Danny Boy (3 page)

And our roads may be far apart
,

But there's one rose that dies Not in Picardy!

'Tis the rose that I keep In my heart!

As we now know, Weatherly did not intend for the lyrics of “Danny Boy” to accompany the Londonderry air originally. He had another composition in mind when he wrote it in 1910, but the song never got attention, and so he filed it away for a couple of years. In 1912, however, his sister-in-law loved the melody, which she probably discovered in either Australian Percy Grainger's arrangement of the Londonderry air, or George Petrie's
Ancient Music of Ireland
. She sent it to Weatherly in England, feeling only he could do the beautiful tune justice. Although charmed by the air, Fred did not see the need to write something specific for it. Instead, he realized that he had written a song several years before which fit the melody perfectly, with only the need for a few minor alterations, and just like that, “Danny Boy” was reborn.

It was not likely that Weatherly's in-law was aware of the fact that many poets and writers, including Thomas Moore, Alfred Perceval Graves, Edward Lawson, and some ninety-plus others, had transcribed words to this
melody. All other versions quickly evaporated and “Danny Boy” evolved into the accepted lyrics to the air. Graves, author of “Trottin' to the Fair” and a friend of Weatherly, apparently hit the overhanging eaves in rage when he learned that his old pal was co-opting this public domain tune. Alfred didn't think it sporting of Fred, and it led to a sundering of the friendship. It seems as if Weatherly always had his finger on the sensitive pulse of his fellow humans, which made him an effective barrister as well as a songwriter. When the music publisher Boosey of Boosey and Hawkes in London accepted “Danny Boy” for publication, it caught the public's immediate attention. Europe maintained its usual ferment, with war clouds darkening the sky, raising the possibility of young men marching off to war. “Danny Boy,” with his pipes and his call to duty and departure, developed into a hymn hummed with epic sadness across the British Isles. They crooned other songs, too, like “It's a Long Way to Tiperrary,” “There Is an Isle,” “There's a Long Long Trail a Winding,” “Keep the Home Fires Burning,” “Roses of Picardy,” and “Lily Marlene.” But “Danny Boy” whipped the masses into a sentimental clutch, and as Fred was too elderly to go to war, he stayed home and collected his royalties on the sheet music and performances.

Weatherly did not have much to say about the writing of or inspiration behind “Danny Boy,” or the song's profound effect on the public. In 1926, when he wrote his autobiography, the song, although popular, had not yet reached the level of immortality that it ultimately achieved. But he did make very telling statements about his work at various points in his life. On one occasion in the twilight of his years, Weatherly was asked to give “The Immortal Memory,” a traditional speech at a dinner with The Burns Society, which usually included the most celebrated musicians and songwriters in Europe at the time. Weatherly had strong feelings about the impact of songs, and in his address to The Burns Society, he reveals the passion that must have stirred him when creating “Danny Boy.” In
Piano and Gown
, he recalls the speech:

