The Galway Shawl
The most famous thing ever to happen in Oranmore in the month of May is a song. The Galway Shawl is a traditional courtship ballad: the narrator meets a girl wearing a bonnet with ribbons and a shawl around her shoulders, walks with her to her father's cottage, plays the hornpipes and The Foggy Dew to please the old man while she sings and cries with joy, and leaves her in the end because he is bound for County Donegal.
Checked against the source on 2026-09-19.
KevinSchnippkoweit, CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons
Oranmore Castle on the 3D model; tap a pin for its page and directions.
From Dungiven to the dance floor
The earliest known version was collected by Sam Henry from Bridget Kealey in Dungiven, County Derry, in 1936. Ballad groups across Ireland took it up, and it is now usually played in waltz time so that people can dance to it. Margaret Barry sang it on Portraits: I Sang Through the Fairs, Christie Hennessy on The Green Album in 1973, the Dubliners on 30 Years A-Greying, Patrick Street, Ryan's Fancy, Four to the Bar in a medley with The Black Velvet Band and The Wild Rover, Daniel O'Donnell on Moon Over Ireland in 2011, Finbar Furey in 2017 and Cerys Matthews on video in 2008.
Oranmore in the song
The village where the girl lived is now a commuter town with a castle on the shore and a railway station; the model on this page pins the castle and the church, and the Oranmore Castle guide tells the town's story.
Questions people ask
Where is The Galway Shawl set?
Who first collected The Galway Shawl?
Who recorded The Galway Shawl?
Written from Wikipedia, "The Galway Shawl" (CC BY-SA 4.0), read on 2026-09-19, and from the OpenStreetMap places on the model. Nothing has been added from memory; follow the source for its footnotes.