Right. So you've never sung an Irish song in your life and you've been roped into something — a session, a wedding, a 50th birthday in the back room of a pub in Tullamore — and you're sat there with a pint going warm in your hand thinking everyone else came out of the womb knowing the words. They didn't. I promise you they did not.
I get emails about this. More than you'd think. Nice people, terrified people, who want to join in but feel like there's a secret rulebook they never got handed. There isn't a rulebook. But there IS an order you should learn songs in, and most lists you'll find online get it backwards. They start you on Danny Boy. Danny Boy! It's a beautiful song and it'll break a stranger's heart at a funeral but it has a range like a cathedral and if you start there you'll quit. Don't start there.
Start small. Start where the song carries you instead of the other way round.
So here's the five I'd put in front of a complete beginner, in this order, and why each one is kind to a nervous voice.
One — the Rattlin' Bog. I'd say that no matter what, you know I would, but hear me out because there's an actual reason beyond me being a one-trick pony (I am, a bit). The Rattlin' Bog is what's called a cumulative song. It builds. You learn ONE new word each verse — the tree, the branch, the twig, the nest, the egg, the bird, the feather, the flea — and then you sing everything you've already sung backwards down the chain. Which means you are not memorising eight verses. You are memorising eight words. The structure does the heavy lifting and your brain just clicks them into place. By the third go-round people who'd never heard it are belting the flea verse (the CLIMAX, obviously) and missing breaths and laughing. Nobody's judging your pitch because the whole thing is a glorious controlled collapse anyway. If you only ever learn one of these, learn the words to the Rattlin' Bog first and you'll see what I mean.
Two — I'll Tell Me Ma. Bouncy, daft, dead short chorus, and half of Ireland learned it in a schoolyard so it lives in the bone. "She is handsome, she is pretty, she is the belle of Belfast city" — that's the whole engine of it and it loops. You can mumble the verses for years and still nail the chorus loud, and the chorus is where you join in anyway. Grand starter. Here's I'll Tell Me Ma in the songbook with the full words.
Three — The Wild Rover. Now this one. THIS one. You don't even really need to know the verses on night one because the song hands you the four claps. "And it's NO (clap clap clap clap), nay never" — and a room of strangers becomes one organism for about ten seconds. There is nothing like it. It's a forgiving melody, sits in a comfortable speaking-ish range, and the claps mean even a non-singer has a job to do. Lovely confidence builder. The Wild Rover lives here.
Four — The Holy Ground. Bit of a sleeper pick, this. People forget it. But "fine girl you are" comes round so often and so hearty that you'll have it after one listen, and the whole song has a swagger to it that makes you stand up straighter. It's a sailor's song, full of leaving and coming home, and there's a great shout of a chorus that wants volume more than it wants accuracy. Perfect. Loud beats correct nearly every time in a pub. Words are over here.
Five — The Parting Glass. And now, having got your legs under you, the soft one. I'm putting it last on purpose. The Parting Glass is the song you sing at the end of the night when the chairs are going up and somebody's mam is crying happy. It asks a little more of you — it wants quiet, it wants you to mean it — but it's slow and it's gentle and there's nowhere to rush. By the time you've done the other four you'll have the nerve. It's the one that'll make you understand why people bother with any of this. Here's The Parting Glass, and don't sing it sober the first time, is my advice, though you didn't hear that from me.
A few things nobody tells you. You do not need a good voice. You need a willing one. The session isn't an audition and the only unforgivable sin is sitting there with your arms folded looking like you'd rather be at the dentist. Sing it WRONG, loud and wrong, and you'll be loved for it. Mumble the verses you don't know and hit the chorus like it owes you money. That's the actual technique. That's all of it.
And learn one all the way through. Just one. The difference between someone who "knows a few Irish songs" and someone who can carry a room is exactly one song they own completely, with no gaps, that they could sing in the dark with a head cold. Make it the Bog. I would say that.
Slán go fóill, BogLord2002
P.S. — Rattlin (the cat, not the song) has strong opinions about my singing and registers them by leaving the room the moment I start. He came back for the flea verse once. I'm choosing to read that as a review.