"Some believe the only thing the Irish are serious about is saying goodbye", is a typical aside that leads to another anecdote by Mr. McCourt. He does give a brief background of the history of the music, and the almost 100 different sets of lyrics that have been set to it. The real surprise is for those that don't know who actually wrote the famous words. If the truth is as presented, I imagine it will set off a variety of hostilities. Before you read the book, take an informal poll, and note what country is associated with this song. I would hazard the results will be very consistent. Then you may pick up this book.

How much value you place on bits of Irish humor will decide how you feel after reading this work. At 104 very small pages that are often partially filled with verse the reader must value a good laugh like a diamond. For the time that passes from start to finish, from first page to last, is very brief indeed.


Very disappointing   January 15, 2002
 8 out of 9 found this review helpful

I was looking forward to a verbal journey. A talk with musicians and poets, historians and purveyors of folklore. And I got a little of that. Very little.
This is a very short volume, and more than I'd like is made up of excerpts of past books. This should be a little spice for the stew, not a major ingredient.
In the whole, it reads as a dry (and there is the main problem, it is dry) history lesson.
Again it is short. It would have worked as well as a long magazine article.


OK magazine article, bad book   February 5, 2002
 8 out of 9 found this review helpful

I'm a sucker for Irish history, lore, you name it. I grabbed this book without a second thought (or glance) and paid the price. It's just not good. The idea is great and it appears that the author was offered a sum of money for a minimum 100 pages about the subject of the origins of Danny Boy. Well, there's no real story behind it so that leaves 99 pages which he fills with name-dropping, Irish history (not bad, but for a different book), and then the capper is a 30 page list of people who have sung the song. On top of all that, there's several annoying typos.

Reread Trinity instead.


An entertaining, though relentlessly folksy, book   February 22, 2003
 7 out of 7 found this review helpful

Beyond question, the melody variously known as "Danny Boy" or "Londonderry Air" is one of the great tunes of all time. Its measured rising and falling cadences would grace the catalog of Franz Schubert or any of the other great classical vocal composers.

Malachy McCourt, brother of novelist Frank McCourt (ANGELA'S ASHES) and a well-known writer and radio-TV luminary in his own right, has produced a curious little book of less than 95 pages about the famous tune and its well-known lyrics. His book is part history, part speculation, part myth and part personal editorial essay. And it is not free from touches of Irish blarney.

McCourt's findings may surprise --- and dismay --- many. The great tune, long since adopted as a kind of unofficial Irish national anthem, may not be of Irish origin. A folklorist named Jane Ross supposedly first noted it down around 1851. She reportedly heard it played by a blind fiddler, Jimmy McCurry, in Limavady, Londonderry --- but there is at least a possibility that the melody may have originated in Scotland. No one knows for sure. At least one respected musical scholar claims that the tune follows no known metric scheme for Irish folk music.

Many different sets of words were attached to the tune after its first publication in 1855 --- but those that have become indissolubly identified with it ("O Danny boy, the pipes, the pipes are calling, from glen to glen and down the mountainside....") were written in 1910 by an English lawyer and song-lyric cobbler named Frederick E. Weatherly, who probably never set foot in Ireland. They were actually intended for a different tune, but when Weatherly's sister-in-law sent him some years later the familiar melody from her home in Australia, he saw that it was a perfect fit for his earlier verses. Thus an "Irish" classic was created from a melody that may be Scottish and words by an Englishman.

McCourt gives us this information straightforwardly enough, but he fleshes them out with a good deal of barely relevant material. It seems strange to arraign a book of 95 pages on charges of padding, but the complaint seems justified. McCourt solicited opinions about the song from Irish celebrities (including brother Frank) and speculates at length on such side issues as who is singing the song and to whom it is addressed (one possibility among several: it is the song of Danny Boy's gay lover!). The author's tone varies between straight historical writing and folksiness, including occasional cutesy use of "tis" and "t'was." McCourt also grinds a personal axe or two. He thinks ill of those Catholic dioceses that have banned the singing of "Danny Boy" at funerals because it is "secular."

There are some fascinating bits of trivia here, however. Victorians hesitated to refer to the song as Londonderry Air because, to their prudish ears, it sounded too much like "London derriere." Irish nationalists never use that title either, because they want no mention of London in the title. Wordsmith Weatherly was once in legal partnership with one of the sons of Charles Dickens. And another of Weatherly's lyrics was the popular "Roses of Picardy," set to music memorably by Haydn Wood. Wood studied under the composer Sir Charles Stanford, who quoted "Londonderry Air" in one of his Irish rhapsodies. Make of that what you will. This is a curious little book, entertaining in its quirky way but almost undone by its relentless folksiness. "Londonderry Air" remains a musical treasure, regardless of its origin.

--- Reviewed by Robert Finn