Danny Boy

The story

The words of "Danny Boy" were written in 1910 in Bath, Somerset, by the English lawyer and lyricist Frederic Weatherly, first to a tune other than the one now sung. The melody, "Londonderry Air", is a traditional Irish air; Jane Ross of Limavady is credited with collecting it in the mid-19th century from a musician she met. How words and air came together is told in more than one way. In one account Weatherly's sister-in-law Margaret Enright Weatherly, known as Jess, sent him a copy of the air in 1913 and he reworked his words to fit its rhyme and metre. In another she sang the air to him in 1912 with different words. In a third, Weatherly never set the poem to any tune himself: Jess, who lived with her husband Edward Weatherly at the Neosho mine near Ouray, Colorado, set it to the air in 1913, having heard it as a child in California, played by her father and other Irish railway workers.

Weatherly gave the song to the singer Elsie Griffin, who made it one of the most popular songs of the new century, and Ernestine Schumann-Heink made the first recording. Sheet music of 1918 bearing Weatherly's printed signature offered alternative words for a male singer, under the title "Eily Dear", so that "Danny Boy" itself would be sung only by a woman; whether this was Weatherly's intent is unclear, and in practice men and women sing the same words.

The meaning of the song has been much debated; one common reading takes it as a parent's message to a son going off to war. The tune travelled on its own as well: Percy Grainger arranged the air for wind ensemble as "Irish Tune from County Derry" in 1918.

Through the 20th century the song was recorded many times. Judy Garland sang it in the film Little Nellie Kelly (1940) and on stage in Ireland, Scotland and New York; Glenn Miller, Bing Crosby, Al Hibbler, Conway Twitty, Andy Williams, Jackie Wilson, Elvis Presley and Johnny Cash all recorded it. In 1957 Harry Belafonte opened it with a spoken introduction set in an Irish rising and changed its words to make it more plainly a song against war, and in 1993 Sinéad O'Connor sang it with an added half verse about dying for Ireland.

The song is often sung at funerals, though the National Catholic Reporter wrote in 2001 that it cannot be played during Mass.

What it says

A song of parting, in which someone who stays behind says goodbye to a young man who is leaving and hopes for his return. It is full of longing and the thought that the one left behind may not live to see him come home. Many listeners have heard in it a parent sending a son to war.

The words