My Cavan Girl is a popular Irish ballad that has been performed by many of the best folk singers in the country. While many famous Irish songs are based on fictional romances, the lyrics in this song were inspired by a true love story.
Originally from Killeshandra (Co. Cavan), Michael Woods was only 17 years old and had just arrived in New York that day when he met Rita Munday. He felt an instant connection to Rita, who happened to be from downstairs in Belturbet, Co. Cavan. The couple married and returned to Ireland, where they had five children.
The couple became friends with Thom Moore, a composer originally from California who lived in Sligo. One night in 1979, Moore sat at her kitchen table and wrote the lyrics to My Cavan Girl so she could enter the Cavan Song contest. Not only did he win the musical competition, the song based on this real-life couple became a much-loved Irish classic.
Here’s how the melody goes:
Letra de My Cavan Girl
As I walk the weary road to Killeshandra I feel,
because it’s twelve miles long around the lake to get to Cavan Town,
although Oughter and the road that I go once seemed incomparable.
Now I curse the time it takes to get to my girl Cavan so beautiful.
Autumn shadows are on the leaves, the trees will soon be bare
Every sheet of red coat around me looks like the colors of her hair
My gaze retreats to meet my feet and once again I sigh
By the broken pools of the sky they remind me of the color of their eyes
In the cross of Cavan every Sunday morning, there you can find it
and seems to have the eyes of all the children of Cavan Town.
If my luck holds, I’ll have the golden summer of your smile
And I will break the hearts of Cavan’s men. it will take a while
So next Sunday night he finds me back home, bound for Killeshandra,
to work the week until I get back and court in Cavan Town.
When asked if she would be my girlfriend, at least she wouldn’t say no.
So next Sunday morning I’ll wake up and go back to her
