Dirty old town where is this

I heard a siren from the docks Saw a train set the night on fire I smelled the spring on the smoky wind Dirty old town, dirty old town. I'm gonna make me a big sharp axe Shining steel tempered in the fire I'll chop you down like an old dead tree Dirty old town, dirty old town.

I met my love by the gasworks wall Dreamed the dream by the old canal I kissed my girl by the factory wall Dirty old town, dirty old town Dirty old town, dirty old town. His parents were Scottish. Two decades later, The Pogues released a grittier version of the song on their second album, ' Rum, Sodomy and the Lash'. Written in by Scottish folk singer Ewan MacColl, the song was written about Salford, a town just outside Manchester in the north-west of England, where MacColl grew up.

As Dubliners frontman Luke Kelly said himself on stage once: "The next song is a love song, written to a place, not to a woman, but to a place. The gasworks wall, the old canal, the docks, they're all there in the dirty old town of Salford. And that isn't a slight to Salford or its people, the charming industrial is now a vital cog in the economic resurgence in the north of England. There's a line in the song about smelling a spring "on the smoky wind," but in the original version, the line read "on the Salford wind," and is occasionally sung as "on the sulphured wind.

With strong Irish links in the town, is it any wonder the song would eventually make its way over and inspire so many folk here? The original song was released in , and after appearing in a number of films, became a folk-revival staple.

MacColl gave the likes of Rod Stewart, Roger Whittaker and The Dubliners partial rights to the song in the lates, and they all went onto to use it for years.

As Ewan MacColl's career began to wind down during the 80s, the song was passed on to his daughter, Kirsty. Kirsty, who had the same musical gifts as her father, would collaborate with The Pogues in to release quite possibly the greatest Christmas song of all time, Fairytale of New York.

While their version of Dirty Old Town was released two years earlier, we know that Fairytale took around two years to write and record, so there's every chance that Ms MacColl had everything to do with MacGowan picking up the song her father made famous some 35 years prior. So there you have it. One of Ireland's most famous love songs has nothing to do with Ireland at all.

It's about an English town, written by a Scottish man Fancy that. By: Conor O'Donoghue. Choose your subscription. Trial Try full digital access and see why over 1 million readers subscribe to the FT.

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