An Epic Ballad of the Longing for Home, Carried Across the Sea on a Whispering Voice
The late, great storyteller Nanci Griffith had a profound gift for finding the universal heart beating within a deeply specific narrative, and nowhere is this more achingly clear than in her rendition of “From Clare To Here.” Released on her Grammy-winning 1993 album, Other Voices, Other Rooms, a stunning collection of covers celebrating the songwriters who influenced her, “From Clare To Here” served as a poignant centerpiece. While Griffith‘s version was issued as a UK CD single in 1993, the track itself was an interpretation of a song originally penned by the English folk maestro Ralph McTell in 1976. Griffith’s choice to include this song, alongside her own moving compositions and covers of other celebrated folk and country artists, cemented her role as an interpreter of the highest order, bringing the immigrant’s timeless sorrow to a new audience. Her album, Other Voices, Other Rooms, reached Number 18 on the Official UK Albums Chart and peaked at Number 54 on the US Billboard 200, signifying a moment of international recognition for the American folk-country artist.
The story woven into the fabric of “From Clare To Here” is one of classic Irish diaspora—the wrenching, permanent sadness of leaving the ancestral home, specifically County Clare on the west coast of Ireland, for the promise and peril of a life abroad. It is a portrait drawn from the lives of countless Irish men and women who, driven by famine, poverty, or simply the search for a better future, found themselves scattered across the world, from Boston to London. Griffith’s voice, often described as sweet yet containing an iron core of knowing melancholy, perfectly captures the narrator’s quiet despair. She is the voice of the young man now working in a cold, distant city, perhaps in a construction crew, whose daily life is a stark, gray contrast to the vivid green memory of his homeland.
The meaning of the song resides in the profound, yet simple, refrain: “It’s a long, long way from Clare to here, it’s a long, long way, gets further every day.” This isn’t just a measure of physical distance; it’s a terrifying metric of emotional and temporal separation. Each sunrise in the new land is a further step away from the person and the place he was. Nostalgia, for the older listener especially, is always tinged with the bitterness of things that can never be recovered, and this song is its perfect anthem. The “here” he’s reached is a lonely place, punctuated by the camaraderie of other expatriates (“Four who shared this room”) and the temporary balm of drink (the “craic” mentioned is Irish for good times, often with alcohol). But the deeper ache—the longing for the soul-deep rootedness of home—remains an open wound.
Nanci Griffith’s version, performed with a beautiful clarity, carries the emotional weight of decades of emigration. She wasn’t Irish, but her Texan gift for narrative and her deep respect for the folk tradition allowed her to inhabit this universal story of yearning completely. This song is a reflection on how the past, the memories of youth, and the scent of the familiar earth can become almost mythic in their distance. It speaks directly to the hearts of those who have known such a journey, whether from a county in Ireland or a small town in the American South, and to all who have ever felt the truth of that line: the journey back seems only to lengthen with time. Griffith reminds us that some journeys are not just across land and sea, but through the years, and the final destination is often just a hollow room of memory.