Where My Eileen Is Waiting: A Song History

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"Where My Eileen Is Waiting" is sung by a light-hearted lover who has no doubt that the girl he left behind is still waiting for him, and who thinks back to the tears of their goodbye.[1] The official Irish charts site run by IRMA lists a Johnny McEvoy single on the Hawk label, under the title "My Eileen," that peaked at number two.[2] Anna McGoldrick recorded it as well, on her 1979 Bonus Records LP Come All Ye... and Sing with Anna McGoldrick, a copy of which is held by the Ward Irish Music Archives.[3]

A man in a straw hat and blue coat stands on a wharf reading a posted notice for emigrants returning from New York to Dublin, with ships' masts behind him.

Erskine Nicol (published by Currier & Ives), Homeward Bound (New York), hand-colored lithograph, ca. 1860. An Irishman reading a notice of a ship sailing for Dublin, shown for the song's lover who is sure the girl he left behind is still waiting; the lithograph has no connection to the song.

Instrumentalists play it as a waltz.[1] The Center for Irish Music, which put it on its 2020 list of common tunes, says it reached the Twin Cities Irish community long ago and has been a favorite of accordion player Martin McHugh, who led the Northern Star Ceili Band.[1] McHugh recorded it with the HiBs on 40 Acre Notch (about 2008) and again on his own 2013 album The Master's Choice, both times following the tune "Mo Theaghlach."[4] Irishtune.info, which files it as "My Eileen Is Waiting for Me," sets it out as a D-major waltz of two sixteen-bar strains, each repeated, while the Center notes that players vary the repeats and quotes its director, Norah Rendell, that song airs played as tunes have "really no standard."[4][1]

None of the sources consulted here says who wrote the song or when, and Linda Brockinton, whose listing calls her a National Dulcimer Champion, credits it simply as traditional Irish in Simply Dulcimer, a download of sixteen of her fingerstyle dulcimer settings drawn largely from Irish and Scottish music.[5]

Our book that contains the song "Where My Eileen Is Waiting"

Sources

  1. Center for Irish Music: "My Eileen Is Waiting For Me Waltz" (2020 Common Tunes).
  2. IRMA (Irish Charts): "Johnny Mc Evoy, My Eileen".
  3. Ward Irish Music Archives: "Come all ye...and sing with Anna McGoldrick".
  4. Irishtune.info: "My Eileen Is Waiting for Me".
  5. Linda Brockinton: "Simply Dulcimer".
  6. Image: Erskine Nicol (published by Currier & Ives), Homeward Bound (New York), hand-colored lithograph, ca. 1860. The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

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