S
ONG AND STORY ARE INDEED CLOSELY CONNECTED
. A
SONG, AS IT SEEMS TO ME, IS A SHORT POEM WHICH EITHER TELLS A SIMPLE STORY OR EXPRESSES A SIMPLE IDEA
. A
ND IT IS DIFFICULT TO FIND A SONG WHICH IS NOT AT THE SAME TIME A STORY
. A
SONG EITHER SUGGESTS MUSIC OR IS SUGGESTED BY MUSIC, AND IT IS PERFECTLY CERTAIN THAT IT IS UPON THE WINGS OF MUSIC THAT SONGS BEST REACH THE
HEART
. O
NE OF THE FEATURES OF THE SONGS OF
B
URNS, SELDOM NOTICED BY HIS MOST ARDENT WORSHIPPERS, IS THAT THE MAJORITY OF THEM WERE WRITTEN TO FIT THE OLD NATIONAL MELODIES OF
S
COTLAND, PROVING THAT HE WAS NOT ONLY A POET BUT A MUSICIAN
. I
LOVED THE SONGS OF
B
URNS WHEN FIRST MY MOTHER SANG THEM; AND BECAUSE IT WAS SHE WHO SANG THEM, MY EARLIEST AND PERHAPS MY ONLY AMBITION WAS THAT SOMEDAY
I,
TOO, MIGHT WRITE SONGS
. O
XFORD, TO MY SURPRISE AND DISAPPOINTMENT, TOLD ME THAT THE SONGS OF
B
URNS WERE NOT CLASSIC, AND WERE NOT EVEN WORTHY TO BE CALLED LITERATURE; AND IT WAS RESERVED FOR THIS GREAT CITY OF COMMERCE
(B
RISTOL
)
TO SHOW ME THE MEANING OF THE CULT OF
B
URNS
. I
T WAS A HAPPY HOUR THAT BROUGHT ME BACK TO SETTLE IN MY COUNTRY OF THE
W
EST, TO WALK ONCE MORE OVER THE GREEN HILLS OF
S
OMERSET, TO DREAM AGAIN OF
A
RTHUR AND OF
A
VALON, TO SEE AGAIN IN THE FANCY THE EARLIEST
C
HRISTIAN
C
HURCH PLANTED BY
J
OSEPH
. W
HY IS IT THAT SONGS APPEAL?
I
S THERE NOT A STORY IN EACH?
A
MELODY WHICH REMAINS DEEP DOWN IN OUR HEARTS?
W
E MAY LISTEN TO THE NOBLEST
SERMONS
. W
E MAY STUDY THE DEEPEST PHILOSOPHY
. W
E MAY BE ELEVATED BY THE LOFTIEST SPEECHES
. W
E MAY READ THE BRIGHTEST PAGES OF HISTORY
. A
ND YET NONE APPEAL TO US WITH QUITE THE SAME APPEAL AS SONG AND STORY
. I
S IT NOT PERHAPS THAT ALL THE REST APPEAL TO THE INTELLECT AND NEED MENTAL POWERS WHICH ONLY THE FEW POSSESS?
B
UT SONG AND STORY APPEAL TO THE HEART
. F
ROM THE HEART THEY COME AND TO THE HEART THEY GO
. T
HEY EXPRESS THE JOYS AND SORROWS OF THE POET HIMSELF; AND JUST BECAUSE HE IS A POET THEY EXPRESS THE JOYS AND SORROWS OF THE WORLD
. T
HINK TO-NIGHT OF THE MILLIONS WHO ARE SINGING SONGS, NOT MERELY ON THIS FESTIVAL NIGHT OF THE GREATEST SONG WRITER OF THE WORLD
. T
O-NIGHT AND EVERY NIGHT, WHEN THE SONGS OF THE BIRDS ARE SILENT AND THE STEPS OF THE PASSERS ARE HUSHED IN THE STREET; IN ALL PLACES, HIGH AND LOWLY, IN CIRCUMSTANCES COMMONPLACE AND IN THE MOST TRAGIC MOMENTS, SONGS ARE BEING SUNG
. T
HOSE WHO WENT FROM THAT
U
PPER
C
HAMBER TO THE GREATEST TRAGEDY OF THE WORLD SANG A HYMN BEFORE THEY WENT
; P
AUL AND
S
ILAS SANG HYMNS IN PRISON; WHEN THE
GREAT SHIP SETTLES DOWN TO HER DOOM, WHEN THE LAST MOMENT IN THE BELEAGUERED FORT HAS COME, WHEN THE ENTOMBED MINER KNOWS THERE IS NO ESCAPE; IT IS NOT ARGUMENT, IT IS NOT PHILOSOPHY, IT IS NOT DOGMAS THAT STRENGTHEN AND CONSOLE THEM; IT IS THE SONGS AND PSALMS AND HYMNS THEY LEARNT FROM THE DEAREST LIPS OF ALL
. I
T IS THESE THAT COME BACK TO THEM IN THEIR LAST MOMENTS
.

Frederick Weatherly died in 1929, leaving behind a collection of over 1,500 published verses, translated operas, and children's books. But his “humble hope” of someday writing words for songs that “great singers would sing” was more than realized in “Danny Boy.”

