Tipperary Town is a town and a civil parish in County Tipperary, Ireland. Its population was 4,979 at the 2016 census. It is also an ecclesiastical parish in the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Cashel and Emly, and is in the historical barony of Clanwilliam. The town gave its name to County Tipperary.
Tipperary International Peace Award[edit]
Created by locals in an attempt to counter the association between Tipperary and war created by the song It’s a long way to Tipperary, the Tipperary International Peace Award, described as “Ireland’s outstanding award for humanitarian work”, has been awarded annually by the Tipperary Peace Convention since the inaugural award to the late Seán MacBride in 1984. Among the other recipients are Live Aid founder Bob Geldof for 1985, the late Irish senator and peace campaigner Gordon Wilson for 1987, former Soviet General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev for 1988, the late South African president Nelson Mandela for 1989, former US president Bill Clinton for 2000, former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani for 2001, John O’Shea, founder of the charity Goal for 2003, the late Pakistani president Benazir Bhutto for 2007, the late US Senator Edward Kennedy for 2009, Afghan human rights campaigner Dr Sima Samar for 2010, former Irish president, Mary McAleese and her husband, senator Martin McAleese for 2011, Pakistani activist for female education and youngest-ever Nobel Prize laureate Malala Yousafzai for 2012, former US envoy to Northern Ireland Richard Haass for 2013, the former UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon for 2014, and Colombian president Juan Manuel Santos for 2017.
In song
The song “It’s a Long Way to Tipperary“, which became popular among the British military as a marching song, was authored by Jack Judge, whose grandparents came from Tipperary, and Henry James “Harry” Williams.
The U.S. Army included a song by John Alden Carpenter called “The Home Road” in its official 1918 song book; it includes the lyric “For the long, long road to Tipperary is the road that leads me home”. A song of remembrance is “Tipperary so far away”, which commemorates one of its famous sons, Seán Treacy; in an address to the people of Ballyporeen on 3 June 1984, Ronald Reagan, President of the United States of America, quoted a line from this song: “And I’ll never more roam, from my own native home, in Tipperary so far away”. There are other songs also with a Tipperary theme such as “Tipperary on My Mind”, “Slievenamon”, “Goodbye Mick”, “The Galtee Mountain Boy“, “Katy Daly” (an American song), “Tipperary“, and “Forty Shades of Green”, written by Johnny Cash.
Gary Moore‘s song “Business as Usual” tells about him and his love: “I lost my virginity to a Tipperary woman”. On Seventy Six The Band‘s 2006 release Gone Is Winter, the song “Carry On” also states that it is “a long way to Tipperary”. Shane MacGowan‘s song “Broad Majestic Shannon” includes the lyric “Heard the men coming home from the fair at Shinrone, their hearts in Tipperary wherever they go”.
