Oh Danny Boy - Not An Old Irish Ballad!

by Pat Friend

Gather a group of Americans of Irish descent for a wake or a funeral and the odds are good you'll hear the haunting melody, and possibly the chilling verse of Danny Boy. Hard as it might be to believe, the notion that it's an old "Irish" song is pure fiction. In fact, the ENGLISH lyricist Frederick Weatherly published the words in 1913. He had started work on the verse several years earlier but it finally came together when his sister sent him the now familiar tune - from America!

His weren't the first (or last) lyrics set to the melancholy tune but somehow the emotions they contained grabbed Irish, or at least Irish-American, hearts. As well known as they've become, the lyrics have an air of mystery about them. Someone's leaving, and being mourned by someone left behind. Was it a parent sending a son off to war? Or to America?

While it's clear that Fred Weatherly wrote the cherished words, the origin of the melody is a bit hazier. Michael Robinson, who has written extensively on the subject of Danny Boy, says it's most likely that the tune known as Londonderry Air or Air from County Derry, was transcribed by Jane Ross who claimed she heard it played by a blind fiddler. She in turn passed it on to her Dublin friend, Dr. George Petrie, who published it in The Ancient Music of Ireland in 1855. In 1911 the Australian Percy Grainger picked it up and published a harmonized version for orchestra. Two years later it was somehow on its way to Weatherly.

So does it matter that Danny Boy isn't really "Irish"? Why does it bring chills and goosebumps to many an American of Irish descent? I think the reason is tied to the impression that many of our ancestors did not really want to leave their native Ireland, and a piece of all of us will always look back.

Oh, Danny Boy, the pipes, the pipes are calling
From glen to glen and down the mountain side.
The summer's gone and all the roses falling.
It's you, it's you must go and I must bide.

But come ye back when summer's in the meadow
Or when the valley's hushed and white with snow.
It's I'll be here in sunshine or in shadow.
Oh, Danny Boy, oh Danny Boy, I love you so!

But when ye come, and all the flow'rs are dying,
If I am dead, as dead I well may be,
Ye'll come and find the place where I am lying
And kneel and say an Ave there for me.

And I shall hear, though soft you tread above me,
And all my grave will warmer, sweeter be,
For you will bend and tell me that you love me,
And I shall sleep in peace until you come to me.