Danny Boy (The Londonderry Air)

DESCRIPTION: The singer laments that her Danny Boy is called away. She promises to be waiting when he returns to her. Even if she dies, she will await him
AUTHOR: Words: probably Frederic Edward Weatherly (1848-1929)
EARLIEST DATE: 1855 (Petrie Collection); words written 1913
KEYWORDS: love separation
FOUND IN: Ireland US
REFERENCES (6 citations):
Silber/Silber-FolksingersWordbook, p. 323, "Danny Boy" (1 text)
Fuld-BookOfWorldFamousMusic, p. 337, "Londonderry Air"
Henry/Huntingdon/Herrmann-SamHenrysSongsOfThePeople H3, p. 286, "The Londonderry Air" (1 tune, plus a text known not to have been traditional)
Averill-CampSongsFolkSongs, p. 188, "Danny Boy" (notes only)
DT, DANNYBOY*
ADDITIONAL: McCourt: Malachy McCourt, _Danny Boy: The Legend of the Beloved Irish Ballad_, Running Press, 2002, pp. 12-13, "(Danny Boy)" (1 text)
Roud #23565
SAME TUNE:
O, Jeanie Dear (File: HHH545)
Campfire Prayer (File: ACSF188C)
Emmer's Farewell (words by Alfred Perceval Graves; in Aline Waites & Robin Hunter, _The Illustrated Victorian Songbook_, Michael Joseph Ltd., 1984, pp. 200-203)
My Gentle Harp (Words by Thomas Moore) (File: Fire088)
NOTES [967 words]: Fuld reports that the name "Londonderry Air" came about because the tune "was collected by Miss J. Ross of the county of Londonderry." Little else seems to be known of its ancestry, though it has been used for many texts, few of them popular. Anne G. Gilchrist published an article, "A New Light upon the Londonderry Air" in JFSS (December 1934).
Malachy McCourt, Danny Boy: The Legend of the Beloved Irish Ballad, Running Press, 2002, p. 21, says that there is "some evidence" to suggest that the tune was composed by Rory Dall (O'Cahan) (otherwise Ruaidhrí Dall Ó Catháin), the "other" famous blind Irish harper (other than O'Carolan, of course). He does not say what this evidence is. The evidence can't be too strong! -- some doubt that Rory Dall even existed, and I've seen various sources that claim he was Irish or Scottish, and give dates for him that range over about 140 years. McCourt, pp. 21-31, lists many other stories about authorship, but none are at all convincing; it does not appear possible to trace the tune before Petrie's version, said to have been provided by Jane Ross.
Fuld attributes the words to Fred Weatherly (1848-1929) without supporting documentation, and many people seem unaware of it, but there appears to be no doubt. He was a British lawyer who was one of thirteen children of a country doctor (McCort, pp. 34-35).
As a poet, he was busy (he supposedly wrote about 3000 items; McCourt, p. 38) but only moderately successful. Weatherly has six poems attributed to him in Granger's Index to Poetry. "Danny Boy" is not one of then. Three of the pieces ("The Holy City," "The Angels to the Shepherds Sang," and "When the Christ Child Came") are religious; the others appear to be for children. None proved very popular in the long run.
Turning to Bartlett's Familiar Quotations (13th edition), we find three Weatherly pieces, none of them the same as the ones quoted in Granger's -- though one of them, "Nancy Lee," has had some slight traditional popularity (it is one of the other Weatherly pieces in the Ballad Index). But none have themes similar to this.
Weatherly does seem to have been popular in his time. Songs That Never Grow Old, copyrighted 1909 and 1913, has a long list: "Beauty's Eyes," with music by F. Paolo Tosti; "Mona," "Nancy Lee," and "The Midshipmite," all with music by Stephen Adams (who also supplied the melody for "They All Love Jack," which is in the third Weatherly item Index; according to McCourt, pp. 36-37, it is a pseudonym for Molloy and Michael Maybrick); "Darby and Joan," and "The Little Tin Soldier" with music by J. L. Molloy -- but most of the songs in that book I have not seen elsewhere.
In 1926, Weatherly published an autobiography, Piano and Gown (McCourt, p. 35), presumably referring to his two occupations as songwriter and lawyer.
Back in the days before all old sheet music seemed to be on the Internet, I managed to acquire the sheet music for two other Weatherly pieces, "Roses of Picardy" and "The Holy City."
My copy of "The Holy City" was published in 1942 with music by Stephen Adams; obviously it is older than that. It is a dream of Jerusalem before the destruction of the Temple and of a heavenly Jerusalem. It is not very original -- and feels both anachronistic and rather silly. I would not file it as great poetry. It did become popular enough to be included in Aline Waites & Robin Hunter, The Illustrated Victorian Songbook, Michael Joseph Ltd., 1984, (pp. 48-54); also, Alice Kane's "I Wore My Pappys' Pants" is reportedly based on it.
"Roses of Picardy," published in 1916 with music by Haydn Wood, is interesting, because Wood's name is printed in far larger type than Weatherly's. For more about it, see its entry in the Index.
Edward Foote Gardner, Popular Songs of the Twentieth Century: Volume I -- Chart Detail & Encyclopedia 1900-1949, Paragon House, 2000, pp. 322, 344, estimates that "Picardy" was the fourteenth most popular song in America in 1918 (#1 for the year being J. Will Callahan and Lee G. Roberts's "Smiles") and also reached #7 in December 1923. But it didn't hold up after that.
Bottom line: "Danny Boy" seems to have been a unique item for Weatherly in style as in its lasting popularity.
Robert Gogan, 130 Great Irish Ballads (third edition, Music Ireland, 2004), p. 129, offers some additional details which do seem to confirm Fuld's report. Weatherly, an English lawyer (!), wrote the lyrics for this song in 1910, and also wrote a tune. It went nowhere. When his sister-in-law sent him the tune for the "Londonderry Air," he decided to use that tune instead, and a hit was born.
According to Reginald Nettel, Seven Centuries of Popular Song, Phoenix House, 1956, p. 220, Weatherly was an "eminent barrister," who reportedly wrote his poems while working through difficult legal problems.
Gogan adds a warning to barroom singers out there: "[This is] one of the most consistently murdered ballads I know, because amateur balladeers usually start singing it in too high a pitch for their voice[,] realizing (when it is too late) that they can't reach the high E note in the chorus. Keep that in mind; don't get caught out."
Given that the range of the song is an octave and a sixth (e.g. from the G below middle C to the E nine steps above middle C), little wonder that singers have trouble. I know of no traditional song requiring a wider range.
As of this writing, Weatherly has four songs in the Ballad Index, although none is very popular other than this one:
-- Danny Boy (The Londonderry Air)
-- Roses of Picardy (music by Hayden Wood)
-- The Bosun's Story (music by J. L. Malloy)
-- They All Love Jack (music by Stephen Adams)
-- Nancy Lee (music by Stephen Adams); this is probably the most popular of Weatherly's other songs in folk circles. - RBW
Last updated in version 6.6
File: FSWB323

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