I dare say I’m biased, but I’ll bet there is no country on earth that has better songs than the Irish. There are hundreds of them and every one a gem. They come in all varieties: Songs of the old sod like “Galway Bay” and “Mountains of Mourne,” songs of the ladies like “Molly Malone” and “Black Velvet Band,” humorous ditties like Val Doonican’s “Delany’s Donkey” and “Paddy McGinty’s Goat,” rebel songs like “Kevin Barry” and “The Rising of the Moon,” and beautiful lilts like “Danny Boy” and my favorite, “Carrick Fergus.”
In Birkenhead, the town I grew up in, an Irish Catholic enclave in northwest England, every church had a hall where the locals gathered on Saturday evening to sing the old songs. It didn’t take more than a pint of stout to coax someone to stand on the stage and sing solo. My grandfather Peter Corcoran didn’t need coaxing. He would sing “I’ll Take You Home Again Kathleen” with such passion that made people weep. He would keep singing until his wife, Hannah would drag him off the stage.
(You can learn more about Hannah and Peter in my novel Hannah's Left Hook, which will be released March 31 by Garland Press.)