Take Me Back Where My Memories Remain: 5 Songs on Leaving Ireland

This week's songs are from T. Duggins, the Pogues, Fontaines D.C., CMAT, and Thin Lizzy

🍀 Happy St. Patrick’s Day! 🍀

I wouldn’t be here if a bunch of people on both parents’ sides didn’t leave Ireland to pursue opportunity in America. My great grandparents on my mother’s side were born there.

In his eulogy for my grandfather, who fought a lengthy battle with Alzheimer’s, my uncle recalled that even with his memory long gone, my grandfather would sing. One of the songs that he would sing was “That Tumble Down Shack in Athlone,” popularized by Bing Crosby in 1952, but written 34 year earlier. The song is about a person longing for the home they grew up in, that now sits across the ocean.

… I'm a long way from home and my thoughts ever roam
To ould Erin far over the sea,
For my heart it is there, where the skies are so fair
And ould Ireland is calling for me.

Nostalgic longing for home and comforting memories, delivered with the familiar warmth, was Bing Crosby’s specialty. Its such a strong paring of singing style and song choice that it still resonates today (“White Christmas”).

In the moderate amount of international travel I’ve done, no matter where I’ve gone, there are Irish people—most of them on the job. Whether they’ve left for jobs, adventure, opportunity, or another reason altogether, they are a people that leave home, but rarely in their hearts. The adoration for their homeland is so strong it trickles down through generations.

Here are 5 songs from Irish artists on leaving Ireland.

“When I come out on the road of a morning, when I have had a night’s sleep and perhaps a breakfast, and the sun lights a hill on the distance, a hill I know I shall walk across an hour or two thence, and it is green and silken to my eye, and the clouds have begun their slow, fat rolling journey across the sky, no land in the world can inspire such love in a common man.” - Frank Delaney

T. Duggins - “(City of) Chicago”

I remember a number of St. Patrick’s Day dinners in which my dad would remind us as to why our ancestors came to America: the potato famine. Over 2 million people left Ireland between 1845 and 1855.

Originally performed by Christy Moore and written by his brother Barry Moore (who performs as Luka Boom), “(City of) Chicago” recounts that exodus, and suggests what they left behind was never far from their memory.

They spread throughout the nation, they rode the railroad cars
Brought their songs and music to ease their lonely hearts

To the city of Chicago, as the evening shadows fall
There are people dreaming of the hills of Donegal

Here, it’s performed a capella by T. Duggins aka Tony Duggins, lead singer of the seminal Chicago Irish band the Tossers. I’ve seen the Tossers perform in bars, in rock clubs, and in a tent pitched in the parking lot of the Irish-American Heritage Center, and they never disappoint. However, seeing Tony Duggins at the Beat Kitchen to celebrate the release of Undone, his only solo album, was one of the more memorable live music experiences I can recall. He performed with no accompaniment other than a pint of Guinness, and occasionally a mandolin, and commanded the stage throughout. Duggins’ version sounds ominous—sung less like a lament, and more like ghost story.

“I’m an Irish poet. I always have been and always will be. It’s not a transferable part of who I am. Nor is it alterable. So much of a poet’s formation has to do with rootedness, not just in a place but in a past. For good and ill, I’m constructed by that past, from the journey of those events and the struggle of that history. There’s no way of unwriting that and none of unliving it”. - Eavan Boland

The Pogues - “Thousands Are Sailing”

On “Thousands Are Sailing,” the Pogues pick up the ghost story from “(City of) Chicago” right in the opening lines.

The island, it is silent now
But the ghosts still haunt the waves
And the torch lights up a famished man
Who fortune could not save

Although it may seem like the song is about the mass migration of the 1840s, Philip Chevron actually wrote it about the wave of migration in the 1980s. Rather than expressing bitterness or good riddance, the song acknowledges a sense of loss to Ireland before going on to celebrate emigrants and their descendants: Brendan Behan, George M. Cohan, and John F. Kennedy. While the big post-chorus instrumental is when the song really shines, I love how drummer Andrew Ranken jumps just ahead of the beat in the pre-chorus and MacGowan is singing just out of range. They’re striving for something beyond their reach, celebrating the attempt, and dancing for those that made it.

