Last year I posted some songs to mark St Patrick’s Day: I’m not Irish, but I’ve always loved their music. The post was tolerably well received so I thought I’d do it again, with a (mostly) different selection of tunes.

I’m starting with the same one as last year – the only repeat – as this brings together two icons of Irish music from the past fifty years, and it’s a damn fine tune too:

That was the opening track from an album that Van Morrison and The Chieftains joined up to make in 1988, called Irish Heartbeat. It is a fabulous album, which I bought at the time – in those days I got a lot of my music on cassettes, and I wore out the tape on this one! Highly recommended, if you don’t already know it.

The opening track on side two of that album was a version of a playground skipping song that had been popular with children for a hundred years or so. It has been recorded many times (including the Otava Yo version I gave you a few weeks ago) but for today here is one by another iconic Irish folk group:

This version is from The Dubliners’ album Live At Vicar Street, which was recorded at a concert in July 2006 and reached #53 in Ireland. They had first released it on their debut album, The Dubliners With Luke Kelly, all the way back in 1964. The song is very much a standard of Irish folk music, though it has travelled far around the world: versions with different locations in the lyrics were known in England in the 19th century, for example.

A favourite Irish band for me is The Pogues. Typically, their version of a traditional Irish song is taken at breakneck speed, and this collaboration with The Dubliners is fantastic:

This was originally a single in 1987, which was a #1 in Ireland and got to #8 in the UK. It was later added as a bonus track to a 2004 reissue of the band’s 1988 album If I Should Fall From Grace With God. A fun fact: though they are very much an Irish band only two of them were actually born there.

Over the years a number of Irish bands and singers have explored Celtic mythology in their music. This is one such, a band which has since been recognised as one of the founders of what became known as ‘Celtic rock’:

This was a song on Horslips’ second album, The Táin, which was released in late 1973. It was based on the Táin Bó Cúailnge (The Cattle Raid of Cooley), one of the most infamous legends of Early Irish literature, dealing with the war between Ulster and Connacht over a prize bull. That guitar riff is instantly recognisable to anyone who, like me, saw the band play live when the album came out: one of the better bookings made by the Social Secretary at UEA! They put on a great show, and prompted quite a few album sales on the night – including mine.

My final selection for today was actually written and originally performed by an American, Steve Earle, but the famous accordion player, Sharon Shannon, played on that recording and was instrumental (see what I did there?) in getting together this wonderful celebration of the joy of music, and it couldn’t be more Irish:

See what I mean? The overload of joy in that is wonderful to see: it must have been fantastic to be a part of that. If you stick with the video through the extended credits you will see that the song originally appeared on Steve Earle’s album Transcendental Blues, which was released in June 2000, peaking at #66 in the US and #32 in the UK. Mundy, who takes the lead vocal here, is an Irish singer who has had a #1 hit there with his cover version of the song. I don’t think it is a patch on the original, but he is popular there and this is a fitting way to bring today’s tunes to a close.

If you’re celebrating today, I hope you have a great day and that you don’t regret it tomorrow when the hangover kicks in 😉

Happy St Patrick’s Day! ☘️🎻🪗