Londonderry Air (Danny Boy)

About this arrangement

The famous Irish air, with Frederic Weatherly’s words “Danny Boy”. It is a long, wide tune: the right hand reaches from the A below middle C up to the high E of “here” in bar 13, so the hand has to move several times. Every phrase starts with a pickup of three quavers (eighth notes), “Oh, Dan-ny”, and ends on a long note that needs its full count. In bars 2, 6, 10 and 14 two notes share one word, “call-ing”, “fall-ing”, “mea-dow”, “sha-dow”. The left hand plays a bass note and a chord on each beat pair, through C, F, A minor, G7 and D7, which brings an F sharp in bars 4 and 12.

Practice tip: Hum each line before you play it: the tune breathes in four long phrases. Practise bars 13 and 14 slowly, so the climb to the top E and the fall back to middle C stay smooth.

The words

Oh, Danny boy, the pipes, the pipes are calling from glen to glen, and down the mountain side. The summer's gone, and all the roses falling, it's you, it's you must go and I must bide. But come ye back when summer's in the meadow, or when the valley's hushed and white with snow. It's I'll be here in sunshine or in shadow, oh, Danny boy, oh, Danny boy, I love you so!

A short history

The tune was collected in County Londonderry by Jane Ross of Limavady, who sent it to the collector George Petrie with the note that it was “very old”. Petrie printed it without a name in The Ancient Music of Ireland in 1855, which is why it is still called simply the Londonderry Air. No earlier source for it has ever been found.

The words are by Frederic Weatherly, an English lawyer and songwriter who died in 1929. He wrote “Danny Boy” in 1910 to a different tune, and in 1913 fitted it to the Londonderry Air after his sister-in-law sent him a copy. The singer Ernestine Schumann-Heink made the first recording in 1915.

Percy Grainger set the melody as “Irish Tune from County Derry” in 1902, and later arranged it for wind band, and it is played for Northern Ireland at the Commonwealth Games.

Quick facts

Tune

Traditional (Irish, printed 1855)

Words

Frederic Weatherly, 1913

Key

C major

Time signature

4/4

Length

16 bars and a pickup

Tempo

Slowly, crotchet = 66

Difficulty

Level 5: A wider range (piece 158 of 201)

Type

Folk song

Hands

Both: melody in the right hand, chords in the left

Copyright

Public domain tune; arrangement by Digital Greenhouse, free for personal and classroom use

Questions and answers