'Oh Danny boy the pipes, the pipes are calling...' It is now 100 years since Fred E. Weatherly published the iconic 'Danny Boy'. As part of the Explore Your Archive campaign, we invite you to join ITMA as it delves into its printed & sound collections to find the real story behind the song. We begin in the year 1910 ...
If you search the ITMA catalogues, you will find almost 1,500 references to 'Danny Boy' and its 'old irish air' in books, sheet music and as sound recordings that range from 78 rpm disks to CD. Some of these items have been digitised in their entirety by ITMA staff and can be viewed and heard online in our Digital Library as part of the Explore Your Archive campaign. The Danny Boy pieces we have selected are an example of the many treasures held in ITMA, in our premises at 73 Merrion Square and online in our Digital Library. We hope you will enjoy this short exhibition online and if possible to take the opportunity to visit 73 Merrion Square where the originals will be on display. But whether virtual or real we hope this story will lead you to discover more music, song & dance in Your Irish Traditional Music Archive.
The exhibition begins with Fred Weatherly's sheet music, the marriage of his words and a traditional Irish air. We then move backwards in time accompanying the great antiquarian collectors who captured the air from the musicians of their day and committed it to paper. We have also included a sound recording from the Glenn Miller Orchestra; a manuscript version from Sliabh Luachra fiddle player, Padraig O'Keeffe and some images of the main characters in our story.
The story of Danny Boy was featured in August 2013 on the RTÉ Nationwide television programme . To celebrate the centenary, Mary Kennedy paid a visit to ITMA where Director Nicholas Carolan showed her many of the items included in our exhibition. You can view this short programme on RTÉ's Century Ireland project.
We would like to thank the Friends of the Library, Trinity College Dublin, and Lisa Shields for permission to reproduce Dr Hugh Shields' article below.
For more information on Explore Your Archive please visit our news page.