Saturday, March 08, 2008

Make It A Lifetime Ban

Give it up for Foley's Pub in Manhattan. Management has banned any and all singing of Danny Boy for the month of March.

It's a wretched song, full of smarmy Victorian sentiments that wail about death and separation and when you come back for me I'll be dead and buried and let's have a good cry.

The song is popular with Irish-American politicians who can't quite hit all the notes but by God they won't be made to shut it. And they have to trot it out every year for St. Patrick's Day, like it's some kind of holiday carol.

There's more than enough sad songs in the Irish songbook, tunes that were actually written by Irish people. Forget the Danny Boy nonsense. It was penned by a Brit.

Favor the Shinners? Warble a few stanzas of Only Our Rivers Run Free and there'll not be a dry eye in the house. Thinking of romance? You'll melt a girl's heart with an on-key rendition of The Grey Lakes of Loughrea.

Please. No more pipes a'callin' from glen to glen and down the mountainside. Try a bit of this instead:

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