Sit With This Ballad For Awhile

McNamara and Shanahan

Where It Lives

There’s a particular hush that falls when someone starts a slow song about local loss. That hush is exactly where McNamara and Shanahan belongs. Folks from West Clare — Doonbeg, Ennis and the little roads between — carried the words and the story for decades. It’s a song that arrived at sing-sessions the way rain arrives off the Atlantic: quietly, insistently, and already full of place.

This is a ballad born of oral memory. It wasn’t only collectors’ notebooks or early broadcast recordings that kept it breathing; it was mothers and uncles at kitchens, lads in travelling bands, teachers who liked to sing at school concerts, and the quiet singers at wakes. You’ll hear versions that lean into narrative detail, and others that pare the story down. A line like 'adieu to you MacNamara, and Shanahan of Doughmore' will be tucked into the chorus sometimes, and at other times singers will improvise a phrase to suit the night.

At a session the song often has a particular job: to slow things, to make room. After a couple of reels and a couple of jigs, someone will ask for a song that sits with people. McNamara and Shanahan does that. It gets sandwiched between a slow lament and a livelier rebel ballad, or followed by a bright polka intended to lift the mood. Instrumentalists usually pull back — guitar, bouzouki or fiddle will play low supporting figures, letting the story be heard.

Transmission here is practical and social. You learn verses by ear, by watching how a singer breathes between lines, by hearing how older versions tuck place-names into the tune. It’s also a teaching piece. Young singers pick it up at pub sessions and family gatherings, learn the phrasing and the respectful pause before the final line, and then take it home to their own neighbourhoods.

So when you hear McNamara and Shanahan next, listen for the small differences: which place-name the singer tucks in, whether the accompaniment is spare or full, and what comes after it on the set list. Those choices tell you the song’s living history as much as the words themselves.

Want more? Our Celtic Music on YouTube is full of Irish ballads, rebel songs and sing-along sessions.

You can stream "McNamara and Shanahan" any time on Irish Ballads on Spotify.

For more like this, browse the rest of Virtual Magic Music.

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