I just got a call from a friend who is listening to Fiona Ritchie's Thistle & Shamrock program. I think it must be Week 31, the program for August 1. Here's the blurb announcing the program:

Brían Ó hAirt and Julee Glaub: Join Fiona Ritchie at The Swannanoa Gathering in the mountains of North Carolina for a conversational, musical encounter with Brían Ó hAirt and Julee Glaub. Each followed a separate path to Ireland to discover the roots of their musical passions. Hear how American and Celtic traditions mingle in their work today with Brían's band Bua and Julee's duo Little Windows.

So, anyhow, my friend says they sang "I'll Fly Away" at the beginning of the program, and my friend got the impression that the performers said the song had Celtic roots. I thought it was an original 1932 composition by Albert E. Brumley. Here's a link to the program (click). Towards the beginning, there's a terrific clip of Julee Glaub singing "I'll Fly Away," which was the favorite song of her North Carolina Grandmother - no Celtic connection, although it's interesting to hear southern US singers doing authentic Celtic music in other parts of the performance. At about 51 minutes, there's a terrific story about Katharine Hepburn.

This has been a very important song in the history of my family. I used to sing it with my friend Jim Cox, a tall Englishman with a big smile who lived here in the California Sierra foothills. We sang it together the last time three weeks before he died in April 2001, and then he played it beautifully on my harmonica. I sang it to him once more, three days before he died; and then I sang it at his funeral. And then a year later, I married Jim's widow on January 12, 2002.

We sang the song often at song circles at song circles at our home, and my mother-in-law, who lived with us, loved it. A week before she died in June, 2013, she was restless at night, so I sang her "I'll Fly Away," and she settled down to sleep. When we discovered she had died in the middle of the night on June 13, we sang this song to her and then toasted her with fruit juice. And we sang it for her one last time at her graveside.

It certainly is a wonderful song.

-Joe-