‘Bodkin’: What Is The Meaning Of The Irish Folk Song Teddy Power Sings?

When we first meet the character of Teddy Power (played by Ger Kelly) in the new Netflix series Bodkin, he’s seated at a local bar and his stoic silence is attributed to the fact that he’s probably completely drunk. So drunk that he doesn’t even blink to acknowledge Will Forte’s character, investigative podcaster Gilbert Power, when Power greets him with a friendly hello at the bar. Power and his fellow journalists Dove (Siobhan Cullen) and Emmy (Robyn Cara) are in the town of Bodkin to research a cold case, the disappearance of a man, woman, and teenage boy who were in town celebrating the harvest festival known as Samhain twenty years earlier.

Out of nowhere a few minutes later, the burly Teddy, who we’ll soon learn is a blacksmith with a talent for smithing handmade knives, abruptly jumps off his barstool, knocking it over and bringing the entire bar to a standstill as he begins to sing an Irish folk song with the voice of an angelic choirboy.

Teddy is played by Irish actor and musician Ger Kelly, who performs music under the name Frowning Hours, and the song he sings is a traditional folk song called “A Stor Mo Chroi (Treasure of My Heart),” a 19th century Irish folk song written by Brian O’Higgins, a writer, poet and Irish republican who was a founder and leader of Sinn Féin. The song, which has been covered by The Chieftains and countless others, speaks to the heartache of a person leaving their Irish homeland, with lyrics that include wistful lines like, “For the stranger’s land may be bright and grand/ and rich in its treasures golden/You may pine, I know, for the long, long ago/ and the love you’ll soon be leaving.”

It is later revealed that Teddy’s real name is Edward Power, and he was the young teenager who disappeared at the Samhain festival two decades earlier. Teddy was returned to his home safely but his disappearance remained unexplained and, odder still, whatever happened to him while he was gone changed his personality, rendering him nearly silent and stunted, both emotionally and developmentally. Eventually [spoiler alert] we learn that one of the new age hippies who lives in Bodkin, Maeve, knocked him out with the oar of a boat the night he disappeared, leaving him with a traumatic brain injury, and music essentially has become his primary method of communication.

In the climactic series finale, as the Samhain festival is underway, one of the locals plants a bomb in a cave near the festivities, and in an effort to lure attendees away from danger, the only thing to be done is to use Teddy’s showstopping voice to get their attention. Teddy sings another traditional song, “The Parting Glass,” and leads them out of the field where the bomb is planted to safety. “The Parting Glass” has been performed for centuries, with well-known recent covers by Hozier and Ed Sheeran (and the tune was also the inspiration for Bob Dylan’s “The Times They Are A-Changin'”) and the song’s meaning is meant to cap off a night of revelry among friends, very literally what he’s trying to do at the Samhain festival.

Up to this point on the show Teddy has been something of a tragic figure in the series, a victim several times over, having disappeared on Samhain a child and then being left with an injury that altered the course of his life. But by using his gift of music, which is essentially his only way to get anyone’s attention, he’s able to save everyone else from a deadly fate and becomes a quiet hero of the story.

Bodkin is available to stream on Netflix.

Liz Kocan is a pop culture writer living in Massachusetts. Her biggest claim to fame is the time she won on the game show Chain Reaction.