A musical tribute to love, loss, and the joy of life that perseveres, Danny Boy is one of those legendary standards that can squeeze a teardrop out of solid stone. The mystery surrounding the origin of its melody has never been definitively solved, but music historians have a hunch as to who is likely responsible for the unofficial anthem of the Irish countryside.
Limavady is a market town in County Londonderry, Northern Ireland, which lies seventeen miles east of Derry and fourteen southwest of Coleraine. Standing stoic and proud in the distance, Mt. Binevenagh presides like a queen over the pastoral landscape which surrounds her. Local historians say that it was on the very outskirts of the Limavady market in 1851 that Miss Jane Ross first heard the enchanting air (played by an “itinerant fiddler”) which would one day become “Danny Boy”.
Jane Ross hurriedly wrote down the notes she had devoted to memory, but when she rushed out into the marketplace to find the fiddler… they had disappeared. Jane Ross disappears from the narrative history at this point in the song’s chronological development, but it must be stressed how important her role in the preservation of a national musical treasure truly was. Had she not recorded the fiddler’s tune, the world might have been prematurely robbed of Danny Boy forever!
More than sixty years pass, as the music of that fateful morning is carried by the wind and traveling folk singers who learned it by heart. Across the Atlantic, the Colorado Gold Rush was in full swing. It was a sweltering day when Irish-born Margaret Enright Weatherly (known as Jess to her friends and family) happened to overhear some Irish miners playing the tune. Musicologists believe that these migrant workers may have had some roots in the Limavady area from which the song was first transcribed.
After asking one of the miners for the song’s name, she learned that it was simply referred to as a “Londonderry Air”. Immediately captivated by the melody, Jess wrote a letter to her brother-in-law, the lawyer Fred Weatherly, who was then residing in Somerset England. This letter included her faithful transcription of the Limavady original, and so the Londonderry Air made its way “across the pond” once more.
Three years prior to receiving Jess’ letter, Fred Weatherly had been working steadily away at a hobby of his: composing lyrics and pairing them with memorable music. But there was a problem: his most potent set of lyrics just wouldn’t fit with the melody he had intended to pair it with! He would toy with different melodies on and off until 1913, when Londonderry Air arrived like a muse sent from heaven. Like Jane Ross before her, Jess Weatherly’s transcription continued the catalyst which assured the combination of Fred’s evocative lyrics with Londonderry Air’s melody. After adjusting the rhyme and meter of his lyrics to fit this new tune, Fred Weatherly was able to create “Danny Boy” as we know and love it today.
After their chance meeting at a gathering, Weatherly gave the newly-written song to vocalist Elsie Griffin, whose rendition immediately garnered international acclaim for the piece (and made Weatherly a household name). Ernestine Schumann-Heink produced the first known recording of Danny Boy, and it would go on to be sung by such greats as Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash, and Mario Lanza. But it must again be stressed that such a happening could never have come to pass without the combined efforts of Margaret “Jess” Enright Weatherly and Jane Ross. They are the true and unsung heroes of Danny Boy’s infamy, along with the fiddler who first enraptured Miss Ross at Limavady.
But who was this mysterious fiddler? Heated debate amongst music scholars of the county Londonderry region has turned up one name… that of one Jimmy McCurry. Originally from Myroe, Jimmy was a traveling musician who didn’t let blindness stop him from becoming a superb violinist. He regularly played at the weekly market in Limavady, and was confirmed to have been residing somewhere in the town in 1851. The Londonderry Air which was copied down by Jane Ross certainly shows significant similarities to other known pieces of McCurry’s. So, until more information presents itself to the musical folklorists of Ireland, we’ll just have to take their word for it!