Danny Boy

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“Danny Boy,” the beloved unofficial anthem of Ireland, was written by an English lawyer — Frederic Weatherly of Bath, who reportedly never set foot in Ireland in his life. Weatherly was a barrister by day and an astonishingly prolific lyricist by night (he penned some 3,000 songs and poems), and in 1910 he wrote the words to “Danny Boy” set to a forgettable tune of his own. It went nowher

The magic arrived by mail. Weatherly’s Irish-born sister-in-law, Margaret “Jess” Weatherly, was living in a Colorado mining camp during the gold rush days when she heard Irish miners playing a hauntingly beautiful old melody called the “Londonderry Air.” She sent a transcription across the Atlantic to Frederic — and his orphaned lyrics fit the tune almost perfectly. Published in 1913, the combination became one of the most beloved songs on Earth, recorded by everyone from opera great Ernestine Schumann-Heink (the first, in 1915) to Judy Garland, Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash, and Willie Nelson.

The melody has its own romance: it was first written down around 1851 by Jane Ross of Limavady, County Londonderry, who heard an itinerant fiddler playing it outside her window. She hurriedly jotted down the notes — and when she went out to learn the musician’s name, he had vanished, never to be identified. Had she not scribbled fast, the world might never have gotten “Danny Boy” at all. So this “quintessentially Irish” treasure is really a three-way collaboration: an anonymous Irish street musician, a homesick transcription from a Colorado gold camp, and an English lawyer who never saw Ireland — proof that a great song doesn’t care about borders.