Thursday, March 2, 2017

The Rebel Black Dot Irish Song o' the Day


The Pogues, "The Irish Rover" from The Best of the Pogues (The Last Angry Irishman)

Commentary: There are no happy endings in Irish traditional & folk music, only varying degrees of melancholy & misadventure.
"On the fourth of July, Eighteen Hundred and Six,
We set sail from the sweet cove of Cork,
We were sailing away with a cargo of bricks
For the grand City Hall in New York.
'Twas a wonderful craft, she was rigged fore and aft,
And O how the wild winds drove her!
She stood several blasts, she had twenty-seven masts,
And they called her the
Irish Rover

"We had sailed seven years when the measles broke out,
And the ship lost its way in the fog,
And that whale of a crew was reduced down to two
Just meself and the captain's old dog.
Then the ship struck a rock, O Lord what a shock!
The bulkhead was turned right over,
Turned nine times around and the poor old dog was drowned,
I'm the last of the
Irish Rover!"

No comments: