny crossed the Atlantic Ocean to America, where he found gainful employment and a better way of life in the steelworks of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
Each year he was away from home, Danny promised his parents by letter that he would return when he’d made his fortune, but each year passed and turned into yet another year of unkept promises. One year away from home turned into two years, then five, then ten years, and then seventeen years with nothing but a monthly letter informing Danny about the changes taking place back home in the Emerald Isle. Each year Danny promised he would return home the following year to see his parents, and although his intent to do so remained earnest, he didn’t want to return to Ireland with insufficient savings and capital to buy his parents their own humble homestead. Even when his dear mother wrote to Danny and told him about his father’s failing health, Danny still watched another year pass by before eventually returning home.
When at last Danny could stay away no longer and his heart burst to return home, he found his father had recently died. His widowed mother was in failing health and the remainder of his six siblings were scattered across the globe, except for his younger sister who’d stayed behind to look after her mammy. Danny’s mammy was still a poor woman who lived the harshest of lives. The pain was writ large across the deep furrows of her brow. “Your dada” his mother informed Danny “left instructions to be buried in the hillside spot, beyond the meadow, in the precise piece of ground he stood on as he waved you ‘goodbye' when you set off for America. Your leaving home broke his heart and mine. He was never the same man again.”
Danny goes out to the hillside where the body of his deceased father lies in a piece of hallowed ground, and where his mother and sister places a bunch of wildflowers weekly. The site is marked with a boulder with the name, birth and death of Danny’s father chiselled on its centre. Danny visits the sacred place where his father now lies; the precise spot where his father waved him off on his journey to Pittsburgh; the last sighting he had of his son as ‘Danny Boy’ disappeared into the distance of greater prosperity and uncertain destiny.
This is the kernel of the story about ‘Danny Boy’ I researched, and around which I have woven my composition of this beautiful song. It is also a song that brings back my own fond memories of my own dear mother and father the morning I left home for Canada at the age of 21 years. I will never forget the morning I emigrated to Canada in December of 1963. The snow was heavy on the ground and all the house windows were frosted with the morning cold.
As I went out the door carrying a heavy suitcase and a heavier heart, my father shook my hand and bade me ‘farewell’, silently crying before he went off to work in the pit. Nor will I ever forget my dear mother’s tears flowing freely down the frosted windowpane as she waved off her firstborn leaving home, with a dread that made her fear never seeing me again. I will take that image to my grave.
Unlike 'Danny Boy', however, 'Billy Boy' returned home two years later while my parents were still in good health and I would have another thirty years with them before they also died. I do hope that you enjoy my version of this beautiful song and the background Gaelic story behind it.
I dedicate my version of this beautiful song to Ireland, to every man woman and child from the Emerald Isle, and to everything in this life that is Irish in origin, suspicious in folklore and green by birth.
Love and peace Bill xxx
I am presently 77 years old and in all my life, I have never known a St. Patrick’s Day where the public streets of Ireland are not thronged with cheerful revelry and rowdy drinkers, toasting our Emerald Isle. Instead, the pandemic Coronavirus has shut down the country’s streets and pubs. But the Government of the day will never shut down an Irish person’s love of their country, stop an Irish man flying their flag, revere their national saint or sing their song.
Today is St. Patrick’s Day, and as a born-and-bred Irish man it would be remiss of me not to dedicate my song today to all people of Irish nationality in whichever part of the world they rest their head tonight. I particularly extend my dedication on this most special of Irish feast days to all the residents of County Waterford, Portlaw (the village of my birth) and Carrick-on-Suir (the place where my lifelong friend, Tony Walsh of Collins Park, took me many times, and where he lives today with his lovely wife, Lily).
There can only be one song that is the most appropriate of Irish dedications, ‘Danny Boy’. This song is capable of reminding all fellow Irish men and women where they were born, under which flag they stand proud, and where their hearts will reside until the day they are living another life at the other side of the green sod. ‘Danny Boy’ reaches that Irish part of the nation’s soul that no other song can reach, and it puts the green into all Ireland.
I also jointly dedicate today’s song to two Facebook friends; Paul Wilson from Haworth in West Yorkshire and Cameron Poole from Hobart, Tasmania. Both Paul and Cameron celebrate their birthday today. Have a smashing day chaps and leave some room for lots of cake and ale. Thank you for being my Facebook friends. Bill.
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Todays’ song is a very old Irish version of ‘Danny Boy’. It is a version of the song you will not have heard before as I have changed some of the words and ‘recomposed’ part of the melodic introduction, construction and conclusion of some very old Celtic lyrics I recently came across.
‘Danny Boy’ is a ballad set to a traditional Irish melody. In 1913, English songwriter, Frederic Weatherly wrote the lyrics that are more commonly recognised today. He then rearranged the lyrics in order to better suit the accompanying melody of ‘Londonderry Air’ after a copy of the tune was sent to him from the United States by his sister, Margaret (affectionately known as 'Jess'). Another account talks about his sister-in-law, Margaret, singing him the ‘Londonderry Air’ as he reportedly modified the lyrics of ‘Danny Boy’ to fit the rhyme and meter of the haunting tune.
Jane Ross of Limavady (a market town in County Londonderry) is credited with collecting the melody of "Londonderry Air" in the mid-19th century from a musician she encountered. The first recording of the song was by Ernestine Schumann-Heink in 1915. Various suggestions exist as to the true meaning and story of ‘Danny Boy’. Some have interpreted the song to be a message from a parent to a son going off to war or an uprising (as suggested by the reference to ‘pipes calling glen to glen’). However, I find the old Gaelic story of the mid-19th century that I discovered more romantic and plausible. This account deals with the mass of migrants leaving Ireland in search of a more prosperous life overseas, as part of the Irish diaspora (the dispersion of many common people from their original homeland).
