The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #79205 Message #4150290
Posted By: Joe Offer
14-Aug-22 - 10:11 PM
Thread Name: Origins: Irish Rover
Subject: RE: Origins: Irish Rover
All this, of course, is to show Tattie Bogle that it's OK to have more than one version of a song. Here's the Clancy Brothers version, which is the one we all learned.
Source: The Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem Songbook (Oak Publications, New York, 1964 & 1971, page 39)
IRISH ROVER
In the year of our Lord, eighteen hundred and six
We set sail from the Coal Quay of Cork.
We were sailing away with a cargo of bricks
For the grand City Hall of New York. We'd an elegant craft, it was rigged fore and aft
And how the wild winds drove her.
She had twenty-three masts and she stood several blasts
And they called her the Irish Rover.
There was Barney Magee from the banks of the Lee,
There was Hogan from County Tyrone.
There was Johnny McGurk who was scared stiff of work
And a chap from Westmeath named Malone.
There was Slugger O'Toole who was drunk as a rule
And fighting Bill Tracy from Dover.
And your man Mick McGann from the banks of the Bann
Was the skipper of the Irish Rover.
We had one million bags of the best Sligo rags,
We had two million barrels of bone.
We had three million bales of old nanny goats' tails,
We had four million barrels of bones. We had five million hogs and six million dogs,
And seven million barrels of porter.
We had eight million sides of old blind horses' hides
In the hold of the Irish Rover.
We had sailed seven years when the measles broke out
And our ship lost her way in a fog.
And the whole of the crew was reduced down to two,
'Twas myself and the captain's old dog. Then the ship struck a rock, O Lord what a shock
And nearly tumbled over,
Turned nine times around, then the poor old dog was drowned--
I'm the last of the Irish Rover.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=COQIxXvwJ0A