The best St Patrick’s Day songs mix rowdy Irish pub songs with a few slow ones for the end of the night. My top picks: The Irish Rover, Whiskey in the Jar, The Wild Rover, The Fields of Athenry, On Raglan Road, Danny Boy and The Parting Glass to close. Below are 30 songs in six groups, with who wrote each and when, plus a two-hour playlist.
St Patrick’s Day without songs is just a day off with a green hat on.
I went looking for some good St Patrick’s Day music to have on in the background for the day. Then I kept going. Here are the best Irish songs for St Patrick’s Day.
For each one I’ve said who wrote it or made it famous, and when. A few will surprise you.
There are no lyrics here. Many of these songs are still in copyright. Besides, you know the words already, or you will by the third pint.
Jump to:
- A two-hour St Patrick’s Day playlist
- What Ireland actually plays on the day
- Irish pub songs and Irish drinking songs
- Rebel and folk ballads, chosen with care
- Love songs and slow airs
- Trad tunes and instrumentals
- Modern Irish bands
- Irish-American standards
- How to build your St Patrick’s Day playlist
- St Patrick’s Day songs FAQ
- More St Patrick’s Day reading
A two-hour St Patrick’s Day playlist
Two hours of Irish pub songs, ready to press play.
If you just want to press play, start here. This compilation from the Music Of Ireland YouTube channel runs just shy of two hours.
It has 35 tracks from folk groups like Blackthorn and Brier. Highlights include Finnegan’s Wake, The Leaving of Liverpool, McAlpine’s Fusiliers and The Kesh Jig.
Here’s the full two hours.
Put it on while the spuds are boiling and you’ll be dancing your feet off by the time the parade comes on.
What Ireland actually plays on the day
In 2019, Spotify listed the songs most consistently streamed in Ireland on St Patrick’s Day over five years.
Top of the list was The Pogues’ Dirty Old Town. The Dubliners’ Seven Drunken Nights was second. The Irish Rover, The Saw Doctors’ N17 and The High Kings’ Rocky Road to Dublin made the top ten too.
So did U2, Sinéad O’Connor, Sharon Shannon and The Undertones. Not one song about a leprechaun.
Irish pub songs and Irish drinking songs
These are the loud ones. Play them early, while everyone still has a voice.
1. The Irish Rover
A tall tale about a ship with an impossible cargo and a crew that comes to a sorry end. Walton’s credited it to J. M. Crofts in 1966, but a manuscript from 1937 survives in the National Folklore Collection.
The Irish Rovers recorded it in 1966. The Dubliners and The Pogues took it to No. 1 in Ireland and No. 8 in the UK in 1987.
2. Whiskey in the Jar
A highwayman robs an officer in the mountains of Cork and Kerry, then gets betrayed by his woman. The Dubliners made it a signature song in the 1960s.
Thin Lizzy’s rock version topped the Irish charts for 17 weeks and hit No. 6 in the UK in 1973. Metallica’s version won a Grammy in 2000. Not bad for a song about a robbery.
3. The Wild Rover
The great table-thumper of every Irish pub on earth. The joke is that it may have started life as a temperance song, according to the historian T. M. Devine. The rover swears off the drink, after all.
The Dubliners recorded it in 1964 and the Clancy Brothers with Tommy Makem the following year.
4. Seven Drunken Nights
A man comes home drunk each night and finds clearer evidence that his wife has company. It’s a version of Our Goodman, a ballad collected in Scotland in the 1770s.
RTÉ banned The Dubliners’ 1967 single. It went to No. 1 in Ireland anyway, and No. 7 in the UK, helped by the pirate station Radio Caroline.
5. Molly Malone
Dublin’s unofficial anthem, about a fishmonger who sells cockles and mussels and dies of a fever. It was first recorded in print in Boston in 1876, and published in London in 1884 as the work of James Yorkston of Edinburgh.
