Peter O’Toole and Richard Harris were stars of stage and screen, but one of their lesser known performances appears on YouTube, singing one of Ireland’s greatest traditional ballads.
The videoshows them singing “Carrickfergus” before the 2000 European Rugby Cup final at Twickenham over pre-match drinks. It also demonstrates that age had not curbed their hellraising habits — at one point O’Toole playfully rugby tackles Harris to the floor. And never, surely, has a line from the song, “I’ll sing no more now until I get a drink”, been delivered with such relish.
The Irish ballad was appropriate because they were supporting Munster against Northampton, but also because it was their song. For they had played leading roles in its emergence from being unknown beyond Irish musical circles to international popularity. Singers such as Bryan Ferry, Van Morrison and Joan Baez have recorded it, and Ed Sheeran referenced it in his hit song “Galway Girl”.
O’Toole and Harris discovered their shared love for “Carrickfergus” in the 1950s, and Harris added to the sparse lyrics known by his friend. But the song’s renaissance began when O’Toole introduced it to Dominic Behan —the musician, author and brother of playwright Brendan Behan —who recorded it in 1960 under the title “The Kerry Boat Song”. Behan wrote that O’Toole gave him two verses and a tune, to which Behan later composed a middle verse to expand the song, and published it.
Meanwhile, Irish folk artists The Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem recorded it in 1964 using the title “Carrickfergus” and a slightly different and more beautiful melody, which became its established modern form.
As with many ancient folk songs, its origins remain as opaque as Irish mist. Some identify it with an 18th-century air, “Do Bhí Bean Uasal” (“There Was a Noblewoman”), while others think it an amalgamation of songs. An illustration of the song’s fascination for so many can be found in the extraordinarily lengthy online discussions about its origin and meaning, some of which have lasted for years. One of its mysteries, however, seems to have been solved by one contributor’s detective work.
The song tells of a drunken Irish wanderer pining for the northern coastal town of Carrickfergus and a former sweetheart, but disparities in the lyrics puzzled many. The first verse begins: “I wish I was in Carrickfergus/ Only for nights in Ballygrant/ I would swim over the deepest ocean, the deepest ocean for my love to find.”
The final verse, however, switches illogically to Kilkenny, in distant southern Ireland. “And in Kilkenny it is reported/ On marble stone there as black as ink/ With gold and silver I did support her/ But I’ll sing no more now till I get a drink.”
According to the online debates, the likeliest explanation for this discrepancy lay not in Ireland, but Scotland — on the Isle of Islay. The island has a Ballygrant village in Kilmeny parish, where during the 18th and 19th centuries there were lead and silver mines that Irishmen voyaged to work in. Marble was also quarried, which provided Kilmeny churchyard’s black marble headstones.
“Kilmeny” was probably misinterpreted as “Kilkenny” in times past when songs were passed down verbally. By switching the names, the last verse and its references to black marble and silver make sense. The song, it seems, is about an Irish miner who found love in Kilmeny, only for her to die and be buried there, across “the deepest ocean”.
Behan’s championing of it was supported by recordings from Johnny McEvoy (1967) and The Dubliners (1975). Bryan Ferry brought it to a wider audience in 1978on his The Bride Stripped Barealbum, though his bloodless, mid-tempo rendition does it little justice. But 10 years later Van Morrison and The Chieftains made the track a masterclass in musical dramatics on Irish Heartbeat,their album of Irish folk songs.From an opening harp accompaniment, it builds gradually to singer and musicians in full flow, before subsiding to the sad denouement.
Inspired by this, Joan Baez recorded “Carrickfergus” a year later but with an overly intricate arrangement. The song’s melancholic nostalgia and glorious melody make it a likely choice for classical singers appealing to a broader audience, and Welsh artists Charlotte Church (2001), Bryn Terfel (2008) and Katherine Jenkins (2011) duly obliged with lush orchestral accompaniments. Ronan Keating released a bland, easy-listening offering in 2009, but Loudon Wainwrightrescued matters a year later in a recording for the US television series Boardwalk Empire.
US band 10,000 Maniacs upped the tempo appealingly in a 2015 folk-rock interpretation with fine vocals from violinist Mary Ramsey, whereas the following year Dexys slowed things down to perhaps too ponderous a pace.
Most recently, Morrison’s version graces the hit film Belfast, embellishing beautifully its theme of reluctant emigration and loss of home.
What are your memories of ‘Carrickfergus’? Let us know in the comments section below.
‘The Life of a Song Volume 2: The fascinating stories behind 50 more of the world’s best-loved songs’, edited by David Cheal and Jan Dalley, is published by Brewer’s.
Music credits: Columbia; Sanctuary Records; IML Irish Music Licensing Ltd; Virgin Records; Mercury; Discos Cada; Sony; Deutsche Grammophon; Taffia International/Warner; Polydor; Cleopatra Records; 100% Records/Warner
