Annotation:Pat Murphy the Piper

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PAT MURPHY THE PIPER. AKA - "Paddy the Piper (3)." Irish, Air (9/8 time). D Major. Standard tuning (fiddle). AB. The air is the vehicle for a comic song, also called "Paddy the Piper," dating from the 1790's and printed in numerous 19th century songsters. Samuel Lover, writing in the 1858, remarked (Lyrics of Ireland), "This was a popular song some half-century ago, and I have heard that it was a favourite one among those of the once-celebrated 'Jack Johnson,' or, as he was often called, 'Irish Johnson.'" The lyric, as printed in The Dublin Comic Songster (185?, p. 40), goes:

When I was a boy in my father's mud edifice,
Tender and bare as a pig in the sty,
Out at the door, as I looked with a steady phiz,
Who but Pat Murphy the piper come by!
Says Paddy, "But few play
This music; can you play?"
Says I, "I can't tell, for I never did try."
Then he told me that he had a charm,
To make the pipes prettily speak,
So he squeezed a bag under his arm,
And sweetly they set up a squeak,
With mey farrala larrala loo;
Oh hone! how he handled the drone,
And then such sweet music he blew,
'Twould have melted the heart of a stone.

"Your pipe," says I, "Paddy, so neatly comes over me,
Naked I'll wander, wherever it blows,
And if that my father should try to recover me,
Sure it won't be by describing my clothes;
For the music I hear now,
Takes hold of my ear now,
And leads me all over the world by the nose.
So I followed his bagpipe so sweet,
And sung as I leaped like a frog,
"Adieu to my family seat,
So pleasantly placed in a bog."
With my Farrala larrala loo, &c.

Full five years I follow'd him, nothing could sunder us,
Till he one morning had taken a sup,
And slipp'd from a bridge, in a river, right under us,
Souce to the bottom, just like a blind pup.
I roar'd and I bawl'd out,
And lustily call'd out,
Oh, Paddy, my friend! don't you mean to come up?
He was dead as a nail in a door.
Poor Paddy was laid on the shelf.
So I took up his pipes on the shore,
And now I've set up for myself,
With my farrala larrala loo;
To be sure I have not got the knack
To play farrala larrala loo,
Aye, and boderoo dideroo whack.

O'Neill prints a version of the song air as "Paddy the Piper (3)."

Source for notated version:

Printed sources: Galwey (Old Irish Croonauns), 1910; No. 20, p. 17. Roche (Collection of Traditional Irish Music, vol. 2), 1912; No. 337, p. 59.

Recorded sources:

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