There’s no evidence Molly was a real woman. Her statue went up in Dublin in 1988 and moved to Suffolk Street in 2014.
6. The Rocky Road to Dublin
A young man leaves Tuam for Dublin and Liverpool, and gets into scrapes all the way. The words are by D. K. Gavan, and the song was made popular by the music hall singer Harry Clifton. The tune was in print by 1841.
It’s a tongue-twister at speed. The Dubliners recorded it in 1964. Luke Kelly’s version turns up in the 2009 Sherlock Holmes film.
7. Dirty Old Town
Spotify’s top St Patrick’s Day song in Ireland isn’t Irish at all. Ewan MacColl wrote it in 1949 about Salford in England, for a play called Landscape with Chimneys.
The Dubliners recorded it in 1966 and The Pogues in 1985. It’s sung in so many Irish pubs that most people assume it’s ours. We’ll keep it, thanks.
Rebel and folk ballads, chosen with care
A word first. Ireland has hundreds of rebel songs, and some are chants about old enemies. I’ve left out the likes of Come Out Ye Black and Tans. They have their place, but a mixed party isn’t it.
The ballads below tell real stories of famine, war and emigration. Most rooms will sing them happily.
8. The Fields of Athenry
Pete St John wrote it in 1979, about a Famine-era man transported to Botany Bay for stealing corn to feed his family. Danny Doyle took it into the Irish top ten that year.
Paddy Reilly’s 1982 version stayed in the Irish charts for 72 weeks. Irish football fans adopted it at the 1990 World Cup.
9. The Foggy Dew
Canon Charles O’Neill, then a curate in Belfast, wrote it around 1919, after attending the first sitting of Dáil Éireann. It’s a republican ballad honouring the rebels of 1916, sung to an old air called The Moorlough Shore.
It asks why Irishmen died for Britain in the Great War when they could have fought at home. The Chieftains and Sinéad O’Connor recorded it for The Long Black Veil in 1995.
10. Grace
Grace Gifford married the 1916 leader Joseph Plunkett in Kilmainham Gaol, hours before he was shot. Brothers Frank and Seán O’Meara of Mullingar wrote this song about them in 1985.
Jim McCann’s recording reached No. 2 in Ireland in 1986 and stayed in the charts for 33 weeks. It’s a love song first, which is why it works in any room.
11. The Town I Loved So Well
Phil Coulter wrote it in the early 1970s, about growing up in Derry and what the Troubles did to it. Luke Kelly sang it on The Dubliners’ album Plain and Simple in 1973.
The music writer Stuart Bailie has called it a song both unionists and republicans could sing.
12. The Green Fields of France
Eric Bogle, a Scottish-born Australian, wrote it in 1976 after visiting First World War cemeteries. He gave his dead soldier, Willie McBride, an Irish name on purpose.
The Fureys and Davey Arthur made it famous in Ireland, and their version is on the two-hour playlist above. Bring tissues.
Love songs and slow airs
These are for later, when the fire’s down and somebody’s uncle clears his throat.
13. Danny Boy
Maybe the best-loved Irish song in America, and it was written by an English lawyer. Frederic Weatherly wrote the words in 1910 and set them to the Londonderry Air in 1913.
Jane Ross of Limavady collected that air in the 19th century. Ernestine Schumann-Heink made the first recording in 1915. I’ve told the full story in my post on Danny Boy for St Patrick’s Day.
14. On Raglan Road
Patrick Kavanagh’s poem about Hilda Moriarty, the woman who got away. The Irish Press first published it on 3 October 1946.
Kavanagh gave it to Luke Kelly in The Bailey pub, to be sung to the old air The Dawning of the Day. The Dubliners released it in 1971. For my money, it’s the finest Irish song of the lot.
15. The Mountains of Mourne
Percy French (1854 to 1920) wrote this one in 1896, with music by Houston Collisson. A young Irishman in London marvels at the city, but his heart is in Co. Down.
