Artist: Brendan Behan
Author: Dickey Shannon
Label: Spoken Arts Records
Year: 1956
Written by his drinking pal as an introduction to his play The Quare Fellow (1954), about a condemned prisoner the day of his execution. Referring to the mice in his Mountjoy prison cell, while serving time for his part in IRA activities. The triangle there was used every morning as their wake up call. Brendan first sang it outside a pub while invited for RTE radio program The Ballad Maker's Saturday Night in 1952, but he really earned his reputation as "a drinker with a writing problem" during a drunken appearence in a BBC tv-show in 1956, promoting the West End staging of his play while singing this very same Auld Triangle. The play was first staged at the Pike Theatre Club, Herbert Lane in Dublin in November '54. Filmed in '62.
Covers:
Ewan MacColl [as The Banks Of The Royal Canal]
Dominic Behan [as Old Triangle on Topic lp Sings Irish Folksongs And Ballads (see also: The Zoological Gardens)]
Liam Clancy [as The Royal Canal]
Ian & Sylvia [idem]
Dubliners [as The Old Triangle]
Bob Dylan & The Band [Basement tape]
Chris Eldridge-Marcus Mumford-Chris Thile-Justin Timberlake-Gabe Witcher [in film Inside Llewyn Davis]
Inspired by the music hall tune Never Let Your Braces Dangle. Some even recognize a vague echo in Dylan's Mr. Tambourine Man. After all, Dylan covered The Auld Triangle with The Band during sessions for the Basement Tapes (Bootleg Series Vol 11).
If you noticed blunt omissions, mis-interpretations or even out-and-out errors,
please let me know:
Arnold Rypens
Rozenlaan 65
B-2840 Reet (Rumst)