Carrickfergus: A Song History

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"Carrickfergus" is named for an ancient town on the northern shore of Belfast Lough, but it is a love lament and not a local history[1]: the singer longs to cross the water to a beloved and, having lost her, turns to drink[2]. Its lines travel between songs. The Traditional Ballad Index points to a strongly composite text in Peacock's collection, "Love is Lovely," which starts with a verse perhaps from "Peggy Gordon," borrows the chorus of "Waly Waly (The Water Is Wide)," and ends with "Carrickfergus" material[2][3]; "Peggy Gordon" is also found as "Maggie Gordon"[3]. In a 1999 album note, the singer John Wright went further, describing "Carrickfergus" as a localised Irish form of "The Water Is Wide" that shares floating verses with it[1]. The Index also observes that the piece is often heard as an instrumental, though it was probably a song first[2].

Watercolor of a calm Irish harbour with a sailing ship, small boats and a hillside town under a cloudy sky

Robert Charles Dudley, Valentia in 1857-1858 at the Time of the Laying of the Former Cable, watercolor over graphite with touches of gouache, 1865. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Public domain (CC0). An Irish harbour shown for atmosphere; it is not Carrickfergus.

The earliest recording in Mainly Norfolk's survey is Dominic Behan's: he sang it as "The Kerry Boat Song" on his 1961 Folklore album The Irish Rover, and in 1965 gave three verses under the title "The Kerry Boatman" in his book Ireland Sings and on its companion Pye album[1][2]. In his note Behan credited the actor Peter O'Toole, who had sung it to him at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon; as Behan told it, the song then had only an opening and a close, and he "gave it the middle it has now"[1]. The Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem recorded it as "Carrickfergus" on their 1964 Columbia LP The First Hurrah![1][4], and a long run of recordings followed, from Five Hand Reel in 1977 to the present[1].

What came before that is uncertain. An account from O'Toole's agency, relayed in 2000 by John Moulden and reprinted by Mainly Norfolk, says O'Toole heard most of the song in 1946 from a Niall Stack, who called it "Molly Bán," and later added to and altered it from a version Richard Harris sang to him in 1957; a bracketed aside printed with the account dismisses it as theatrical, and it should be treated with caution[1]. The place names are debated too. In an IrishCentral opinion piece, Niall O'Dowd endorsed an online contributor's argument that the song points to Ballygrant on Islay, whose quarry was once its main industry, and suggested that its "Kilkenny" may be a mishearing of Kilmeny, the Islay parish containing Ballygrant[5]; the group The Haar presented the Islay reading as recent scholarship on their 2022 album[1]. In the sources consulted here, none of these explanations is settled.

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Sources

  1. Mainly Norfolk (Reinhard Zierke): "Carrickfergus".
  2. The Traditional Ballad Index: "Carrickfergus".
  3. The Traditional Ballad Index: "Peggy Gordon".
  4. New York Public Library Research Catalog: "The first hurrah! [sound recording]".
  5. IrishCentral (Niall O'Dowd): ""Carrickfergus" - the truth about the lyrics to one of Ireland's most haunting ballads".