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BALLYJAMESDUFF

CO. CAVAN · IE

Ballyjamesduff
Baile Shéamais Dhuibh

The Ireland's Ancient East
STOP 06 / 06

Baile Shéamais Dhuibh · Co. Cavan

The town in the song. Percy French wrote it; the museum keeps the rest.

Ballyjamesduff sits in south Cavan on the old road from Dublin to Cavan town, around a Plantation-era square that is wider than the town that grew up around it. It is named, depending on which source you trust, for an English officer in Cumberland's army or for a local Duff who happened to own the land. Either way the name stuck, and a hundred and fifty years later Percy French wrote a song about it that put the place into the mouth of every Irish bar singer from Boston to Brisbane.

The song is the thing most people know. "Come Back Paddy Reilly to Ballyjamesduff" is a homesick emigrant's ballad written in 1912, and it did the work that homesick emigrant ballads do — it made a small market town a fixed point in the imagination of people who would never see it. There's a statue of Paddy Reilly on the square now, sitting on a bench, looking like he's just got off the bus from somewhere and is wondering whether he came back too late.

The other thing the town has, and the reason it punches above its weight, is the Cavan County Museum. It lives in the former St Clare's convent at the top of the hill, three floors of properly curated stuff — a 1798 pike, three medieval Sheela-na-gigs, the costumes from the 1916 Rising, every Cavan GAA jersey of consequence, and out the back a replica WWI trench system that opened in 2014 and has been swallowing school groups ever since. It is the best regional museum in the north midlands, and most visitors are people from Cavan bringing their grandchildren.

Beyond that, Ballyjamesduff is an old creamery town getting on with itself. It is not a destination in the brochure sense. You come for the museum, you stand on the square for ten minutes thinking about Paddy Reilly, you have a pint, and you drive on to Virginia or Cavan or wherever you were going. Which is, if you think about it, exactly what the song is about.

Population

~3,800

Walk score

A wide square and four streets off it

Founded

Plantation town, 17th century

Coords

53.8617° N, 7.2056° W

01 / 06

At a glance.

Three things every local will eventually mention. Read these and you've already understood more than most day-trippers do.

01 The museum

Cavan County Museum, in an old convent.

Three floors of the county's history in the former St Clare's. A 1798 pike, medieval Sheela-na-gigs, GAA jerseys, and a full WWI trench system out the back. School-trip energy on weekdays; quieter Saturdays.

Stories & lore → 02 The song

"Come Back Paddy Reilly to Ballyjamesduff."

Percy French wrote it in 1912 about an emigrant longing for a town he'd left behind. It became one of the most-sung Irish ballads of the 20th century. There's a statue of Paddy Reilly on the square. He's been waiting a while.

Stories & lore → 03 The square

A Plantation square, wider than it needs to be.

Laid out in the 17th century when the Dublin–Cavan road came through. Big enough for a fair, a market and the statue. Most of the town's life still happens on it, or one street back from it.

Walks & outings →

02 / 06

Stories & lore.

The reason to come back. The things every local will eventually tell you about, usually after the second pint.

The song that did the work

Percy French and Paddy Reilly

William Percy French was a Roscommon-born songwriter who, in 1912, wrote "Come Back Paddy Reilly to Ballyjamesduff" — a comic-sentimental ballad about an emigrant in foreign parts daydreaming his way home. Paddy Reilly was a real coachman French had known. The song travelled. By the 1950s it was a standard in every Irish-American bar in the United States, sung by John McCormack and a hundred others, and the name of a small Cavan market town was in the mouths of people who could not have found it on a map. The statue of Paddy Reilly on a bench in the square went up in 2002.

A pike, three Sheelas and a convent

Cavan County Museum

The museum opened in 1996 in the former St Clare's convent, a long stone building at the top of the hill that the order had run as a school for a century. The collection covers the county from the Bronze Age to the 20th — a 1798 pike from the United Irishmen rising, three medieval Sheela-na-gigs (the carved figures that puzzle every visitor and most archaeologists), the 1916 costumes from the Rising in Dublin, and the GAA gallery on the top floor that takes the whole story of Cavan football seriously, as it should be taken. Free parking, decent café, three hours minimum if you do it properly.

A replica system out the back

The WWI trenches

Behind the museum, opened in 2014 for the centenary of the First World War, sits a full replica trench system — front line, communication trench, dugout, no-man's-land. It was built to scale using period photographs and engineering diagrams, and it does what no glass case can do: gives a school group the actual size of the thing. Schools book it months out. If you are visiting independently, time your arrival for after lunch on a weekday and you may have it to yourself.

Why the square is so wide

A Plantation town

Ballyjamesduff was laid out in the early 17th century after the Plantation of Ulster, when the English authorities planted Protestant settlers on confiscated Gaelic land across the northern half of the country. The wide central square — bigger than the town really needs — is the giveaway. Plantation towns were designed with market squares large enough to be defensible, which is why so many small towns in this part of the country have the same outsized civic centre and the same straight streets running off it. Cavan was a frontier county. The architecture remembers.

03 / 06

Things to do outside.

Wear waterproofs. Bring a sandwich. Tell someone where you're going if it's the mountain.

The Square and Main Street loop Around the square, up the hill to the museum, back down by Main Street. The Plantation layout is most readable on foot. Stop at the Paddy Reilly statue on the way past.

1.5 kmdistance

25 mintime

Lough Nadreegeel A small lake on the edge of town with a path around part of it. Reedy, quiet, herons in the morning. Not a postcard lake — a working one, fished by locals.

3 kmdistance

45 mintime

Killinkere old road Out the Killinkere road south of the town, through hedged drumlin country. Good for a Sunday morning when the museum doesn't open till one.

6 km returndistance

1.5 hourstime

04 / 06

When to go.

There is no bad time. There are different times.

Spring

Mar–May

Museum quiet, hedges greening, the whole drumlin country at its best. Bring a coat — Cavan weather has its own ideas.

◉ Go

Summer

Jun–Aug

Long evenings, the square in full use, museum running summer programmes. School trips taper off in late June.

◉ Go

Autumn

Sep–Oct

The county quietens. Good light on the drumlins. The trenches feel right in November rain.

◉ Go

Winter

Nov–Feb

Museum runs reduced winter hours — check before driving. The town carries on; not much happens after dark.

◐ Mind yourself

05 / 06

What to skip.

Honestly? Don't bother.

If a local was sitting beside you, this is the bit where they'd lean in.

Looking for Percy French in the town itself

He was from Roscommon and lived in Dublin. The connection is the song, not the man. The Percy French Society and museum are in Castlecoote, Co. Roscommon — that's where to go if you want him.

Driving up just for the statue

Paddy Reilly on his bench is a five-minute stop. If you're in the area, fine. As a destination, it's the museum that justifies the drive.

Expecting a music town

It isn't one. Cavan trad lives in other corners of the county. Ballyjamesduff has pubs and they have nights, but if you came for sessions you came to the wrong town.

The trenches in cloud and lashing rain with small children

It is an outdoor exhibit and an evocative one. In Cavan weather it can also be a long muddy ten minutes. Pick your day.

Getting there.

By car

Dublin to Ballyjamesduff is 1h 20m up the N3 via Kells and Virginia. Cavan town is 25 minutes north on the same road. Mullagh and Lough Ramor are ten minutes east.

By bus

Bus Éireann 109 (Dublin–Cavan–Donegal) stops on the square several times daily. About 1h 45m from Busáras.

By train

No train. The nearest railway is at Dundalk or Drogheda, both about an hour by car.

By air

Dublin Airport is the obvious one — 1h 10m by car, and the bus passes the airport on the way up.