Behan insisted that he had been given two verses by O’Toole and that he wrote an additional one to slot in between. His 1965 version of the song given to him by O'Toole, which would become 'Carrickfergus', was immortalised on the album The Irish Rover, and titled ‘The Kerry Boatman’. He wrote celebrated songs like ‘The Patriot Game’ (which Bob Dylan drew on for ‘With God On Our Side’), ‘McAlpine’s Fusilliers’, ‘The Merry Ploughboy’ and ‘Liverpool Lou’, among other standards from the days of the Irish ballad boom of the 1960s and early 1970s. In fact, Dominic and his brother, the playwright Brendan Behan, were part of an extraordinary, artistic, republican, socialist family that included the songwriter Peadar Kearney, who – along with several well-known folk standards – wrote the lyrics to the Irish national anthem, ‘Amhrán na bhFiann (A Soldiers Song)’, which was formally adopted by the State in 1926.ĭominic Behan was himself a prolific playwright, author, songwriter and singer.
It was the famous Irish actor Peter O’Toole – he insisted on his Irish-ness despite the fact that the birth records show that he was born in Leeds, England to an Irish father – who brought the song to the attention of the Irish songwriter, Dominic Behan. But there are mysteries, as yet not fully resolved, regarding the apparently fractured narrative in what has become one of the most loved, and covered, songs in the modern Irish folk repertoire. Antrim, on the North-Eastern edge of the island of Ireland. The song ‘Carrickfergus’ is written about the town of the same name, in Co.