 

“D
anny Boy” isn't as well worn as that bit of dogged verse known as “Happy Birthday.” Conversely, the latter hardly has a reputation for reducing a room to tears, so I'll leave it to scholars to determine which song has more social significance. At any given time of the day, somewhere in the world, some homesick boy is humming this haunting tune or some girl is singing it, because her love departed for a life in the armed services. Mothers croon it too, regretting that they did not name the absent lad Danny when he was born.

In verse poetry, in story, or in song, it's no easy task to find sagas of mothers, daughters, and sisters heading for the battlefield, the ocean deep, the towering mountain, or the blistering hot desert. But the annals are replete with departures of the boys or male members of the family. Despite the evocation of sadness, of anguished farewells, indeed of the finality of death itself, why does
the song gain new, adoring, mournful acolytes each year? With so many songs carrying the same theme, why has this one remained in the collective psyche of the world as the preeminent song of a tearful farewell?

What does “Irish” conjure up in the mind of any man or any woman with a hint of romance or a trace of poetry in the soul? Few will dispute the lure and charm and wonder of all things connected with that green island across the sea. It seems only right that the journey into the mystery that is “Danny Boy” commence there. Despite centuries of warfare, revolution, insurgency, and rebellion against the Sassanach invader, the land is unspoiled and the forty shades of green vie and yet merge together in a restful, soothing palate.

Some are convinced the Irish are not serious about anything other than saying goodbye. Death is accepted, so is battle, the loss of spouse, even the dying of children. Tragedy seems indigenous to the land. It was always a puzzle to the English that in the midst of grief, in the midst of carnage, the Irish man could leap to his feet and give vent to a full-throated song or an intricate story, even ones with comic overtones. G.K. Chesterton was compelled to put pen to paper and write a small poem that is now clichè:

The great Gaels of Ireland

Are men that God made mad

For all their wars are merry

And all their songs are sad
.

Perhaps old G.K. was influenced by the fact that the ancient Celts fought all their wars in their pelts, as they say in rural areas. (To those not in the know, that means naked.) To face a fully-clad warrior or an armored knight might be intimidating enough, but to face a man wearing only his skin is apt to stir speculation that the opposing force is composed of lunatics who fear nothing.

Of course, there is nothing merry about a war, and of course not all Irish songs are sad. Non-Irish lyricists, such as the American, Chauncey Olcott, author of “When Irish Eyes are Smiling” and “My Wild Irish Rose” tend toward the over-romantic and sad, whereas native Irish can be satirical and rely on irony, qualities largely absent in the English psyche. Thus, the most sentimental of self-styled Irish songs were concocted by songwriters like Edgar “Yip” Harburg, who were visitors to the Emerald Isle and for a brief moment, amble into the Celtic twilight. Melodies will ring in their heads and they will write words intended to requite this new and insistent
love. No words will suffice, however, and the writer is left with a void in the heart. Almost all the songs of longing, of leaving, and of hoping to return are soft and melodic, even a faux Irish song like Harburg's, “How are Things in Glocca Morra?” Other popular songs of that genre include “I'll Take You Home Again Kathleen,” “Galway Bay,” “Hills of Donegal,” “Home to Mayo,” and the subject of this small tome. Even songs of protest and of war are rounded with melody, which make them singable, despite their minor keys. Furthermore, the Irish speak melodically, so melodically that it is often difficult to know when one has been insulted. There are subversive songs, such as “Moses Ritooral Ritoorilay” and “Mother England Loves Us Still” which were dismissed by the British as childish doggerel, not knowing that their imperialistic rule was mocked by Irish laughter.

