Jimmy mo mhíle stór

Jimmy, My Darling Sweet
This is a traditional Irish song performed by The Chieftains and The Rankin Family. It appears on the The Chieftains's a more...

This is a traditional Irish song performed by The Chieftains and The Rankin Family. It appears on the The Chieftains’s album Tears of Stone released in 1999.

Joe Heany

This is not a Connemara song, but comes – as the language indicates – from Munster. Normally, Joe would make changes in a Munster text so that the song would sit more naturally within his own dialect framework; here, however, he makes few such changes, and given the recording circumstances, he may have been using a printed source when he recorded this. ‘Jimmy Mo Mhíle Stór’ was not part of his standard repertoire, and he made no commercial recordings of it.

P W Joyce, “Old Irish Folk Music and Songs” (1909):

“The air of this song -a lovely tender simple melody – was published for the first time by me in my Ancient Irish Music, It is well known all over Munster, wher it is also called Drahaareen O Mochree [Dearthairín-ó Mo Chroí] ….The Irish words of Jemmy mo Veela Sthore may be seen in my Irish Music and Song.”

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Irish

English

A year ago
my heart's love left me
and he won't return
until he's seen the world
when I see him how
I'll rush into his arms
and smother him with honey-kisses,
Jimmy my darling sweet

My mother and my father
Are wrangling with me always
I'm totally fed up
And tormented by this life
I gave my love to the fairest,
The handsomest one
And he boarded a ship,
Jimmy my darling sweet

These twelve months and better
My darling has left these shore
He ne'er will come back
'Til he travels the globe all o'er
And when he returns with laurels
I'll crown him all o'er
He's the finest of lovers,
Sweet Jimmy my darling sweet

I'll go to the woods
And there live the rest of my life
With no one around,
Listening to the warbling of birds
Beneath the rowan tree
With grass a plenty there
And giving my love to him,
Jimmy my darling sweet

He's the finest of lovers,
Sweet Jimmy my darling sweet

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Chords

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