The Cruiskeen Lawn

A traditional Irish drinking song and air — the title anglicizes crúiscín lán, “the little full jug” — in print by the first decade of the nineteenth century in Smollet Holden’s Dublin collection (c. 1807) and O’Farrell’s Pocket Companion (1808), and later in O’Neill’s Music of Ireland (1903). Thomas Moore borrowed the air for his “Song of the Battle Eve.” The Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem recorded the song in 1969, keeping it in active circulation.