The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #164783   Message #3948941
Posted By: Thompson
08-Sep-18 - 05:26 AM
Thread Name: Leaving a job with a bad boss - song suggestions
Subject: RE: Leaving a job with a bad boss - song suggestions
Goodbye Muirsheen Durkan sung by Luke Kelly with the Dubliners https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uMX-Lbxa_ac

The Rocks of Bawn sung by Paul Brady with pipes by Liam O'Flynn https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G6oqBKE1ObY

The Rocks of Bawn has that great sense of transition from gratefulness for work at the beginning into rage and hatred. The boss starts as 'Lovely Sweeney' and ends with a curse.

Don't hire with any master
Till you know what your work will be
For he will rise you early
From the clear daylight to the dawn…

May my curse attend you, Sweeney
You have me nearly robbed
You're sitting by the fireside
With your *dúidín in your gob*
Sitting by the fireside
From the clear daylight till the dawn…

*Dúidín - a short-stemmed clay pipe, the cigarette of the 18th and 19th century: put a spade in the earth anywhere in Ireland and you'll bring up their decorative stems, and if you're digging in bogland, sometimes the bowls too. Gob - contemptuous term for a mouth; the word actually means a bird's beak.