I want to be straight with you before we start. I have sung Carrickfergus maybe four hundred times and I could not tell you, under oath, what it is actually ABOUT.
And I love it more for that.
It's a man, drunk, by the sea, wishing he could swim home to a love he probably can't reach. He says he'd swim the deepest ocean to be with her. Then in the next breath he admits he can't swim, the waters are too wide, and anyway he has no wings to fly. So now we're stuck. Beautiful image, instantly undercut. That's the whole song, really — gorgeous longing, then a shrug, then the bottle.
There's a verse later where the fella just goes, plain as anything, that he's drunk today but he's seldom sober. A handsome rover, town to town, sick now and his days are numbered. Lads. That's one of the most honest lines in any song I know. No metaphor. No dressing it up. Just a man telling you exactly where he's at. Gets me every single time.
So no — it doesn't all add up. The geography wanders, the story half-collapses, the verses don't quite belong to the same man. And the haze IS the song. Don't try to fix it.
A Bit of History
Right, history. Buckle in, because this one's murky even by folk standards, and I'm not going to pretend otherwise.
Carrickfergus is a real town. North coast, County Antrim, big Norman castle, lovely spot. The song's named for it but spends half its time somewhere else entirely (Kilkenny gets a name-check, which is the far side of the island — go figure).
Here's the thing that fascinates me. A lot of people who've dug into this reckon the song we sing now is stitched together from an OLDER Irish-language song, something along the lines of "Do Bhí Bean Uasal" (roughly, "there was a noblewoman"). And that older song may not have been about Carrickfergus at ALL — it may have been a wronged-lover, jilted sort of thing, set elsewhere, with the verses drifting and breaking apart over the years the way these things do. So the English version might be a translation that's half-remembered, with bits glued on from who knows where. Which would explain why it reads like a dream you can't fully recall in the morning.
The version most people know really took off in the 1960s when the singer and actor Peter O'Toole apparently passed it along, and Dominic Behan and others put it into wider circulation, and from there it became a standard. But that's the modern arrangement's journey — the bones underneath are much older and much harder to date. Anyone who hands you a tidy "written in such-and-such a year by so-and-so" is, I'd gently suggest, making it tidier than it is.
So: traditional. Public domain. Origins genuinely uncertain, possibly Irish-language at the root, definitely passed mouth to mouth for generations. I'd rather tell you "we're not sure" than invent a fact to sound clever.
Lyrics
Here's the version I sing. There are others — verses move around, words shift town to town, which after the history above will surprise nobody.
I wish I was in Carrickfergus Only for nights in Ballygrand I would swim over the deepest ocean Only for nights in Ballygrand
But the sea is wide and I cannot swim over And neither have I the wings to fly I wish I could meet a handsome boatman To ferry me over to my love and die
My childhood days bring back sad reflections Of happy times I spent so long ago My boyhood friends and my own relations Have all passed on now like the melting snow
But I'll spend my days in endless roaming Soft is the grass, my bed is free Ah, to be back now in Carrickfergus On that long road down to the sea
Now in Kilkenny it is reported On marble stones there as black as ink With gold and silver I would support her But I'll sing no more now till I get a drink
For I'm drunk today and I'm seldom sober A handsome rover from town to town Ah, but I'm sick now and my days are numbered So come all ye young men and lay me down
How to Sing It
This is a slow air. SLOW. Treat it like one.
The single biggest mistake I hear is people rushing it because they're nervous of the silences. Don't. The silences are doing half the work. Let the line end. Let the room breathe. A held breath in this song is worth more than three quick verses in a rowdier one.
Pitch it low and start it ALMOST under your breath, the way you'd talk to someone late at night. You build, but you build small — this isn't a song you belt, even on the "drunk today" verse. Especially not then. Sing that one quieter, if anything, like a confession. The contrast is what lands it.
It is NOT a singalong. Do not invite the room in on a chorus, because there isn't really one. This is a hush-the-pub song, a "everyone stop talking now" song. Same family of moment as The Parting Glass — you put it near the end of a night, when folk are soft and a bit sad and ready to feel something. Don't follow it with anything loud. Let it sit.
And if you want the full whiplash of an Irish session — go from the joyful cumulative chaos of our own Rattlin' Bog, everyone roaring the flea verse, straight into the heartbreak of this. That swing from daft to devastating in the space of one song is the whole entire point of a session. We contain multitudes, lads. We can sing about a flea on a feather and a dying drunk by the sea in the same hour and mean both.
One last thing. Nobody fully agrees what this song is about. Don't let that put you off. Sing it like YOU know, even if you don't. The not-knowing is the feeling.
Slán go fóill,
BogLord2002
P.S. — I sang this in the kitchen the other night, low, and Rattlin' the cat came in and sat on the windowsill facing the sea and stayed there the whole song. Probably the cold of the glass. Probably nothing. But he doesn't do that for the flea verse, I'll tell you that much.