This may be my all time favorite Irish song – the Irish Rover played by the Pogues and Dubliners together in 1987. Whether you like either you can’t not love this. It’s an awesome performance. You can tell that Shane McGowan is in awe of the Dubliners. He’s an ugly bugger and a anti-poster boy for dental hygiene and I can assure you that is not water in that paper cup but no one sings an Irish song like Shane.
I saw the Pogues live in London in 1987 and it’s still the best concert I have ever been too. They rocked the place. The mass at the front (this was pre-mosh pit) was incredible. I have never seen or been in such a mass of people leaping up and down. McGowan had a liter bottle of whiskey in one hand and a cigarette in the other the whole time.
Have a great St Patrick’s Day:
- 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 in New York
- We’d an elegant craft, it was rigged ‘fore and aft
- And how the trade winds drove her
- She had twenty-three masts and she stood several blasts
- And they called her the Irish Rover
- There was Barney McGee from the banks of the Lee
- There was Hogan from County Tyrone
- There was Johnny McGurk who was scared stiff of work
- And a man from Westmeath called Malone
- There was Slugger O’Toole who was drunk as a rule
- And fighting Bill Tracy from Dover
- And your man Mick McCann, from the banks of the Bann
- Was the skipper on the Irish Rover
- We had one million bags of the best Sligo rags
- We had two million barrels of stones
- We had three million sides of old blind horses’ hides
- 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 bales of old nanny goats’ tails
- In the hold of the Irish Rover
- We had sailed seven years when the measles broke out
- And our ship lost her way in the fog
- And the whole of the crew was reduced down to two
- ‘Twas meself and the captain’s old dog
- Then the ship struck a rock; oh Lord what a shock
- The bulkhead was turned right over
- We turned nine times around – then the poor old dog was drowned
- Now I’m the last of the Irish Rover
I saw the Dubliners in, of all places, Slough back in the early 70’s. Some jerk in the audience was giving them a hard time and heckling them between every song. I will always remember the riposte from one of the D’s….
“If someone puts a price on yer head…. take it!” That shut him up.
I wonder what that mosh pit looked like, jumping up and down to the music. I understand what you mean when you said “no one sings an Irish song like Shane.” I had to follow the lyrics on his part of the song, but his way of singing rocks!