Donegal & Back!

Songs, ballads & whistle tunes from Packie Byrne

Packie Manus Byrne was born in 1917 on a small isolated farm in rural Donegal. He learned songs from his family and relatives as well as from other local singers. In those days It was not unusual to have a soot-blackened fiddle hanging over the hearth in the kitchen, but Packie took to the tin whistle: "I preferred something I could carry in my inside pocket!" In 1965 he visited his first English folk festival, and the newly emerging folk revival took him to its heart.

This album represents some of Packie’s finest work, mainly taken from his Veteran cassette ‘From Donegal and Back!’ plus the addition of three tracks from his seminal Topic Records album ‘Songs of a Donegal Man’, and three tracks which have never previously been released.

CD Listing

  1. The Creel (2.43)
  2. Lament to the Moon (3.57)
  3. Meet an Irishman (3.01)
  4. Air - Slieve Na Mban (3.35)
  5. The Highwayman Outwitted (4.45)
  6. Jig -The Dawn Pack (1.16)
  7. Come, Come Away (2.31)
  8. The Shirt my Father Wore (3.37)
  9. Where is my Norah (4.36)
10. Reel - An Cualain Coo (1.17)
11. The Big Ship (1.57)
12. McCaffery (6.06)
13. Jig - Forgetting the Lesson (1.43)
14. The Barnyard (4.04)
15. The Leather Britches (4.19)
16. The Drummer Boy of Waterloo (3.19)
17. The Shores of Lough Erne (3.50)
18. Reel - Blow the Bellows (1.24)
19. Cod Liver Oil (3.01)
20. Air - Un-named (3.28)
21. The Rich Man's Daughter (5.53)
22. Rambling Irishman (2.19)