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.”