No- it isn't Vic - It was written for Phillip Donnellan's film, The Irishmen, nver released in Britain as the Beeb didn't like what some of the Navvies said about the conditions on English sites
It was shown on Irish television when Donnellan died in 1999 and is due to be shown at our local History Society next month, if you're around
It's a superb film and the soundtrack includes Joe Heaney, Bobby Casey, Tom McCarthy, Martin Burns and Seamus Ennis
Some of MacColl's best songs were used, but never sung around because they were never released elsewhere, apart from Tunnel Tigers

THE RAMBLER FROM CLARE (1966)
I had to sell my bicycle to get me fare over. The missus had to borrow from the neighbours, a pound here, ten bob there, to get me fare. I'll try and get my wife and family over here this year if I make a go of it, for there's definitely nothing back in Ireland for a poor man. Nothing! (John Foran, recorded in London, 1965)

There's Johnny Munnelly, a Mayo man, was the greatest man that ever came out of Ireland, and he slaughtered himself for John Laing, took TB and died. And the sinker, Jim Heeley ... slaughtered himself upon piece-work that tore that man's heart and guts out. The man's walking around now with one lung and there's not a man to walk up and say, 'Well, Jim, you've done good work! Here's a pint! Here's a pound, here's a feed.!' They're finished for life. They're finished for life! ' (County Offally man, recorded in London, 1965)

         
tune: traditional Irish ('The Rambler from Clare')
new words and trad arr.: Ewan MacColl
? 1968 Stormking Music, Inc.

I am a young fellow that's very well known;
I've travelled through Galway and the County Tyrone.
For work I've been searching through Cork and Kildare,
There was never a job for the rambler from Clare.

Through Kerry I searched with no brogues to me feet,
I was stranded in Sligo with nothing to eat;
Till in desperation I borrowed the fare,
And 'Goodbye to old Ireland,' said the rambler from Clare.

On the boat leaving Ireland I stood in the bar,
And a big red-faced agent he stood me a jar.
Says he: 'Up in Scotland they're building dams there
And there's plenty of work for a rambler from Clare.'

I made for Argyll where I dug a big hole;
It was half-a-mile deep and I felt like a mole.
It held ten million gallons of water, I swear,
And the most of it sweat from the rambler from Clare.

The next job I worked on was digging a drain;
I moved up the trench like a big diesel train.
They laid off the rest of the gang then and there,
For the equal of ten was the rambler from Clare.

One day they was moving a bridge into place
And a thousand-ton crane it falls flat on its face.
Like Ajax that bridge on me shoulders I bear -
There's no crane in the world like the rambler from Clare.

They'll tell you my equal was ne'er to be seen;
They called me 'the horse' and 'the digging machine';
The gangermen loved me, the agents would stare,
All admiring the strength of the rambler from Clare.

But now I am bent and me fire is turned cold;
In another four years I'll be fifty years old.
I'm worn out and finished, but what do they care?
For they've had all they want of the rambler from Clare.

MacColl always spelt his name this way - that's the way the family spell it now - typo on my part
I'm never sure whether Dylan spells Zimmermann with on N or two Raggy - don't be petty
Jim Carroll