It’s funny and sad in the same breath, like most of French’s work. Don McLean’s 1973 recording reached No. 2 in Ireland.
16. Spancil Hill
Michael Considine of Co. Clare emigrated to America around 1870. He wrote this song there some time before 1873, dreaming of home and the fair at Spancil Hill. He died in California in 1873, aged 23.
Robbie McMahon’s version is often called the definitive one. Jim McCann’s version is on the two-hour playlist.
17. The Parting Glass
The last song of the night in Irish pubs. It’s actually Scottish in origin, and an early version survives on a 17th-century broadside.
The Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem revived it in 1959. Ed Sheeran tucked it on the end of his 2011 album +, and Hozier released it as a charity single in 2020.
Trad tunes and instrumentals
No words, no problem. These are for dancing, or for having on while you cook.
For a longer run of jigs and reels, this instrumental compilation suits a céilí in the kitchen.
18. The Kesh Jig
A double jig in G and one of the first tunes most session players learn. Like most jigs, it’s usually played a few times through, then run straight into another tune as part of a set.
The Bothy Band put it on their first album in 1975. It’s on the two-hour playlist too.
19. Sí Bheag, Sí Mhór
Said to be the first piece written by Turlough O’Carolan (1670 to 1738), the blind harper from Co. Meath. The title means little fairy hill, big fairy hill. It refers to two hills in Co. Leitrim.
Planxty recorded it on their first album in 1973, and The Chieftains in 1975. It’s the most peaceful three minutes on this list.
20. Riverdance
Bill Whelan’s piece began as the interval act at the Eurovision Song Contest in Dublin on 30 April 1994. Michael Flatley and Jean Butler danced it.
The single spent a record 18 weeks at No. 1 in Ireland. The stage show opened in Dublin in February 1995.
Modern Irish bands
If anyone under 50 is coming, you’ll need these.
21. The Boys Are Back in Town (Thin Lizzy)
Phil Lynott wrote it for the album Jailbreak, released in 1976. It went to No. 1 in Ireland, No. 8 in the UK and No. 12 in the US.
Lynott was the son of a Dublin mother and a Guyanese father. Play it loud.
22. Fiesta (The Pogues)
Jem Finer and Shane MacGowan wrote it for If I Should Fall from Grace with God (1988), borrowing the refrain from the Liechtensteiner Polka. It’s brass, accordion and a fair bit of chaos.
The Pogues formed in London in 1982 as Pogue Mahone. Shane MacGowan died in November 2023, aged 65.
23. N17 (The Saw Doctors)
Davy Carton and Leo Moran of Tuam wrote it about an emigrant longing for the N17, the road home through Co. Galway. It was recorded in 1989 and didn’t chart at first.
A re-release reached No. 2 in Ireland at Christmas 1990. It’s fourth on Spotify’s 2019 list of Ireland’s St Patrick’s Day favourites.
24. Galway Girl (Steve Earle, then Mundy)
Not the Ed Sheeran one. The American singer Steve Earle wrote this Galway Girl, with Sharon Shannon playing on it, on his album Transcendental Blues (2000).
Mundy and Sharon Shannon’s cover spent five weeks at No. 1 in Ireland in 2008. It was Ireland’s biggest-selling download of that year.
Irish-American standards
On 12 March 1961, the Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem played The Ed Sullivan Show to around 40 million viewers. Liam Clancy later said sales of Aran sweaters rose 700% after they wore them on air.
Some of the songs Irish America loves best were written in America for the stage. Others were written by Irishmen, at home or abroad, and made famous by Bing Crosby.
25. When Irish Eyes Are Smiling
Written for the show The Isle O’ Dreams and published in 1912. The words are by Chauncey Olcott and George Graff Jr, and the music by Ernest Ball.
It was written for the American stage, and it’s as Irish-American as a parade on Fifth Avenue. John McCormack recorded it during the First World War. More on my When Irish Eyes Are Smiling page.