“When I die, Dublin will be written in my heart.” - James Joyce

Fontaines D.C. - “Boys in the Better Land”

“Dublin in the rain is mine” is the first line on Fontaine’s D.C.’s Dogrel, and the final song is “Dublin City Sky.” The “D.C.” stands for “Dublin City,” to avoid conflict with another band named Fontaines. They’re a proud Dublin band. Yet, none of the members of the band are originally from there. They get to take an outsider’s insider perspective of Ireland. Here, they’ve throw two different vantage points on the same idea.

If you're a rock star, porn star, superstar
Doesn't matter what you are
Get yourself a good car, get out of here

One person’s taken the advice and just arrived; the other has been giving the advice to the people that live there. Is Ireland the idyllic green pasture you see in the travel ads? Is it a cobbled farmland young people flee, seeking opportunity beyond its borders? Or is it both and neither? Fontaines D.C. sped up the tune when they re-recorded it for Dogrel, turning it into a rollicking shambles and a sneering good time, like a shot of whiskey with a bit of vinegar mixed in.

“No prospect, no prospect, little prospect – the future was blank and bleak. As the Irish joke had it at the time, the wolf was at the door, howling to get out.” - Fintan O’Toole

CMAT - “Nashville”

CMAT, aka Ciara Mary-Alice Thompson, is an Irish singer performing American country music. As I was saying about Fontaines D.C. having it both ways in “Boys in a the Better Land,” CMAT can roll up songs like “Lord Let That Tesla Crash” and “The Jamie Oliver Petrol Station” and dress like Katy Perry joined the B52s, but still kick out blistering country songs like Lydia Loveless.

"Sadness is in the bones of country music. In the bones of even the happiest country music is just, like, pure sadness and abject misery and confusion at the human condition. These are all the topics that occupy my brain the most …It's a very Irish thing."

On “Nashville,” CMAT inverts the “Irish Goodbye.” As she grapples with depression and her country star dreams, the song suggests her way out would be to “tell everybody I’m moving to Nashville” in order to “get all [her] goodbyes out of the way.” It’s tragic and sad and thanks to that big chorus, she makes it sound grand—like any great country song.

“Everything I do or say comes from the fact I was born and raised in Ireland. But we go out into the world as human beings and individuals on earth.” - Luka Boom

Thin Lizzy - “Vagabond of the Western World”

Doing their own version of an Irish traditional, Thin Lizzy landed their first hit with “Whiskey in a Jar” in 1972. The band was pressured to keep on with the rock versions of trad Irish music. They rebuffed most of those suggestions, but would record a Hendrix-inspired version of “Danny Boy” (released as “Dan” under the name Funky Junction), and many years later would bring in elements of “Danny Boy,” “Shenandoah,” and “It’s A Long Way To Tipperary” (among many other Irish myths, artists, and imagery) into “Roisin Dubh (Black Rose): A Rock Legend.”

In Going My Way (1944), Bing Crosby performed “Too-Ra-Loo-Ra-Loo-Ral (That's an Irish Lullaby),” a Tin Pan Alley song of a child hoping to hear their mother’s song one more time. Thin Lizzy weaves that lullaby into “Vagabonds of the Western World,” an otherwise heavy blues track, likely about Phil Lynott’s absent father.

Gave a girl a baby boy
He said "This child is my pride and joy"
"I'm busy running wild and free"
"Make sure he grows up like me"
And I'm a vagabond

He takes aim at the man for running out on his family, chasing instead the need to “run wild and free,” and finds the same impulse in himself. Whether it’s running from something or to something, leaving is a calling.

Thanks for reading. Enjoy listening.