As regular readers of Chimesfreedom know, I am a Steve Earle fan. So you might imagine my delight a few years ago while visiting a shop in Galway on my first trip to Ireland, on the radio I heard Steve Earle’s “Galway Girl” from Transcendental Blues (2000), one of my favorite CDs. In this day and age of worldwide communications and travel, it should not be surprising that an artist is popular around the world. And Earle often has talked about his love of the country and Galway, in particular, explaining that he finds “poetry in the rocks of Ireland.” Still, hearing the familiar song contributed to making the island inhabited by some of my ancestors seem even more like home.
In the performance above, Earle is joined by Sharon Shannon, a fiddle and button accordion player who recorded the song with Earle on her own CD, Diamond Mountain Sessions (2001). In the video above, she plays the accordion, and she plays with a number of artists in different versions including the below version with Mundy. Her recording with Mundy became a national hit, and you can see why this rousing version is so popular.
Mundy and others have performed the song in the Irish Gaelic language. I found one version without much description, so here are “Kevin Mundy and Keith” (neither apparently related to the Mundy from the above video) performing “Cailín na Gaillimhe.”
With Earle’s song becoming an Irish classic, it shows that a great song is not limited by borders. Have a safe and happy St. Patrick’s Day.
What is your favorite Irish tune? Leave your two cents in the comments.
