Song for St Paddy’s Day: the Pogues and The Dubliners – The Irish Rover

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