Bryan Ferry brought it to a wider audience in 1978 on his The Bride Stripped Bare album, though his bloodless, mid-tempo rendition does it little justice. 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”.īehan’s championing of it was supported by recordings from Johnny McEvoy (1967) and The Dubliners (1975). By switching the names, the last verse and its references to black marble and silver make sense. “Kilmeny” was probably misinterpreted as “Kilkenny” in times past when songs were passed down verbally. Marble was also quarried, which provided Kilmeny churchyard’s black marble headstones. 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. “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.”Īccording to the online debates, the likeliest explanation for this discrepancy lay not in Ireland, but Scotland - on the Isle of Islay. The final verse, however, switches illogically to Kilkenny, in distant southern Ireland. 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 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. One of its mysteries, however, seems to have been solved by one contributor’s detective work. 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. Some identify it with an 18th-century air, “Do Bhí Bean Uasal ” (“There Was a Noblewoman”), while others think it an amalgamation of songs. 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.Īs with many ancient folk songs, its origins remain as opaque as Irish mist. 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. 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”. O’Toole and Harris discovered their shared love for “Carrickfergus” in the 1950s, and Harris added to the sparse lyrics known by his friend.
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