The Galway Girl

In celebration of St. Patrick’s Day let’s take a look at a popular Irish song.mf8

The Galway Girl was written by Steve Earle.  Earle is actually an American, but wrote the song while living in Ireland.

The story is semi-autobiographical and tells the story of the singer’s reaction as he meets a  “beautiful black haired blue eyed girl” in Galway, Ireland.  Shannon said in a radio interview regarding the writing of the song, “ “Steve wrote the song in Galway. He used to spend a lot of time there, just hanging out and writing songs and going to trade sessions. He made great friends with all the musicians there.”   She went on to explain that this was based on a meeting Steve Earle had with a girl, whose identity has not been revealed {beyond their inner circle}.

The song was first recorded by Sharon Shannon, an Irish musician.  Numerous other performers have gone on to record this musical composition.  The most popular version is with Mundy and Shannon.

The song appeared in the movie P.S. I Love You and the TV series Treme.