Paddy's Green Shamrock Shore: A Song History
"Paddy's Green Shamrock Shore" is an Irish emigrant's song: the singer sails out of Derry for America, describes a punishing crossing, and looks ahead to coming home one day to marry his sweetheart.[1] No author is known, and the Ballad Index gives 1927, in Sam Henry's collection Songs of the People, as its earliest date, while noting that Moulden's Thousands Are Sailing suggests the song goes back to about 1825.[1] It is number 1419 in the Roud index of folk songs.[1][2]
Ludolf Backhuysen, Ships at Sea, pen and brown ink and brush and gray and brown wash, 1600s. Sailing ships on a rough sea, shown for the crossing the song describes; it has no connection to the song.
The song was never common in oral tradition; the Roud index records only eight examples, most traceable to Sam Henry and nearly all from the Derry and Donegal area.[2] The folk revival gave it a wider audience through recordings by Packie Byrne (1969), the Battlefield Band (1976), Paul Brady on Welcome Here Kind Stranger (1978), Five Hand Reel (1979), and Frank Harte, who included it on The Hungry Voice (2004), his album of songs about the Great Famine.[2] The Battlefield Band's 1976 sleeve notes tie it to emigration after the Famine, whereas the Ballad Index reports a suggested date of about 1825, so the sources consulted here differ on its era.[1][2]
"Paddy's Green Shamrock Shore" is one of the 35 pieces in Neal Hellman's Mountain Dulcimer Arrangements From Both Sides Of The Atlantic, a book of mountain dulcimer arrangements that notates hammer-ons, pull-offs and pitch bends, published by Fingers Of Steel.[3]
Sources
- The Traditional Ballad Index: "Paddy's Green Shamrock Shore".
- Mainly Norfolk: "Paddy's Green Shamrock Shore".
- Fingers Of Steel: "Neal Hellman, Mountain Dulcimer Arrangements From Both Sides Of The Atlantic".
- Image: Ludolf Backhuysen, Ships at Sea, pen and brown ink and brush and gray and brown wash, 1600s. The Cleveland Museum of Art.