The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #79205   Message #3878238
Posted By: Tattie Bogle
22-Sep-17 - 05:43 PM
Thread Name: Origins: Irish Rover
Subject: ADD: Irish Rover
So here is the version from my family memorabilia: some verses the same as in the DT, others quite different, especially the third verse:

THE IRISH ROVER

In the year of our Lord, 1806,
We set sail from the fair Cobh of Cork,
We were bound far away with a cargo of bricks
For the great City Hall of New York.
We'd a beautiful craft, she was rigged fore and aft,
And boys! How the trade winds drove 'er,
Sure she stood fearful blasts, she had twenty-six masts,
And we called her The Irish Rover.

We had one million bags, of the best Sligo rags,
And we had two million barrels of bones,
We had three million sides of ould blind horses' hides,
We had four million barrels of stones.
We had five million dogs, we had six million hogs,
And we had seven million bundles of clover,
We had eight million bales of ould Jimmy-goats' tails
In the hold of The Irish Rover.

Donoghue and McHugh came from Red Waterloo
And O'Neill and McPhail from the Rhine,
There was Ludd and McSpudd from The Land of the Flood,
Nick Malone, Mike McGlone and O'Brien,
Thete was Mick McIntee and a big Portuguee,
And Michael O'Dowd from Dover,
And a man from Turkestan, by the name of Pat McCann
Was the skipper of The Irish Rover.

Then we sailed eleven years till the measles broke out
And the ship lost her way in a fog.
And the whole of the crew 'twas reduced into two,
'Twas meself and The Captain's ould dog.
Then we struck on a rock, with a horrible shock
And then she rolled right over',
Turned eleven times around,
Then the poor dog got drowned,
I'm the last of The Irish Rover.