The "Isle of Innisfree" in the Style of Celtic Women performed by The Green Shamrocks, featuring Alison.
Available on Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Isle-of-Innisfree-feat-Alison/dp/B00V0GUDTQ
The "Isle of Innisfree" is a song composed by Dick Farrelly (Irish songwriter, policeman and poet, born Richard Farrelly), who wrote both the music and lyrics. Farrelly got the inspiration for "Isle of Innisfree", the song for which he is best remembered, while on a bus journey from his native Kells, County Meath to Dublin.
Farrelly’s "Isle of Innisfree" is a haunting melody with lyrics expressing the longing of an Irish emigrant for his native land. When film director John Ford heard the song, he loved it so much that he chose it as the principal theme of his film The Quiet Man. The composition received no mention in the screen credits. "The Isle of Innisfree" became a worldwide hit for Bing Crosby in 1952 and continues to feature in the repertoires of many artists.
There is a common misconception that the song and the famous poem by W.B. Yeats, "The Lake Isle of Innisfree", were written about the same place. Yeats' Innisfree was an uninhabited island in Sligo's Lough Gill, whereas Farrelly's Innisfree represented all of Ireland.[
"Isle of Innisfree" is the principal musical theme of the film The Quiet Man . It features in Steven Spielberg's film E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial when the famous kissing scene between John Wayne and Maureen O'Hara in The Quiet Man is shown. The melody is also included in the soundtracks of the films Distant Voices, Still Lives and Breakfast on Pluto .
"Isle of Innisfree" has been recorded by hundreds of artists worldwide, most notably Finbar Wright of The Irish Tenors, The Quiet Man Soundtrack CD (featuring The Dublin Screen Orchestra), Celtic Woman, Tommy Fleming, Bing Crosby, Sinead Stone and Gerard Farrelly (Legacy of a Quiet Man CD), RTÉ Concert Orchestra, Val Doonican, Sean Tyrell, The Cafe Orchestra, Phil Coulter, Joe Loss, Anne Shelton, Vera Lynn, Connie Francis, Eamonn Campbell, Norrie Paramor and his Orchestra, James McNally, Finbar Furey, Paddy Reilly, Frank Patterson, Daniel O'Donnell, Diarmuid O’Leary and the Bards, Josef Locke, Charlie Landsborough, Geraldo and his Orchestra, Bridie Gallagher, James Galway, John McNally, Jimmy Young, Victor Young and his Singing Strings, Carmel Quinn, the Dublin City Ramblers, Tony Kenny, Alec Finn, Victor Silvester, Brian Kennedy, Semprini and Sean Dunphy to mention but a few.
The first public performance of the song was at a social event in the St. Vincent De Paul Hall in Kells, Co. Meath on St. Patrick's Night 1950. The "Isle of Innisfree" and "Seolta Bána" by Dick Farrelly were performed by Sinead Stone and Gerard Farrelly (Dick Farrelly's son) for Irish actress Maureen O'Hara at her induction into the Irish America Hall of Fame at the JFK Heritage Centre in New Ross, County Wexford, in July 2011. In May 2012 they performed the "Isle of Innisfree" and other Dick Farrelly songs for President Michael D. Higgins at the George Bernard Shaw International Conference which took place in the National Gallery of Ireland.
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