Whiskey Island is based on the true story of an Irish immigrant in the 1840's who fled the potato famine for Ohio where he dug the canals. You can find out more about Toraigh and buy our first CD at toraigh.com

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Whiskey Island is actually a peninsula with access from the Edgewater Park area of Cleveland, Ohio. In 1827 that federal funding and engineering expertise allowed local citizens to dig a channel, creating the river's mouth as we now know it. The Irish, naturally, did the digging. Since that peninsula was the only habitable land anywhere about, the Irish took possession of it and began erecting tarpaper shanties on it. Amusingly enough, that stretch of slightly elevated land was once the "farm" of Lorenzo Carter, the city's first resident, who had built a still on its easternmost end. The land the Irish settled on had been called Whiskey Island before they arrived, but if it hadn't been, it would have had to have been renamed. The Irish who squatted there gave a new meaning to the island's name -- they made it a real island of whiskey. In its heyday it boasted of having 13 saloons, a considerable achievement since it was only a mile long and a third of a mile across at its vtidest point. It was from the first and for many years remained the wildest, bawdiest section of Cleveland. For the Irish canal digger it was home away from home, and after months of hard labor, death and disease, working the canals as far south as Portsmouth, the diggers fondly remembered the craic shared at Whiskey Island.

Whiskey Island
© 2003 Martin Koop (ASCAP) martinkoop@martinkoop.com

I left the blight in Carraroe
where I had been unfed
to dig deep in the soggy soil
and dig is what I did
Whiskey Island
I will be your plow

coffee, tack and bacon
then lay up the clay
early in the morning before the heat of day
County Galway
I will not miss you now
Whiskey Island
I will be your plow

When I found my way to Ohio
a younger man was I
stacking swollen boys
like cordwood
after fever last July
Mother Mary
how did I survive

Smoke pail on my shoulders, all
callouses and bone
Thirty cents to work a day
four tons of bloody stone
Oh Ben Bulben
I will not miss you now
Whiskey Island
I will be your plow.

I slept and dreamed
the other night
My Sligo maid and I
had slipped away to Innisfree
to listen to the tide
in evenings glimmer
filled with linnet’s wings

Then the jigger-boy comes shouting
bringing whiskey with the stew
sharp shovels for the diggers
clean water for the mules
Knocknarea Mountain
I will not miss you now
Whiskey Island I will be your plow

© 2003 Martin Koop (ASCAP) martinkoop@martinkoop.com