This is a song about a cider so strong it raises the dead.
Not metaphorically. In the song an actual corpse sits up in the coffin and asks for a pint. That's the level we're operating at here, lads, and I adore it. Johnny Jump Up is Cork doing what Cork does best, which is telling you the most ridiculous lie imaginable with a completely straight face, and then daring you to call them on it.
Our own session_newbie_cork put me onto how seriously they take this one down there. Took me a while to come round to it, I'll be honest. But it's grown on me something fierce.
A Bit of History
Here's the bones of it, and I'll be straight with you because I always am. The song is tied to a real-ish bit of Cork legend about a cider called Johnny Jump Up, said to be the stuff that came out of the city in and around the years after the Second World War, when, the story goes, the apples or the barrels or SOMETHING went wrong and produced a cider with a kick like a startled mule. There's talk of men being paralysed off it. There's talk it was renamed for exactly that reason. Whether a single word of that is true, I genuinely cannot tell you, and anyone who hands you a precise vintage and a brewery and a date is, I'd gently suggest, having you on a bit. It's a local legend. That's the honest shape of it.
What's a bit firmer is the song itself. It's strongly associated with the great Cork singer and songwriter Jimmy Crowley and the Cork ballad scene that carried it, and you'll hear it credited around the comic-ballad tradition of the city. As with so many of these things, the line between "traditional" and "a specific fella in a specific pub" gets blurry the moment you press on it. So I won't pretend to certainty I don't have. The traditional comic-song body of it, the lethal-cider verses everyone bawls along to, is what we'll sing here.
The reason it lasts isn't the history anyway. It's that it's GAS. It's a tall tale set to a tune. Every verse the cider does something more absurd than the last, and you're laughing before the punchline because you already know it's going to be daft. That's a hard thing to write and an easy thing to love.
Lyrics
I'll tell you a story that happened to me One day as I went down to Youghal by the sea The sun it was warm and the day it was hot When I says to myself, "I'll have a quick pint."
I went into a pub and I called for a stout The barman came up and he soon threw me out While the wind it did blow and the rain it did pour Then he says to me, "Try Johnny Jump Up."
I saw a man stagger out into the road He fell in the gutter, pigs ate him for bread They couldn't digest him, no not even the pigs Were stretched out in the gutter with the heart out of them.
I went to the doctor and I asked for advice I told him last night I was bitten by mice He says, "Show me the bite," and I lifted me shirt Then he says, "Holy God, did you fall in the dirt?"
"Did you ever drink whiskey, or rum, or poteen?" Says I, "Doctor, no, sure I lived on Lucozade." He says, "Take off the spuds and the bacon and the rest, And try Johnny Jump Up, sure it's surely the best."
At the Cork Eucharistic Congress, the men of the cloth Said the famous Father Matthew was as drunk as the rest The crowd they all heaved and they rolled on the path When they all tried a sample of Johnny Jump Up.
A man died in the workhouse all stiff in his bed So they laid him outside in his coffin so dead Next morning they found him a-walking the road He'd a pint in each hand and they full to the brim.
How to Sing It
Right. Practical bit, and there are a couple of traps in this one.
First trap: the WORDS change. There are a dozen Cork variants of Johnny Jump Up, lines wander in and out, the verse order shifts, and some singers have whole verses I've never heard. That's grand. It's a comic folk song, not scripture. Pick the verses your room knows and don't fret about the rest. If you fluff a line, lean into it, half the audience is fluffing it harder than you.
Second trap, and this is the important one: don't rush the punchlines. The whole song is jokes, and a joke needs a beat. The corpse with a pint in each hand is the CLIMAX of the thing, so save it, sit on that last verse, and let the daftness land. A man who races through it like he's reading a shopping list kills every laugh in the room. Slow up. Sell it.
Tempo's a comfortable lilt, not a gallop. It's a story being told by a fella who knows it's funny. Think pub raconteur, not racehorse. And the chorus tag, "try Johnny Jump Up," comes back round so people latch onto it fast, which means even a cold room is singing along by the third verse. That's your friend. Use it.
One last thing. This is a Cork song, so if you've Cork people in the room, hand it to them. They'll sing it better and they'll be insufferable about it after, and honestly they've earned it.
For a clean copy to print and pass round the table I keep the words over on the lyrics page. If you fancy more of the comic, tall-tale stuff you'll want The Mermaid for sheer nonsense and The Galway Races for the roll-call craic. And do have a wander through the whole songbook while the kettle's on.
Mind the cider.
Slán go fóill, BogLord2002
P.S. — Rattlin' the cat is, as far as I know, off the cider. Though there was a morning last spring he came in walking very strange and very pleased with himself and I never did get to the bottom of it.