Oddly enough, the Irish are susceptible to the weepy warblings of such foreigner drivel as “McNamara's Band,” “Christmas in Killarney,” and again, that geographically-challenged “Glocca Morra” stream that ventures east, north, and south at the same time, spanning hundreds of miles because the town names happen to rhyme. It would be hard to pick the winner of the competition for allegedly Irish claptrap, but George M. Cohan
certainly counts among the medalists. He specialized in the stereotype of the nationalistic, swaggering Irish buffoon, and his trite song, “Harrigan,” is not likely to be included in any time capsules documenting stellar Irish contributions to civilization. There is no hint of the poet here, nor of the intelligent and artistic men and women who painted, sculpted, and published books; no sign of the quiet men who took over the political system, the ones who never drank whiskey and never gave a speech.

The stage Irishman was Cohan's forte, and perhaps he served a purpose, as he did his strutting and singing while the peaceful men stealthily undermined the WASP structures. The opposite sex was relegated to cheeky, sharp-tongued, but virginal women, shackled by male lust and in perpetual need of counsel from Fathers Murphy, Flanagan, O'Brien, or any other celibate round-collar in the vicinity.

I don't know how many Irish songs concern mother, but they must number in the hundreds. My brother Frank claims that we were trapped in a territory of maternities, Mother Ireland, Mother Church, as well as the songs, “That Old Irish Mother of Mine” and “Mother Machree.” Machree comes from the Gaelic
mo croide
(of the heart).

Foreign sentimentalists such as Cohan were also likely to have the little old Irish mother lingering at the cottage door, with its thatched roof, white-washed walls and roses twined on trellises around the door, tearfully waving to the parting son. A young girl would never get the same send-off as the boy. Very few of the songs describe a female departure, though they left Ireland to be housemaids and farm girls in distant America, suffering the same hardships and deprivations as the boys. But where are the songs? There are the Kathleen songs (Caitlin being the correct name in Irish), as well as the innumerable Rose and Rosalee songs. Yet many of these were merely pseudonyms for Ireland, as it was seditious under British law to sing of fighting for or loving that country.

Before The Great Hunger, sometimes incorrectly called The Famine, in the 1840s, the Irish subsisted on the potato, as it keeps for quite a long time in the winter months. And there were paeans to that humble tuber too, i.e. “The Garden Where the Praties Grow” and the very somber “Famine Song”:

We are down into the dust

Over here, over here

We are down into the dust

Over here, over here

We are down into the dust

But the Lord in Whom we trust

Will repay us crumb for crust

Over here, over here
.

Songs and poems about the perfidious landlords stockpiling wheat, barley, oats, vegetables, and livestock, and exporting them to England whilst hundreds of thousands of Irish men, women, and children died of starvation and exposure after failing to pay rent, were rare. But The Great Starvation did not stop young men from planting the seeds of rebellion and revolution with one hand, while accepting the queen's shilling to quell uprisings elsewhere in the British Empire with the other. The sun never set on the British Empire, so the saying goes, because God could not trust the English in the dark.

What was there to sing about, then? The usual rage at the oppressor, self-imposed exile, and as always, fathers and mothers bidding goodbye to children, holding what were known as American wakes. Though the person was not dead, just emigrating, it was unlikely he would ever see the homeland again. So, as usual, the Irish sang,
played fiddles and melodeons, and the music drowned out the imminent truth of a necessary departure. As the morning drew nigh, the music slowed to a mournful dirge and the singing slipped from melody to the old practice of keening—a high wail. Then, other women joined in to extol the virtues and attributes of the dead or departing person. In the American wake, the reveler saw the traveler to the crossroads where the conveyance to the ship was awaiting, whilst the parents and siblings stayed in the home. If the emigrant was a boy and had a girlfriend she would often tuck one of her pubic hairs somewhere in his clothing, in the belief that this intimate object would preserve his chastity and faithfulness. It is not known how many songs of departure, emigration, and death the Irish gave vent to, but the chances of a young woman ever seeing her love again were remote, even if she planted a garden of her hairs in the lad's trousers or keened all the lamentations, sang all the songs, or plucked out every hair of her body, north or south, east or west, or any other point of the compass in the universe and beyond, as the Mayo man said when pressed to expand a thought.

