Neil Byrne singing "Noreen"

[Eris0303]

Posted: 4/4/11 at 8:44pm

Neil Byrne is a guitarist/vocalist for Celtic Thunder and I know there are posters who despise the group. But, I wanted to share this song because of it's history.

Rather than paraphrase Neil's telling of the story I'll just quote him:

“Noirin, mo Stoirin” started life as an instrumental piece which Phil Coulter composed as a wedding gift for his friends Liam Neeson and his wife Natasha. Phil called the tune “Natasha” and performed it, for the very first time at the ceremony at Liam’s farm in upstate New York.

One other memorable performance was when he played Carnegie Hall a few years later with Liam and Natasha in the audience. She was delighted, excited like a kid.

The tune kept rolling around in Phil’s head and he kept telling himself that he ought to write a lyric and turn it into a song but could never get a handle on it and kept putting it on the back burner.

Natasha’s untimely death was an enormous shock to all of us, such a tragedy, such a waste of a young wife and mother. Such a loss.

Phil started thinking again about the tune but decided NOT to write a lyric that would specifically refer to Natasha but rather try and capture the sense of missing a loved one ‘with every bone in my body’.

In Phil’s words, “it was one of the most difficult writing jobs I’ve done in a very long time”.

The song is set in period Ireland, during troubled times, when perhaps fleeing persecution the singer is forced to leave his country and his sweetheart. It translates from Irish to “Noirin, my Darling”

“I curse the day that I left her, and the people that drove me away…”

“I also wanted to leave the ending open so that listeners might hope that, when it’s safe to do so, he does return to his Noreen and to the peace of the valley.”

Every time I hear the song I think of Natasha Richardson. Not just her career but her good works and how a bright light went out when she passed. I cannot think of a more fitting memorial and, based on Neil's words, I have to think she would have loved it.
Noreen