Bonzer Words!: Danny Boy
...Danny Boy is an all pervading malady that attacks all male members of the Irish Diaspora over the age of twenty-five...
Dermott Ryder takes a critical look at a famous song.
There is a song, indestructible, omnipresent and irresistible, that has brought more torture to stretched vocal chords and innocent ears than any other in the known universe. It is Danny Boy, a set of words written in 1910 by Fred E Weatherly and put to a tune known as The Londonderry Air in 1912. He never visited Ireland and he acquired the tune from sources in the USA but somehow he hit the schmaltz spot. Here was a man who knew his demographic.
Over the years I have encountered many arguments, complex and simplistic, as to the real meaning of Danny Boy. I believe the plain truth to be that Fred E Weatherly, a very successful songwriter in his day, simply wrote it to tug at the ever-vibrating heartstrings of the super-sentimental international Irish, and thereby sell his sheet music in rich making numbers. He succeeded with a flourish. The expatriate Irish took Danny to their fibrillating hearts and to the pub, bar, hooley, céilí, celebration and party.
Danny Boy is an all pervading malady that attacks all male members of the Irish Diaspora over the age of twenty-five, and when it comes it strikes like lightening, usually late in the evening.
In my family, typically, it occurs at wakes, family parties, in the singing room at the pub, or even walking home from the pub with a bunch of mates. The afflicted person is normal one moment and possessed the next. The telltale signs are unmistakable, he grows taller, his eyes widen, he fills his lungs with air and at that instant he knows that he is the world's greatest Irish tenor, so he sings Danny Boy.
DANNY BOY
Fred E Weatherly - American Traditional
Oh, Danny Boy, the pipes, the pipes are calling,
from glen to glen and down the mountainside.
The summer's gone and all the leaves are falling.
Tis you, tis you must go and I must bide.
But come ye back, when summer's in the meadow,
and all the valley's hushed and white with snow,
for 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 flowers are dying,
if I be dead, as dead I well may be.
Then come and find the place where I am lying,
and kneel and say an Ave there for me.
And I shall hear, though soft your tread above me,
and all my grave will warmer, sweeter be.
and you shall bend, and tell me that you love me,
and I shall rest in peace until you come to me.
The most dangerous part of this inebriated moment of self-delusion, the crisis, comes if the singer uses the second verse as chorus. This transition from verse to chorus and the attempt to reach a last crescendo can bring indescribable anguish to both singer and audience. Worse still is the pathetic performance of the singer who, knowing he can't make and sustain the final great note, takes the coward's way out and ends with a tearful eye and with a guttural, throat rattling growl. We can't prevent this strange Anglo Celtic malady. Medical science has not yet found a cure. Therefore we must manage it and allow it to run its course.
The most dangerous day in the year for the expatriate Irish, and those in close proximity, is Saint Patrick Day. Patrick, a peripatetic Scotsman who lived in the Old Dart for a while and did good work as an exterminator, must be sat on a cloud somewhere laughing his little tartan socks off at some of the things done in his name. Green Beer, gilded plastic harps, large, Guinness spilling, usually overweight men dressed up as 'little people' singing mawkishly sentimental songs about a wind-swept phantasy island homeland in the distant, cold Atlantic, to list but a few. So, to be on the safe side, don't go out to the pub on Saint Patrick's Night, stay at home with a bucket of Chinese take away and a case of Stella Artois and watch the annual 'Dubliner's Special' on the British channel. They never sing Danny Boy.
© Dermott Ryder
**
Dermott writes for Bonzer! magazine. Please visit www.bonzer.org.au
