Jimmy Mo Mhìle Stòr

Jimmy, My Darling Sweet
This is a traditional Gaelic song performed by Kathleen MacInnes. It appears on her album Òg-Mhadainn Shamhraidh releas more...

This is a traditional Gaelic song performed by Kathleen MacInnes. It appears on her album Òg-Mhadainn Shamhraidh released in 2006. There are also many versions of the song in Irish. I’m not certain where she sources this Scottish Gaelic version. Kathleen MacInnes was born and brought up on South Uist, Western Isles, in a Gaelic-speaking home, and has enjoyed a career in television and the theatre as an actress, presenter and singer.

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
For faraway places
He'll never return
Until he sees the wide world around
When I'll see my love coming
I'll give him all my love
And smother him with honey kisses
Oh Jimmy my darling

My father and mother
They never can give me ease
I'm tired and fed up
And tormented with this life
I gave my love to the fairest
Without asking I kissed him
And he went off to sea
Oh Jimmy my darling

I'll go to the woods
And spend there all of my time
With no one around
Listening to birdsong
Beaneath the rowan tree
With flowers aplenty there
Giving love to the most heavenly
To Jimmy my darling
(2x)

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Chords

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