St Patrick's Day 2025

Cobh, Cork glimpsed over Spike Island
(Photo: Simon Meeds)

Last week's Dragon Folk Club session had a St Patrick's Day theme being just two days before the actual date. This Friday there is no theme.

I am pleased to say that the new manager of The Bridge Inn, Mike, is looking after us very well and in particular keeping us warm - previously a bit of an issue for some visitors.

When listening to the songs from last week, bear in mind that though the obvious topics were Ireland or the Irish, I invited people to consider St Patrick's other patronages: Nigeria, Montserrat, Archdiocese of New York, Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Newark, Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Los Angeles, Boston, Rolla, Missouri, Loíza, Puerto Rico, Murcia (Spain), Clann Giolla Phádraig, engineers, paralegals, Archdiocese of Melbourne. He is also invoked against snakes and sins.

Colin, MC as usual, started us off with Steve Knightley's The Galway farmer, a timely tale of an Irish visitor to the Cheltenham Festival who puts a tidy sum on one particular horse.

Paul stayed in the same county with The Galway Shawl (roud 2737). A few of this week's videos are a bit personal to me. Mike shown here on guitar is a friend of mine, and Andy on mandolin is the player I told Denny of who I used to accompany on Bodhrán.

Denny continued the session with She moves through the fair (roud 861) and Simon completed the first rotation with Muirsheen Durkin (roud 9753). This last video is the first of several by The Boston Folk Orchestra, who aren't Irish, but several of it's current and past members attended the same school as I did, though not at the same time. This is from their 1978 cassette - remember those? In April 2025 the band celebrates its 50th anniversary.

Given the theme I didn't expect many additions this week to the Dragon database, but in fact there were four, and for the first I have an apology to make. I suggested that Denny's singing of Bold Robert Emmet (* round 3066 - Thomas Maguire) would not be new to the database, but as indicated by the asterisk I was wrong!

Next for the database was Colin's singing of The orange and the green (* Anthony Murphy).

Danny sang The Kipper Family's Bored of the dance (* Chris Sugden) and the final new song for the database came from Colin: Liverpool Lou (* Dominic Behan).

The ony song of the evening not found on YouTube and therefore not in the playlist linked from "a selection" below was Denny's King of the railways (Roy Duffield).

The final song of the evening, appropriately resulting in a sing-along, was Simon's Paddy lay back (roud 653).

Now listen to a selection of songs sung during this session.

(Number of people present - 4 of whom 4 performed)

A quorum was reached

Before I start the report of last week's Dragon Folk Club session it is important to mention that this Friday, 26 January, will be our annual Burns Night session. I can't promise you haggis, pipes nor even a sgain dubh but there will no doubt be a good helping of Scottish songs, some of which may even have connections with Rabbie himself.

I would like to thank Colin for providing a report on last week's session though a problem with my computer means I am writing this without direct access to it. Never mind, I have already created the playlist of songs and I think I remember most of the content.

Presidential Inauguration

The Mayor of Trumpton

A sadly low turn-out again for last week's session but at least we were five in the first half of the evening and there was some interesting back and forth of ad hoc themes. There was no official theme but this Wednesday is Burns' Night, so this Friday's theme (27 January) is all things Scottish or Burns - your presence is required.

The most popular mini-theme last week was the inauguration of President Trump. Some songs were thought appropriate and others were simply modified to fit. Colin was MC.

Steve C started the evening off with Old Shep (Red Foley). It was the song Elvis Presley sang at his first public performance, aged 10 on 3 October 1945 at the Mississippi-Alabama Fair and Dairy Show.