Belfast Singer & Songwriter
Padraig Lalor

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Stories behind the songs

62 Seconds:  In May 1911 Titanic was launched into Belfast Lough to be fitted out. It took her 62 seconds to slip into the sea and according to an article in the Times, it took Belfast 90 years to get to grips with it's Titanic heritage.

Two pennies:  Thomas Millar  was an assistant deck engineer with White Star Line and Titanic was his second voyage. His death at the age of 33 left his two young sons orphaned. The story of the two pennies has been well documented in a book by his great grand daughter Susie Millar.

Molly Brown: a larger than life character, was a champion of women's rights in The USA and was one of the more formidable survivors of the disaster.   

Close your eyes: a Mother, resigned to their fate comforts her child by wrapping a shawl around them to keep them together as they pass from one life to another.

When the waves are round me breaking. As I pace the deck alone, and my eye in vain is seeking some green leaf to rest upon, what would not I give to wander where my old companions dwell? Absence makes the heart grow fonder, isle of beauty fare thee well! Milton Paradise Lost

Jerome Burke: a young man from Glanmire near Cork City boarded Titanic at Queenstown. Before his departure, a neighbour, came to the Burke house with some holy water. Jerome's mother filled some of this water into a small distinctive bottle his sister Nora had brought back from a trip to Lourdes and gave it to him. 

Fourteen months after the disaster, a man walking with his dog along the shoreline near Dunkettle, found the bottle which contained the message goodbye to all the Burkes of Glanmire. The bottle seemingly found its way back almost 3000 miles through Cork harbour into the very Parish where Jerome was born. 

Ismay's Dream: J Bruce Ismay and the White Star line wanted to build the biggest liners of the time. His escape from Titanic led to him being pilloried in the press and criticised by the two inquiries into Titanic’s sinking. Much of his later life was lived in Connemara in the West of Ireland. He died in London in 1937. 

Vex not his ghost: O, let him pass! he hates him much that would upon the rack of this tough world stretch him out longer. King Lear (5.3.314)

Béal Feirste's wrath: Belfast (Béal Feirste, meaning "mouth of the sandbars"). The huge labour requirements of Harland & Wolff  proved irresistible to many traditional agrarian Catholic workers from the South. Some viewed a mixed labour force as a bad omen & many conspiracy theories surround the ill fated liner. The song "Béal Feirste's wrath" tells a story of how the lives of the 3000 men who worked on Titanic were forever tied to those who still lie in the deep.   

Lulled in the countless chambers of the brain, our thoughts are linked by many a hidden chain; awake but one, and in, what myriads rise!  Alexander Pope

Thimbleful of the western wind:  whispering over the graves of Ireland's dead is a reminder that life is too short to be holding grudges or animosity.