The Muppets’ Hilarious & Heartfelt Rendition of “Danny Boy” for St. Patrick’s Day!

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The Muppets Sing “Danny Boy” for St. Patrick’s Day! ☘️🎶

Yes, you read that right—the Muppets came together to sing Danny Boy in honor of St. Patrick’s Day! 🇮🇪🎤

Over the years, countless artists have put their own spin on this beloved Irish classic—from Thin Lizzy to Tom Jones, Celtic Woman, Eric Clapton, and even Elvis Presley! 🎶 But no version is quite as fun and heartwarming as this one!

“Danny Boy” remains one of the most iconic and well-loved Irish ballads of all time. And if you’ve ever wondered just how big St. Patrick’s Day has become, look no further—this version alone has over 10 million views! 🤯

The story behind the song is just below the video. If you like this sort of thing, join my Weekly Dose of Irish and never miss an update! ☘️💚

👉 Watch The Muppets’ version of “Danny Boy” here! Enjoy, and don’t forget to share the craic with your friends! 🍻

Just great isn’t it? I never thought I would see the muppets singing Danny Boy for St Patrick’s day. If you are looking for some lovely Irish music for St Patrick’s day. This article has a playlist with over 4 hours of great Irish music.

But my favourite cover has to be Celtic Woman’s cover. Give it a listen here.

The story behind Danny Boy

The tune came first. It was written down in Limavady, Co. Derry, by a local woman called Jane Ross, who collected the melodies she heard around her. Nobody knows who played it for her. Local tradition points to a blind fiddler called Jimmy McCurry, but there is no proof either way. Jane sent it to the collector George Petrie, who printed it in 1855 in The Ancient Music of Ireland with no name, only her remark that it was “very old”. With no title to go on, it came to be known as the Londonderry Air, after the county where it was found.

The words came from an Englishman. Frederic Weatherly (1848 to 1929) was a barrister who wrote song lyrics on the side, thousands of them, including The Holy City and Roses of Picardy. He wrote Danny Boy in 1910 while living in Bath, set to a different tune, and it went nowhere.

Then his sister-in-law Margaret, living in America, sent him the Londonderry Air. She had learned it from her Irish-born father. Weatherly saw the fit, adjusted his words to suit, and Boosey & Co. published Danny Boy in 1913. The sheet music named the contralto Ernestine Schumann-Heink among its singers, she was one of the first to record it, and from there it never really stopped.

A song about someone staying behind while a young man goes away was always going to land with the Irish abroad. Families in America, Britain and Australia knew all about that kind of goodbye, and Danny Boy became one of the great songs of the diaspora. It is a fixture at funerals too, though some parishes won’t allow it during the funeral Mass itself. Not bad going for a tune with no name and words from Somerset.

If you want the words exactly as Weatherly wrote them, the original 1913 Boosey & Co. sheet music is online at the Connecticut College sheet music collection. It is long out of copyright, so it is free to look at, print and sing from.

The best versions of Danny Boy

Harry Belafonte gave it a slow, gentle reading on An Evening with Belafonte in 1957, and it’s still one of the loveliest. Jackie Wilson went the other way in 1965 and belted it out as a single. It only got to number 94 on the Billboard Hot 100, but the voice on it is something else.

Johnny Cash recorded it twice. The first was on Orange Blossom Special in 1965. The second was on American IV: The Man Comes Around in 2002, the last album released in his lifetime, and you can hear every one of his years in it.

Elvis Presley recorded his version in February 1976 at Graceland, his own home in Memphis. It came out that year on From Elvis Presley Boulevard, Memphis, Tennessee. Big voice, big finish, as you’d expect.

Eva Cassidy’s version is the one that tends to finish people off. It came out on Imagine in 2002, six years after she died, and it is about as quiet and honest as the song gets.

Otherwise, enjoy these St Patrick’s day facts and have a great day wherever in the world you are celebrating! 

Thanks,

Stephen 

Featured photo: View of a Dublin flag in the St. Patrick’s Day Parade by Robert Lamb, licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

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