Percy Grainger's Irish Tune from County Londonderry adapts the Danny Boy/Londonderry Air melody for wind ensemble in 1918.Nonetheless, it is unclear whether this was Weatherly's intent and it is common practice for exactly the same lyrics to be used when sung by both women and men. The 1918 version of the sheet music with Weatherly's printed signature included alternative lyrics (" Eily Dear"), with the instructions that "when sung by a man, the words in italic should be used the song then becomes "Eily Dear", so that "Danny Boy" is only to be sung by a lady". Some interpret the song to be a message from a parent to a son going off to war. There are various conjectures about the meaning of "Danny Boy". Ye'll come and find the place where I am lying,Īnd I shall hear, though soft you tread above me,Īnd all my grave will warmer, sweeter be,įor you will bend and tell me that you love me,Īnd I shall sleep in peace until you come to me! Oh, Danny boy, Oh Danny boy, I love you so!īut when ye come, and all the flowers are dying, It's I'll be there in sunshine or in shadow,. Or when the valley's hushed and white with snow, It's you, it's you must go and I must bide.īut come ye back when summer's in the meadow, The summer's gone, and all the roses falling, Oh, Danny boy, the pipes, the pipes are callingįrom glen to glen, and down the mountain side. Jane Ross of Limavady is credited with collecting the melody of "Londonderry Air" in the mid-19th century from a musician she encountered. Ernestine Schumann-Heink produced the first recording of "Danny Boy" in 1915. Weatherly gave the song to the vocalist Elsie Griffin, who made it one of the most popular songs of the new century.
Another alternative story is that Frederic did not set the poem to any tune, but that his sister-in-law Margaret Enright Weatherly, who together with her husband Edward were living near Ouray, Colorado at the Neosho mine, set the poem in 1913 to the tune of the "Londonderry Air" which she had heard as a child in California played by her father and other Irish railroad workers. Another alternative version of the story has Jess singing the air to Weatherly in 1912 with different lyrics. An alternative story is that Margaret Weatherly sent him a copy of "Londonderry Air" in 1913, Weatherly modified the lyrics of "Danny Boy" to fit its rhyme and meter. In 1910, in Bath, Somerset, the English lawyer and lyricist Frederic Weatherly initially wrote the words to "Danny Boy" to a tune other than "Londonderry Air". 1940 recording by Glenn Miller and His Orchestra on RCA Bluebird, B-10612-B
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