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
As an Irishman born into a rebel Irish family in County Waterford, and whose maternal grandfather supported and was a part of the Irish uprising of the early 20th century, I have always been acquainted with the song, ‘Danny Boy’. It was an Irish song that my mother sung often as she went about her busy life as a mother of seven children, of which I was her firstborn. Ever since I started my daily singing practice in 2018 and began delving into the background of all the songs I choose to sing (700 songs videoed up to press on my YouTube Channel), I have come across so many facts I never knew. My love for digging out historical fact and folklore (especially Irish folklore) is only surpassed by my love of a good story and a haunting tale composed within one song.
The very first time I heard a different version of 'Danny Boy' being sung was when I heard the Roy Orbison version that was prefixed by a melody and words I hadn’t heard before. I started to research into the Irish background of the song and came up with a few additional verses that were in a different meter and tune than the more common version of ‘Danny Boy’ which most of us have come to know, and which was not the alternate version that Roy Orbison sang. As I had no sheet music to these words to guide me as to how it sounded, I decided to re-arrange my own melodic introduction, construction and conclusion of the song (not too dissimilar in overall structure to that which Roy Orbison sung) but different enough in tune and composition to ‘make it genuinely my own restructured version.’ I do hope you enjoy my version, as I have tried to keep to the mid-19th-century background story I unearthed.
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
One mid-19th-century story (the one I chose to recompose the song around) went as follows.
‘Danny Boy’ was the oldest son of a poor Irish tenant farmer, with a large family who worked the land in Western Ireland. After the ‘Potato Famine’ (1845-49), Ireland experienced the failure of over half of the potato crop by infestation, followed by the loss of 75% of the potato crop for the next seven years. Between one and one and a half million people would die in consequence of this potato blight. With no food or viable means of sustenance, many families emigrated in search of a better life. For those families who had not the means to migrate as a family to more prosperous lands, the eldest males would often travel across the sea so that they could work and send money back to their poor parents and younger siblings who’d been left behind to farm the land, salvage the seaweed and dig the turf.
The most popular new lands they settled in were, Liverpool in England (where they worked on the docks, or on the roads as a navy) or (in the steelworks of Pittsburgh in Pennsylvania in the U.S.A.) and in the mines of Australia.
‘Danny Boy’ was forced through poverty to leave his Irish homeland. As the oldest son, ‘Danny’ left both the famine and his family behind him when he left home in search of a more prosperous life. Each year he was away, Danny would recall the vision of his father waving goodbye to him from the top of the hill as he watched his son walk on with heavy heart, not knowing if his firstborn would ever return home again. Both father and son cried out their loss at their point of separation, but neither knew the pain each endured. Danny crossed the Atlantic Ocean to America, where he found gainful employment and a better way of life in the steelworks of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
Each year he was away from home, Danny promised his parents by letter that he would return when he’d made his fortune, but each year passed and turned into yet another year of unkept promises. One year away from home turned into two years, then five, then ten years, and then seventeen years with nothing but a monthly letter informing Danny about the changes taking place back home in the Emerald Isle. Each year Danny promised he would return home the following year to see his parents, and although his intent to do so remained earnest, he didn’t want to return to Ireland with insufficient savings and capital to buy his parents their own humble homestead. Even when his dear mother wrote to Danny and told him about his father’s failing health, Danny still watched another year pass by before eventually returning home.
When at last Danny could stay away no longer and his heart burst to return home, he found his father had recently died. His widowed mother was in failing health and the remainder of his six siblings were scattered across the globe, except for his younger sister who’d stayed behind to look after her mammy. Danny’s mammy was still a poor woman who lived the harshest of lives. The pain was writ large across the deep furrows of her brow. “Your dada” his mother informed Danny “left instructions to be buried in the hillside spot, beyond the meadow, in the precise piece of ground he stood on as he waved you ‘goodbye' when you set off for America. Your leaving home broke his heart and mine. He was never the same man again.”
Danny goes out to the hillside where the body of his deceased father lies in a piece of hallowed ground, and where his mother and sister places a bunch of wildflowers weekly. The site is marked with a boulder with the name, birth and death of Danny’s father chiselled on its centre. Danny visits the sacred place where his father now lies; the precise spot where his father waved him off on his journey to Pittsburgh; the last sighting he had of his son as ‘Danny Boy’ disappeared into the distance of greater prosperity and uncertain destiny.
This is the kernel of the story about ‘Danny Boy’ I researched, and around which I have woven my composition of this beautiful song. It is also a song that brings back my own fond memories of my own dear mother and father the morning I left home for Canada at the age of 21 years. I will never forget the morning I emigrated to Canada in December of 1963. The snow was heavy on the ground and all the house windows were frosted with the morning cold.
As I went out the door carrying a heavy suitcase and a heavier heart, my father shook my hand and bade me ‘farewell’, silently crying before he went off to work in the pit. Nor will I ever forget my dear mother’s tears flowing freely down the frosted windowpane as she waved off her firstborn leaving home, with a dread that made her fear never seeing me again. I will take that image to my grave.
Unlike 'Danny Boy', however, 'Billy Boy' returned home two years later while my parents were still in good health and I would have another thirty years with them before they also died. I do hope that you enjoy my version of this beautiful song and the background Gaelic story behind it.
I dedicate my version of this beautiful song to Ireland, to every man woman and child from the Emerald Isle, and to everything in this life that is Irish in origin, suspicious in folklore and green by birth.
Love and peace Bill xxx
