Right. I've been threatening to write this list for about two years and Mick finally told me to either do it or stop talking about it over my pint, so here we are.
A word before we start. "Best Irish drinking songs" is a thing people type into Google, I know, because I read my own stats (it's a sad little hobby). But a drinking song isn't the same as a SONG ABOUT DRINKING and it's definitely not the same as a song that WORKS in a pub at half eleven on a Friday. Some of the most beautiful Irish songs ever written will clear a room if you start them at the wrong moment. So this is ranked by one thing only: have I, BogLord2002, actually sung it in a pub, and did it land. Pint three is the test. If a song falls apart at pint three it's not a drinking song, it's a recital.
Here's the list. Argue with me below, you usually do.
1. The Wild Rover. Number one and it's not close. The "no, nay, never" with the four claps on the table — there is no song on earth that pulls a quiet pub into one body faster. Strangers clap. Lads who swore they wouldn't sing are slapping the table like they own it. The Wild Rover is the one I'd put in a beginner's hand and say, off you go, you can't ruin this. (You can, actually. You ruin it by clapping FIVE times. Don't. Four. I will know.)
2. The Irish Rover. Different rover, no relation. This is the tongue-twister one — the cargo of bricks and the dog and the ship's crew, faster and faster until somebody falls over the words and the whole table laughs. It's a song that rewards a bit of swagger and punishes anyone too sober to keep up. Gas every time.
3. Whiskey in the Jar. The big chorus song. "Musha ring dum a doo dum a da" — half the room doesn't know what it means and neither do I, and it does not matter one bit. Highwaymen, a double-crossing woman, a pistol. It has everything. People who claim they don't know any Irish songs know this one, they just don't realise it yet.
4. The Black Velvet Band. Slow build, big payoff. The story does the work — yer man gets stitched up by a girl with sparkling eyes and shipped off to Van Diemen's Land — and by the chorus everyone's leaning in. Lovely song. Faintly heartbreaking if you actually listen, which after pint three you won't, and that's grand.
5. Finnegan's Wake. A man dies, they wash him, they wake him, somebody throws whiskey, he sits up. It is a song about a corpse and it is JOYFUL, which tells you everything about how this island handles grief. Mighty for a session because it speeds up and the words trip you and you all collapse laughing at the end.
6. I'll Tell Me Ma. Cheating slightly — it's a children's street song, not a boozer's anthem. But put it in front of a pub and watch. Everyone knew it as a child and the words come back like they were never gone. I'll Tell Me Ma wins on pure muscle memory. Belfast city, where the girls are so pretty.
7. The Mermaid. "Three times around went our gallant ship." A sailor's drowning song that's somehow a comedy. The Mermaid has the kind of repeating verse that lets a slow learner catch the bus, which is the whole point of a good session song — nobody left behind.
8. The Holy Ground. "Fine girl you are." That's it, that's the hook, and a whole pub will roar it back at you. The Holy Ground is short, it's loud, it's a sailor leaving Cobh, and it does the job in about ninety seconds flat. Class.
9. Johnny Jump Up. A cautionary tale about cider so strong it'd raise the dead. Johnny Jump Up is funny on the page and funnier when the man singing it is three pints into his own version of the story. Cork's finest contribution to the genre, and I'll hear no argument from Limerick.
10. The Jug of Punch. It's a song about how much yer man loves a jug of punch. There is no plot. There is no twist. There's a fella and there's punch and that's the song, and on the right night The Jug of Punch is exactly as deep as you need it to be.
11. Drunken Sailor. A sea shanty, technically not Irish, but it's sung in every Irish pub from here to Boston so it's earned its place. Drunken Sailor is the easiest call-and-response on the list. What shall we do? You already know. Put him in the longboat.
12. The Galway Races. Pure list-song joy. The Galway Races reels off the whole crowd at the racecourse — every county, every chancer — and the gallop of it suits a pub that's well warmed up. Don't start it cold.
13. Mursheen Durkin. "Goodbye Mursheen Durkin, I'm sick and tired of working." Off to California to dig for gold. Mursheen Durkin has a chorus you can lean your whole weight on. Emigration song that somehow sounds like a celebration, which is very us.
14. Spancil Hill. Now this one's a turn. It's slow, it's homesick, it's a man dreaming of Clare from a long way away, and it is on this list because Spancil Hill is MY home patch and I'll not leave it off. Sing it when the night's gone quiet and tender, not when it's roaring. Wrong moment and it's a wet blanket. Right moment and grown men go silent.
15. The Banks of the Roses. Cheeky, fast, a courting song with a wink in it. The Banks of the Roses is a great one for a session where everyone's loose and the fiddle's flying.
16. Weile Weile Waile. I know, I know — it's grim. A woman, a baby, a penknife. But Weile Weile Waile is a cumulative-ish horror lullaby that Irish children sing in school yards without blinking, and in a pub it's gas precisely BECAUSE it's so dark and everyone delivers it deadpan. Don't judge us.
17. The Parting Glass. And we close where you always close. The Parting Glass is not a drinking song, it's the END of the drinking, the song that says we're done, go home, mind yourselves. You don't sing it loud. You sing it together and quiet and then you all stand up and somebody cries. Every real session ends here. It's the only correct way to finish, and if you start ANY other song after it you're a savage.
Now — the actual point. The way you ruin every single one of these is the same way: you sing them AT people instead of WITH them. A drinking song isn't a performance. It's a room agreeing to be one thing for three minutes. Pick the one the most people in the room already half-know. Start it lower than feels right (you always start too high). And leave the showing-off at the door.
The full songbook with words for all of these is over at the songbook — go learn one before the weekend. And if you're wondering why a man who runs a fan site for a song about a bog has this much to say about pub singing... well. It's all the same craic, lads. It's all the cumulative joy of a room building something together one verse at a time.
Slán go fóill, BogLord2002
P.S. — Mick says I've ranked Spancil Hill three places too low and The Galway Races two places too high. Mick can write his own list. P.P.S. — Rattlin slept through the entire writing of this, on the warm bit of floor by the radiator that isn't actually near the radiator. I've stopped questioning it.