Right. I have to be honest before I write another word: this one's mine. Not mine as in I wrote it (God no), but mine as in HOME. Spancil Hill is a real crossroads a few miles east of Ennis, and Ennis is where I'm sitting right now typing this with Rattlin' the cat asleep on the warm bit of the desk. So this isn't me reading about some far-off place in a book. I've stood at that crossroads. I've been to the fair.
And that's exactly why this song wrecks me every single time.
Because Spancil Hill isn't a drinking song and it isn't a singalong, not really. It's a song about a man who fell asleep in California and dreamed himself the whole way back to Clare. To the fair, to the lads he grew up with, to a girl. And then he woke up. That's it. That's the whole thing. The most ordinary, most devastating thing in the world.
A Bit of History
The murky part first, because the brief says be honest and I'd rather be honest anyway.
The song is usually credited to a man called Michael Considine, an emigrant from the Spancil Hill area who left for America in the 1870s and never made it home. He's said to have written the words in California, homesick and in poor health, and sent them back to a young nephew in Clare. That's the story you'll hear at every session in the county, and it's a lovely story, and I believe it in my bones — but I'll level with you, the precise dates and the exact text of what Considine wrote versus what got smoothed and changed by a hundred years of singers, that's all a bit foggy. Folk songs don't keep tidy records. The version most people sing today is shorter and rougher round the edges than the longer original poem that occasionally surfaces.
What's NOT in doubt is the place. Spancil Hill (Cnoc Fuar-choille is the Irish name you'll see locally) was the site of a genuinely famous horse fair, one of the big ones, going back a long way. So when the song names the fair, and names real spots, and names yer man the blacksmith — those aren't poetic invention. The singer is walking through an actual map of his own childhood. That's what gets me.
It crossed the Atlantic and came back. The way half of Clare did.
Lyrics
Last night as I lay dreaming of pleasant days gone by, My mind being bent on rambling, to Ireland I did fly. I stepped on board a vision and I followed with my will, Till next I came to anchor at the cross of Spancil Hill.
It being the twenty-third of June, the day before the fair, When Ireland's sons and daughters and friends assembled there. The young and the old, the brave and the bold, their journey to fulfil, There were jovial conversations at the fair of Spancil Hill.
I went to see my neighbours, to hear what they might say, The old ones were all dead and gone, the young ones turning grey. I met with the tailor Quigley, he's as bold as ever still, Sure he used to make my britches when I lived in Spancil Hill.
I paid a flying visit to my first and only love, She's as white as any lily and as gentle as a dove. She threw her arms around me, saying "Johnny, I love you still," She's Meg, the farmer's daughter, and the pride of Spancil Hill.
I dreamt I held and kissed her as in the days of yore, She said, "Johnny, you're only joking, as many's the time before." The cock crew in the morning, he crew both loud and shrill, And I awoke in California, many miles from Spancil Hill.
How to Sing It
Slow. SLOW. I cannot say this loud enough. People hear it's a ballad and they still rush it, and rushing Spancil Hill is a crime. Let the lines breathe. There's no clapping, no four-beat anything, none of the speeding-up joy of the Rattlin' Bog — this is the opposite end of the session, the one you sing when the loud songs are done and the room has gone quiet and somebody's thinking about home.
A few honest notes from doing it badly for years:
The line about the old ones being dead and gone and the young ones turning grey — don't act it, don't put a big sad face on. Just sing it plain. The plainer you sing it the more it lands. The song does the work, you only have to get out of its way.
The girl's name wobbles between versions (you'll hear Meg, you'll hear Mac, sometimes it's just "the farmer's daughter") — pick one and commit. Nobody in the room is checking.
And that last line. "And I awoke in California, many miles from Spancil Hill." Hold the silence after it. Don't go straight into the next song. Let it sit.
Pair it late with The Parting Glass if you want to finish the night properly wrecked, or back the other way with The Wild Rover if the room needs lifting again after. But honestly? Sometimes you just sing Spancil Hill and then everyone goes home, and that's right too.
It's the truest one in the whole songbook. Homesick is homesick, and it doesn't care what century you're in.
Slán go fóill, from the cross of Spancil Hill itself, BogLord2002