Danny Boy is a beautiful song, but it is tinged with sadness, too.
I also like the little bits of mystery that cling to it.

Danny Boy

Oh, Danny Boy, the pipes, the pipes are calling
From glen to glen and down the mountain side.
The summer's gone and all the roses falling.
It's you, it's you must go and I must bide.
 
But come ye back when summer's in the meadow
Or when the valley's hushed and white with snow.
It's I'll be here in sunshine or in shadow.
Oh, Danny Boy, oh Danny Boy, I love you so!
 
But when ye come, and all the flow'rs are dying,
If I am dead, as dead I well may be,
Ye'll come and find the place where I am lying
And kneel and say an Ave there for me.
 
And I shall hear, though soft you tread above me,
And all my grave will warmer, sweeter be,
For you will bend and tell me that you love me,
And I shall sleep in peace until you come to me.
 
- Frederick Edward Weatherly



  • Danny Boy is more or less universally considered to be an Irish song and is sung countless times each St. Patrick's Day, but Fred Weatherly was an English songwriter and lawyer who apparently never set foot in Ireland. And pipes and glens are more often linked to Scotland than to Ireland.

  • People often assume that Danny Boy is a very old song, and they credit it as "Traditional", but in fact, Weatherly didn't compose it until 1910. The song wasn't successful until he abandoned his own music in 1913 and revised the lyrics to fit a melody his sister-in-law sent him from the United States.

  • The tune his sister-in-law sent him is of uncertain origin and appears to be an Irish harp melody from the 1600s. More than 100 songs have been set to this music.

  • It is difficult to find two versions of Danny Boy that match. In fact, even the original sheet music published by Boosey & Co. of New York and London in 1913 (and priced at 60¢) contained a minor inconsistency. Where the lyrics are printed by themselves, in the form of a poem, Line 8 is
    "Oh, Danny Boy, I love you, love you so!"
    but where the lyrics are set to music, the line is
    "Oh, Danny Boy, oh Danny Boy, I love you so!"

  • Weatherly, a highly successful songwriter who wrote and published more than 1500 "hits", never said who was singing this song to Danny Boy. Speculation includes a mother to a son, a father to a son, a girl to her beau ... but no one really knows.