The Song "Danny Boy"......

Waltzing Matilda is a sad song for sure, and about as anti-war as one might come across. Another anti-war song in that vein is Christmas in the Trenches by John McCutcheon. I started to learn it because it is a challenge song to learn a new run-down technique in which every 1 and 3 beat is another bass step lower, but the message of the song is so sad that I can't make my way through singing it without getting weepy and my voice catching.

Goodnight Irene is one of those songs that so many people have contributed new verses to it, that I can't say that I know what the original was like? Is that a Woody Guthrie song, or did he "collect" it from an older traditional?  Anyway, a verse that I heard added by the same John McCutcheon as the paragraph above (no idea whether he wrote it) is:

Sometimes she sleeps in pajamas
Sometimes she sleeps in a gown.
The night Irene does the laundry,
she is the talk of the town.

Topdown liked that verse so well that he adds it whenever he sings that song now, too.

When I listen to songs I never really hear the lyric content until someone explains them or I read them.  For most probably all my Sixty Three years I have heard Danny Boy been sung by friends and family this is the first time I knew what the lyrics are about.
Bill there are two Waltzing Matilda Songs. The Aussie Folk Song
Waltzing Matilda is Australia's best-known bush ballad, and has been described as the country's "unofficial national anthem".
The title was Australian slang for travelling on foot (waltzing, derived from the German auf der Walz) with one's belongings in a "matilda" (swag) slung over one's back. The song narrates the story of an itinerant worker, or "swagman", making a drink of billy tea at a bush camp and capturing a stray jumbuck (sheep) to eat. When the jumbuck's owner, a squatter (wealthy landowner), and three mounted policemen pursue the swagman for theft, he declares "You'll never take me alive!" and commits suicide by drowning himself in a nearby billabong (watering hole), after which his ghost haunts the site.
The figure of the "jolly swagman", represented most famously in Banjo Paterson's bush poem "Waltzing Matilda", became a folk hero in 19th-century Australia, and is still seen today as a symbol of anti-authoritarian values that Australians considered to be part of the national character.
A swagman (also called a swaggie, sundowner or tussocker) was a transient labourer who travelled by foot from farm to farm carrying his belongings in a Swag (bedroll). The term originated in Australia in the 19th-century and was later used in New Zealand.

The Band Sang Waltzing Matilda  is the other Waltzing Matilda song.

And  the Band Played Waltzing Matilda is a song written by Scottish-born Australian singer-songwriter Eric Bogle in 1971. Many cover versions of the song have been performed and recorded  in differant counteries around the world.
This the  other Waltzing Matilda Song  is an account of the memories of an old Australian man who, as a youngster had travelled across rural Australia with a swag (the so-called Matilda of the title) and tent. In 1915 he had been recruited into the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps and sent to Gallipoli. For ten weary weeks, he kept himself alive as around [him] the corpses piled higher. He recalls that terrible day ... in the hell that they called Suvla Bay [they] were butchered like lambs at the slaughter ... in that mad world of blood, death and fire. He is hit by a shell and awakens in hospital to learn that he has lost both his legs.
When the ship carrying the young soldiers departs from Australia the band plays Waltzing Matilda while crowds wave flags and cheer. When the crippled narrator returns and the legless, the armless, the blind, the insane are carried down the gangway to the same popular music, the people watch in silence and turn their faces away.
I will let the song tell the story below.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cZqN1glz4JY

and I alays thought Waltzing Matilda was a bout some crazy lady that danced every dance at weddings !

Danny Boy played with bagpipes - makes me cry every time!!

And still no one knows for sure the meaning of Bohemian rhapsody. My own thoughts on the subject are that Freddy as we know was gay and after a particularly bizarre and flagrant life style knew he had something wrong from the early 70s.  It was AIDS of course, with no cure at  the time. And "pulled my trigger now he's dead"! And that fact I think haunted him till he brought it out well veiled in this song.

Danny Boy is a song I'm asked quite often to perform but I only do the first verse and chorus. As usual with me, I couldn't be bothered to learn the rest. I always thought Goodnight Irene was an Irish folk song?

I suppose it is the second one to which I was referring.  Thanks for adding clarity to a half-informed thought. I didn't know that Eric Bogle wrote that. He wrote a song about boats that I like very well. Sadly, I can't recall the title of the song just now. It talks about the boat being soft in the transom and how it only likes him for his money and the end of every chorus wraps up with, "And I'm so **** tired of rowing."

Thanks guys I love that song Old Fat Boat

Got a story about Danny Boy as well. Many years ago I was fortunate to be able to get a Tee Time at the famous Bethpage Black golf course in Long Island, NY (My uncle lives there and knows people ). Anyway, the clubhouse is an old stone or brick building with 30'+ high ceilings and wonderful acoustics. I'm guessing someone lost a bet, but after the round a guy a few tables down from us stands up and belts out a beautiful A cappella version Danny Boy in this crowded bar - the entire bar was silenced and gave him an awesome round of applause when he finished. It was a moment I will likely never forget.

That's the one. I would have sworn it was Eric Bogle. I'm not on  my game!