GaryOsberg.com

Next Thursday is Saint Patrick’s Day.  The song “Oh Danny Boy” is a very popular Irish song.  Malachy McCourt wrote a book titled “Danny Boy. “The Legend of the Beloved Irish Ballad”.

The tune is known as the “Londonderry Air” and it originated in the northern most county of Ireland.  The story goes that sometime in the 1600s, Rory Dall O’Cahan, a blind harpist, left a gig at a castle in the Valley of Roe and having had a little too much to drink, he fell asleep in the ditch alongside the road. He was awakened by the sound of fairies playing the most beautiful tune he had ever heard, on his harp.  He returned to the castle and proceeded to play the first rendition of what became known as the “Londonderry Air”.

Around 1850, Miss Jane Ross of Limavady, County Derry, heard a blind fiddler playing the tune and she wrote down the notes and the tune spread all over western world. Some say that Jimmy McCurry was that fiddler. Many tried to come up with words to the tune, including some of the best known poets of the time, but none seemed to work. 

Finally in 1913, an Englishman, Fred Weatherly, a teacher and a lawyer who had written nearly 1,500 songs in his life, was sent the tune by a sister-in-law who lived in America.  Fred had recently lost his father and his only son.  His sorrow is reflected in the words, especially the second verse.

“And if ye come and all the flowers are dying, if I be 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 the 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.”

“Good judgment comes from experience and often experience comes from bad judgment.”  Rita Mae Brown