♫ The Songbook ♫
The Rattlin' Bog is the greatest song ever sung — but it doesn't sing alone. Here's my growing collection of the OTHER great trad and pub songs: the ones that get a whole room going, the ones your nan knew, the ones you sing at closing time. Full lyrics, where they came from, and how to sing them. All traditional. All free. Sing away.
Traditional Irish
Carrickfergus - lyrics, history and origins of the drunk, beautiful, half-nonsense Irish lament that nobody can fully explain (and that's the point).
Traditional Irish (Londonderry Air)
Danny Boy - lyrics, history and origins of the Londonderry Air, the tune that's older than the words and somehow became THE Irish ballad.
Traditional Irish (Yeats)
Down by the Salley Gardens - lyrics, history and origins of the Yeats song he rebuilt from three lines an old woman sang him.
Traditional (sea shanty)
Drunken Sailor - lyrics, history and origins of the most singable sea shanty there is, and how to get a whole crowd roaring it inside one verse.
Traditional English
Green Grow the Rushes O - lyrics, history and origins of the strangest cumulative counting song there is, and what the lily-white boys might actually mean.
Traditional (Belfast/Dublin)
I'll Tell Me Ma - lyrics, history and origins of the Belfast street rhyme that became a roaring pub singalong about Albert Mooney and the belle of the city.
Traditional Irish (Cork)
Johnny Jump Up - lyrics, history and origins of the Cork comic song about a lethal cider that paralyses a man and gets the dead rising for a pint.
Traditional Dublin / Irish
Molly Malone (Cockles and Mussels) - lyrics, history and origins of Dublin's unofficial anthem, the tale of the fishmonger who wheels her wheelbarrow through streets broad and narrow.
Traditional Irish
Muirsheen Durkin - lyrics, history and origins of the cheerful Irish emigration song about a lad off to California to dig for gold instead of spuds.
Traditional Irish (County Clare)
Spancil Hill - lyrics, history and origins of the great Irish emigration ballad set at a real horse fair near Ennis, County Clare.
Traditional Irish
The Banks of the Roses - lyrics, history and origins of the cheeky Irish courting song with the grand 'whack fol the diddle' lilt.
Traditional Irish (Galway)
The Galway Races - lyrics, history and origins of the rollicking Irish list-song with the 'with me whack fol the do' chorus made for stomping.
Traditional Irish (Cork)
The Holy Ground - lyrics, history and origins of the Cork sailor's farewell, with the famous roared 'FINE GIRL YOU ARE' line that makes the whole song.
Traditional Irish
The Jug of Punch - lyrics, history and origins of the simplest, happiest Irish drinking song there is. A man, a jug, contentment.
Traditional (sea song)
The Leaving of Liverpool - lyrics, history and origins of a sailor's farewell that survives on a single thread, almost lost to us entirely.
Traditional (sea song)
The Mermaid - lyrics, history and origins of the daft doomed-ship sea song where the waves go up and down and a mermaid spells the end of you.
Traditional Irish/Scottish
The Parting Glass - lyrics, history and origins of the song you sing last, when the lights come up and nobody wants to leave.
Traditional Irish
The Wearing of the Green - lyrics, history and origins of the 1798 rebel street ballad about it being a hanging offence to wear a shamrock.
Traditional Irish/British
The Wild Rover - lyrics, history and origins of the most-sung pub song in Ireland, with the famous four-clap chorus.
Traditional Irish (Dublin)
Weile Weile Waile - lyrics, history and origins of the jaunty Dublin children's song that is secretly a stone-cold murder ballad.
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