A parting glass for Liam Clancy

By

NIALL O'DOWD,

IrishCentral.com Publisher

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There's a hell of a hooley in heaven tonight

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You would not come down off the stage, you were in great form and you and Tommy sang your lungs out. You had a wild look in your eyes that night, the songs were sung with great abandon and sheer joy, you brought the house down.

You showed me what a great performer looked like up close, though the songs you were singing were classics, you made it feel like they were being sung for the first time.

And “The Dutchman” – your greatest song of all about Margaret and her lover who is losing his mind growing old and senile by the canal in Holland.

"He watches tugboats down canalsAnd calls out to them when he thinks he knows the captain
'Til Margaret comes to take him home again
Through unforgiving streets that trip him
Though she holds his arm
Sometimes he thinks that he's alone and calls her name."

She still loves him because she saw “her unborn children in his eyes,” an image that forever haunts. I never heard you sing that song that it did not bring a tear to my eyes.

So farewell, good night and joy be with you all – all now gone – the Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem. There’s a hell of a hooley in heaven tonight.

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