Naturally, there are competing claimants to the origins of this old tune, melody, or air commonly known as the “Londonderry air.” The prurient and prudish
Victorians were quite shy about calling it the “Londonderry air” because of the closeness in pronunciation to the French word “derriere.” The preservation of propriety was of utmost importance; to the Victorians we owe the ordering of “white” and “dark” portions of the furtive fowl, as they demurred from saying “breast” or “thigh.” Modesty and chastity, not to mention celibacy, were also maintained on the bookshelves of these pure people; they never allowed books by males and females in close proximity. So, 'twas a wonder that anything was written, or indeed published, except for the purest of drivel or jingoistic poems of praise for the soldiers who kept the British colonies in thrall. Perhaps Danny was one of those oppressors who had taken the Queen's shilling or the King's shilling. The name of the air itself may lend some insight as to who is offering the heart-wrenching farewell. When parents have to speak sternly to offspring, they will generally use the child's full name, Thomas or William instead of Tommy or Billy, threatening “Come here at once!” or “If you don't do your homework . . .” etc. The same technique is used by judges when sentencing convicted criminals to death, i.e. “George Walker Bush, I hereby sentence you to be hanged by the neck until you are dead!” etc. But diminutives of names bespeak affection and toleration
for the naughtiness of children, which brings us to “Danny Boy.”

It would be unseemly to call the lad Daniel, just as it would be unseemly to tell the story of Danny in the Lion's Den. And who could ever think of calling the late Mr. Webster “Danny” or Mr. Dafoe, or indeed Daniel O'Connell, who was known as “The Liberator” because he secured Catholic Emancipation for Ireland? The nickname wouldn't do for these austere gentlemen. But for Danny it's fine, for it would be rather hard to sing “Oh Daniel Boy,” not to mention pompous and reproving. And so, we are wont to ask, why and how did Weatherly, who lived in England all of his born years, come to write the lyrics to a haunting melody, which causes tears to course down the cheeks of strong men and sends delicate slips of lovelorn ladies into paroxysms of grief, even though nobody in the immediate family has had the temerity to die, fight a war, or even holiday in a foreign country?

The allure of the lyrics arises from our ignorance of who is addressing said Danny, the details of the circumstances, and where this colloquy takes place. Is the lad spoken to from afar? Why does Danny not hear the pipes that are calling from glen to glen? Is there a recruiting sergeant roaming the country, accompanied by bagpipes? 'Tis often
said that the Irish gave the bagpipes to the Scots, who have yet to see the joke! So, let us list all the candidates who might be bidding farewell to our hero Danny:

       
1. mother

       
2. father

       
3. wife

       
4. girlfriend

       
5. sister

       
6. brother

       
7. son

       
8. daughter

       
9. gay lover

       
10. parish priest

There is no logical way to disprove every theory to date, which renders the true meaning behind the words elusive, mirage-like, and just beyond our grasp. But one can formulate educated guesses by examining the clues within the words themselves.

To begin with, I think that we can eliminate the parish priest, as they are a notoriously unsentimental lot. But beyond that, the image of Danny (an altar boy perhaps?) returning to the grave in the second verse ventures far beyond the overly-sentimental, and reaches into the absurd, if not disturbing. At its purest intent, it's still a
bad scene from a campy movie, and Danny certainly deserves a better fate than that.

It's shocking enough that the lyrics to “Danny Boy” were written by an Englishman, but try to imagine the look on the Ancient Order of Hibernians' faces at the next St. Patrick's Day parade were they to learn that this beloved song was an openly gay lover's lament to his companion, Danny. Implausible for many reasons, the least of which being that a married, middle-aged English barrister such as Weatherly, had not the slightest trace of homosexual content in his impressive collective. That is, if we ignore the most extreme of the Jack-the-Ripper conspiracy theories! More realistically, Fred was not likely to risk being ostracized for taking such a progressive social stand in the beginning of the twentieth century when he penned the lyrics. But giving Fred the benefit of the doubt by putting him ahead of his time, what are the odds, as stated in the second verse, of a gay lover coming home to dying flowers? Quite slim, I'd suspect. Clearly, the clues are written between the lines.