26. Too-Ra-Loo-Ra-Loo-Ral
An Irish lullaby written in 1913 by James Royce Shannon for Chauncey Olcott’s show Shameen Dhu.
Bing Crosby sang it as a priest in the film Going My Way (1944). His record sold over a million copies and reached No. 4 on Billboard.
27. Galway Bay
Dr Arthur Colahan wrote it in 1947, while working as a doctor in Leicester. Bing Crosby recorded it on 27 November that year. Crosby’s record reached No. 3 in the Billboard charts.
Crosby softened a line about the English to make it less political. Don’t mix it up with Francis Fahy’s older song of the same name.
28. The Isle of Innisfree
Dick Farrelly of Kells, Co. Meath, wrote it on a bus to Dublin. It was published in 1950. It isn’t Yeats’s Innisfree. Farrelly’s stands for the whole of Ireland.
John Ford loved it so much he made it the main theme of The Quiet Man (1952). Bing Crosby had a hit with it that same year.
29. I’m Shipping Up to Boston (Dropkick Murphys)
The Dropkick Murphys formed in Quincy, Massachusetts, in 1996, and play St Patrick’s week shows in Boston every year. They set a fragment of Woody Guthrie words to their own tune.
The best-known version is on The Warrior’s Code (2005). It turned up in The Departed (2006) and went platinum. Irish-American, not Irish, and proud of it.
30. Drunken Lullabies (Flogging Molly)
Dublin-born Dave King formed Flogging Molly in Los Angeles in the 1990s. The name comes from Molly Malone’s, the LA pub where they played every Monday night.
The 2002 album Drunken Lullabies went gold in the US. AllMusic’s review said it best: “After one listen, you’ll probably wish you were Irish.”
How to build your St Patrick’s Day playlist
A good playlist has a shape. Here’s the running order I’d use.
- Afternoon: trad tunes and the YouTube compilations, while people arrive.
- Early evening: the pub songs, starting with The Irish Rover.
- Peak of the night: Thin Lizzy, The Pogues, The Saw Doctors and the Dropkick Murphys.
- Late: the ballads and slow airs.
- Last song: The Parting Glass. Always.
One to leave off: Fairytale of New York. It’s a great song, but it’s a Christmas song.
Need something to say between songs? My Irish sayings and St Patrick’s Day jokes will fill the gaps.
St Patrick’s Day songs FAQ
What is the most popular song on St Patrick’s Day?
In Ireland, Spotify found in 2019 that The Pogues’ Dirty Old Town was the most consistently streamed song on the day over five years. The Dubliners’ Seven Drunken Nights came second, and The Irish Rover third.
What are the best Irish drinking songs?
The Wild Rover, Whiskey in the Jar, Seven Drunken Nights, The Irish Rover and Molly Malone are the safe bets. Start with The Irish Rover and everyone will join in by the chorus.
What song is sung at the end of the night in Irish pubs?
The Parting Glass is the classic closer. It’s Scottish in origin but has been sung at the end of Irish nights for generations.
What’s the difference between an Irish drinking song and a rebel song?
Drinking songs are about drink, love and misadventure, like The Wild Rover. Rebel songs are about Ireland’s fight for independence. Some are fine ballads, others are chants best kept for the right crowd.
Is Galway Girl by Ed Sheeran or Steve Earle?
Both, but they’re different songs. Steve Earle’s Galway Girl came out in 2000 and was a No. 1 hit in Ireland for Mundy and Sharon Shannon in 2008. Ed Sheeran’s song of the same name came out in 2017.
More St Patrick’s Day reading
- Danny Boy for St Patrick’s Day: The Story Behind the Song
- When Irish Eyes Are Smiling: The Song and Its Story
- Top 10 Irish Toasts for Raising a Glass
- Irish Sayings and What They Mean
- St Patrick’s Day Facts
- The Best St Patrick’s Day Jokes
- Ireland’s Top 100 Irish Poems
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