This old Irish song reminds me of Shel Silverstein’s poetry… filled with hyperbolic numbers and off-the-wall narrative. It’s old enough to have no known author and several versions of lyrics. It seems that every new artist to sing it puts their own spin on the wording. The Pogues & The Dubliner’s render it most famously, and The Electrics really rock it up, but our personal favorite is The High Kings….
In the year of our Lord
Eighteen hundred and six
We set sail from the fair Cobh of Cork,
We were bound far away
With a cargo of bricks
For the fair City Hall of New York.
We’d a beautiful craft,
She was rigged fore and aft,
And Lord how the trade winds drove her,
As she stood to the blast,
She had twenty-three masts
And we called her the Irish Rover.
Donoghue and Mac Hugh
Came from Red Waterloo.
And O’Neill and Mac Flail from the Rhine.
There was Ludd and Mac Gludd
From the land of the flood
Pat Malone, Mike Mac Gowan and O’Brien,
There was Barney McGee
From the banks of the Lee,
There was Hogan from County Tyrone.
And a chap called McGurk
Who was scared stiff of work
And a chap from West Meath called Mellone.
There was Slugger O’Toole
Who was drunk as a rule
And fighting Bill Casey from Dover.
There was Dooley from Clare
Who was strong as a bear
And was skipper of the Irish Rover.
Bould Mac Gee, Mac Entee
And big Neill from Tigree
And Michael O’Dowd from Dover
And a man from Turkestan
Sure his name was Kid Mac Cann
Was the cook on the Irish Rover.
We had one million bags
Of the best Sligo rags,
We had two million barrels of bones,
We had three million sides
From old blind horse hides
We had four million bags full of stones.
We had five million dogs
And six million hogs,
And seven million bundles of clover.
We had eight million bales
Of old billy goats tails,
In the hold of the Irish Rover.
O we sailed seven years
And the measles broke out,
And the ship lost her way in a fog.
And the whole of the crew
Was reduced unto two
Just meself and the skipper’s old dog.
And we struck on a rock
With a terrible shock
And Lord, she rolled right over.
She turned nine times around;
And the old dog got drowned
I’m the last of the Irish Rover.
