Danny Boy Legacy
Danny Boy Legacy
On Limavady's Main Street you will see a sculpture created by the artist Philip Flanagan to commemorate Jane Ross and the town’s connection to the world- renown melody ‘Danny Boy’ or the ‘Londonderry Air’. Jane was an avid collector of unpublished Irish melodies and one day heard the tune being played on a fiddle outside the Burn and Laird shipping office, opposite where she lived, by a fiddler known locally as blind Jimmy McCurry (1830-1910) who resided in Limavady workhouse. Jane wrote down the notes of tune which she later passed on as part of her collection to George Petrie who published the air in 1855 with the title of ‘Londonderry Air’.
The lyrics to the air that gave it the name happened in a roundabout way, the melody was heard by a Margaret Weatherly being played by gold prospectors in Colorado in 1912, some say they were from the Roe Valley area and had taken the tune with them. She was so taken with the melody that she acquired a copy and sent it to her brother-in-law Fred Weatherly who resided in Somerset, England and wrote lyrics as a pastime. He had already written lyrics for a song entitled ‘Danny Boy’. On hearing the air the lyrics he had worked perfectly with the tune and so was born the anthem which the town now claims fame to and celebrates each year with a Danny Boy Festival.