Londonderry Air
anthem of Northern Ireland. It is also popular among the Irish diaspora.
The air was collected by Jane Ross of Limavady, County Londonderry, and was first published by the Society for the Preservation and Publication of the Melodies of Ireland in 1855 in The Ancient Music of Ireland produced by George Petrie, who labelled it an anonymous air.
Many different lyrics have been set to the music. The most popular are Danny Boy ("Oh Danny Boy, the pipes, the pipes are calling") written by the English lawyer, Frederick Edward Weatherly, in 1910 and set to the tune in 1913. The words are a love song of a women to a man, though they are often mistakenly taken to be a call to arms, or a rebel song.
The first lyrics to be set to the music were probably The Confession of Devorgilla ("Oh! shrive me, father - haste, haste, and shrive me").
The tune was first called Londonerry Air in 1894 when Katherine Tynan Hinkson set the words of her Irish Love Song to it:
- Would God I were the tender apple blossom
- That floats and falls from off the twisted bough
- To lie and faint within your silken bosom
- Within your silken bosom as that does now.
- Or would I were a little burnish'd apple
- For you to pluck me, gliding by so cold
- While sun and shade you robe of lawn will dapple
- Your robe of lawn, and you hair's spun gold.
- Yea, would to God I were among the roses
- That lean to kiss you as you float between
- While on the lowest branch a bud uncloses
- A bud uncloses, to touch you, queen.
- Nay, since you will not love, would I were growing
- A happy daisy, in the garden path
- That so your silver foot might press me going
- Might press me going even unto death.
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