The earliest printed version of the song is dated 1864. The poet Carl Sandburg claimed he discovered “Paddy Works on the Erie” on sheet music published in 1850 but no copy has ever been found. One was sung by Tom Callinan, Matt, and Tanya, and the other was sung by Tex and Rex.Paddy Works on the Erie” is one of the most popular and widely known American work songs.īut, “Paddy Works on the Erie” is also a sanas-laoi, a secret song, of the crossroads.īad cess to the luck that brought me through, In the Shining Time Station episode "Impractical Jokes," two versions of this song were sung. This song has been performed by numerous musicians and singers, including Ewan MacColl, The Weavers, Luke Kelly with The Dubliners, The Wolfe Tones, The Tossers, The Kelly Family, Shane MacGowan with The Pogues and Ferocious Dog, and The Cottars. Oftentimes, the song becomes faster progressively. The song begins in 1841, during the time of the Irish diaspora.įor 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". The song reflects the work that thousands of Irish section crews did as track layers, gaugers, spikers, and bolters. Background ĭuring the mid-19th century, Irish immigrants worked to build railways in the United States. Mark Page, whose sea experience spanned 1849–1879, sang it for Carpenter in the late 1920s. Several versions of this chanty were audio-recorded from the singing of veteran sailors in the 1920s–40s by folklorists like R.W. In 1847 Paddy Murphy went to Heaven To work on the railway, the railway, the railway, Oh, poor Paddy works upon the railway. A reminiscence from the 1920s, for example, claims its use at the windlass of the following verse, aboard a packet ship out of Liverpool in 1857: Īlthough these are among the earliest published references, there is other evidence to suggest that the chanty was sung as early as the 1850s. My dung'ree breeches I put onĬhorus: To work upon the railway, the railway, To work up-on the railway. In eighteen hundred and sixty-three, I came across the stormy sea. In this discussion he quotes "Paddy, Come Work on the Railway": Adams includes an exposition on sailors' chanties, including their melodies and sample lyrics. Adams' On Board the Rocket (1879), in which the sea captain tells of experiences in American vessels out of Boston in the 1860s. The song was next mentioned as a chanty in R.C. One of the chanties the men sing while performing this task is mentioned by title, "Paddy on the Railway." At one point, the crew is getting up the anchor in a storm, by means of a pump-style windlass. Clark recounted experiences fishing on the Grand Banks of Newfoundland, in a vessel out of Provincetown, Mass. Clark's Seven Years of a Sailor’s Life (1867). "Paddy on the Railway" is attested as a chanty in the earliest known published work to use the word "chanty," G.E. Ernest Bourne recorded the first version, released in 1941, by Alan Lomax for the Library of Congress in 1938. The earliest confirmed date of publication is from 1864 from a manuscript magazine. In The American Songbag, the writer Carl Sandburg claims that the song has been published in sheet music since the early 1850s.
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