"Poor Paddy Works on the Railway" is a popularIrish folk andAmerican folk song (Roud 208). Historically, it was often sung as asea shanty. The song portrays an Irish worker working on arailroad.
There are numerous titles for the song, including "Pat Works on the Railway" and "Paddy on the Railway" and "Fillimiooriay". "Paddy Works on the Erie" is another version of the song.
InThe American Songbag, the writerCarl Sandburg claims that the song has been published in sheet music since the early 1850s.[1] The earliest confirmed date of publication is from 1864 from a manuscript magazine.[2] Ernest Bourne recorded the first version, released in 1941, byAlan Lomax for the Library of Congress in 1938 under the title "A-working on the Railway".[3]
"Paddy on the Railway" is attested as achanty in the earliest known published work to use the wordchanty, G. E. Clark'sSeven Years of a Sailor’s Life (1867). Clark recounted experiences fishing on theGrand Banks of Newfoundland, in a vessel out ofProvincetown,Massachusetts, ca.1865–1866. At one point, the crew is getting up the anchor in a storm, by means of a pump-stylewindlass. One of the chanties the men sing while performing this task is mentioned by title, "Paddy on the Railway."[4]
The song was next mentioned as a chanty in R. C. Adams'On Board the Rocket (1879), in which the sea captain tells of experiences in American vessels out ofBoston in the 1860s. Adams includes an exposition on sailors' chanties, including their melodies and sample lyrics. In this discussion he quotes "Paddy, Come Work on the Railway":
Although these are among the earliest published references, there is other evidence to suggest that the chanty was sung as early as the 1850s. A reminiscence from the 1920s, for example, claims its use at the windlass of the following verse, aboard a packet ship out ofLiverpool in 1857:
Several versions of this chanty were audio-recorded from the singing of veteran sailors in the 1920s–40s by folklorists like R. W. Gordon, J. M. Carpenter, andWilliam Main Doerflinger. Captain Mark Page, whose sea experience spanned 1849–1879, sang it for Carpenter in the late 1920s.[7]
During the mid-19th century, Irish immigrants worked to build railways in the United Kingdom and the United States. The song reflects the work that thousands of Irish section crews did as track layers, gaugers, spikers, and bolters.[8] The song begins in 1841, during the time of theIrish diaspora.
For a number of versions, the melody of the first lines of each stanza resembles the song "Johnny I Hardly Knew Ye" and "When Johnny Comes Marching Home".Oftentimes, the song becomes faster progressively.
This song has been performed by numerous musicians and singers, includingEwan MacColl,The Weavers,Luke Kelly withThe Dubliners,The Wolfe Tones,The Tossers,The Kelly Family,Shane MacGowan withThe Pogues andFerocious Dog, andThe Cottars.
In theShining Time Station episode "Impractical Jokes," two versions of this song were sung. One was sung by Tom Callinan, Matt, and Tanya, and the other was sung by Tex and Rex.
