"The Briar and the Rose"

The Black Rider, 1993

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In an interview I read a while back, Steve Earle was asked which of his songs he thought would live on the longest after he was gone. He didn’t name one of his early country hits, nor one of the political songs that have generated press in the 21st century. He picked a song that wasn’t even a single: “Galway Girl,” from 2000’s Transcendental Blues.

This seemed surprising to me, living in the States. But then a year or two later I went to a wedding in Ireland. After that, it wasn’t so surprising any more. Though the song is relatively new, in Ireland it might has well be centuries old. When the wedding band kicked into “Galway Girl,” I doubt most of the people hollering along knew it was a Steve Earle song. I doubt most of them knew or cared who Steve Earle was. In America, it’s an album cut. In Ireland, it’s the eighth highest-selling single in Irish chart history. “Galway Girl” is a national standard, from a guy who’s not even Irish.

When I was looking up “The Briar and the Rose,” off Tom’s 1993 album The Black Rider, I discovered it had a similar trajectory, albeit on a smaller scale. It wasn’t a single. It’s not a song Tom plays live very often. But it’s been covered quite a bit. And those covers often appears on albums like this:

The site Bells Irish Lyrics notes that “The Briar and the Rose” is “not an Irish Song in the true sense of the word, but it has been adopted by many Irish artists due to its Celtic flavour along with its reference to Brennan's Glen.”¹

“The Briar and the Rose” isn’t quite at the same holler-along-with-the-wedding-band level of fame as “Galway Girl,” but quite a few Irish and English folk singers have sung it. A guy named George at the Tom Waits Fan Forums tracks Tom Waits covers. He groups them by album. Here’s how many artists have covered the various songs off The Black Rider:

Not even close

Some of those covers include traditional Irish instruments. But many are either entirely or mostly a cappella, for small vocal groups. That’s the case with my favorite cover I discovered doing this (though I’d point you to versions by Fay Hield, The Once, and Five Pint Mary too). This is by a male seven-part harmony group Coda from Mayo, Ireland, on the West coast.

Will “The Briar and the Rose” end up as a stealth contender for Tom’s most-remembered song, like Steve Earle predicted for “Galway Girl”? In one country at least, it certainly might.

1. Though it appears that Brennan’s Glenn is not a real place in Ireland. A SPIN feature written while Tom was recording The Black Rider includes a studio moment where “everyone crowds around a wall map of California, looking for a lake with a funny name.” The Tom Waits Library theorizes that, with no actual lakes named on The Black Rider, “Brennan’s Glenn” is where this cartographic excursion landed him.