Sir, Ronan McGreevy recounts the history of the IRA attack on a train carrying British troops at Upton Station on February 15th, 1921 (An Irishman's Diary, February 16th). In the course of his piece he mentions the song The Lonely Woods of Upton, made to commemorate the event, and attributes it to the showband singer Sean Dunphy. While Dunphy certainly had a popular, if improbable, hit with the song in the late 1960s, he did not write it.
The song is an interesting example of the recycling process often found in the world of traditional music and song, for it is a parody of a song made during the Spanish-American war about the sinking of the Battleship Maine in Havana Harbour. In its turn, that song was modelled on the earlier The Banks of the Wabash.
The Lonely Woods of Upton is a pretty miserable piece of work, although its pleasant waltz-time tune and nationalist sentiments have made it attractive enough to some Irish singers. The make-over artist who produced it cared nothing that the sinking of a ship in Havana Harbour bore little resemblance to the ambush of a train in Co Cork, and, for his final verse changed the “Maine” couplet: “Some are sleeping ’neath the waters of the harbour./More repose beneath a mound of Spanish clay” into the “Upton” couplet: “Some are sleeping ’neath the waters of Cork harbour./More are sleeping ’neath the good old Irish clay”.
Dunphy did not sing that verse, but it was in the repertoire of the Connemara singer Seosamh Ó hÉanaí and can be heard on archive recordings of his singing. He was, I presume, less concerned with historical accuracy than with the perceived attractions of the song. – Yours, etc,
TERRY MOYLAN,
Dublin 12.