The Dubliners

IT is amazing how many people who think they know their music from the golden era of the 1960s and 1970s somehow missed The Dubliners.

Perhaps we were fortunate. My eldest brother Ian was good friends at school with Dave Tarr, that wizard fiddle player who later played for the Silver Creek Mountain Band and alongside Ramsay McKay on The Suburbs of Ur. Dave had connections with some of the Irish brothers who taught at the De la Salle College in Devereux Avenue in East London. As happened so often, the music moved, via tape or borrowed record, quickly among friends, and before we knew it, we were getting into traditional Irish music through the Dubliners and also the Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem. Later, we picked up on numerous other Irish bands, like Planxty, the Chieftains and the Pogues.

But back then, in the early 1970s, it was the Dubliners who really staked a place in our hearts. What the Dubliners did was bring traditional Irish music, which for too long had been somewhat schmaltzy, or which revolved around a group of seated people all playing reels together on fiddles, into the modern era. And they started doing that in O’Donogue’s pub in Dublin. The whole concept of an evening listening to Irish drinking songs – often about the centuries-old conflict with their bullying neighbour, Britain, across the sea – seems to emanate from those early sessions in O’Donogue’s. I was disappointed in how little info I could glean about the band on the Net, but let’s see what I came up with.

Wikipedia observes that they were formed in 1962, and “made a name for themselves playing regularly in O’Donoghue’s Pub in Dublin”. I actually made a brief pilgrimage to the pub in 1990, while covering the first visit to Ireland by newly released Nelson Mandela for the South African Morning Group. Unfortunately, or fortunately, my trip from London for the event coincided with the return of the Irish football team from Italia 1990, the World Cup, at which they reached the quarterfinals. So when I ventured into that part of Dublin, I found the street packed with Ole-ole-oleing supporters, all quaffing pints of Guinness.

Ronnie Drew on acoustic guitar and Luke Kelly on acoustic guitar and banjo were the key vocalists in the group, which originally also comprised fiddler Ciaran Bourke and banjo player Barney McKenna. Wikipedia says Drew spent some time in Spain as a youngster where he learnt to play Flamenco guitar (the Dubliners also do some Spanish songs, there being a distant link between Celtic music and that from Spain). As a result, his use of Spanish guitar gave the band an interesting touch. Wikipedia says his voice has been compared to a cement mixer and the sound of coking coal being crushed under a door. It certainly had a low, gravelly quality, in which he also had the tendency to enunciate the last letter of the last word in a line. Luke Kelly, on the other hand, I remember reading, was said to be able to “sing the head off a glass of Guinness at 30 yards”, or something like that. It was uber powerful, yet could be incredibly tender, if the song called for that approach. This was, it must be stressed, no ordinary bar band bent on giving people a good time as they got pished, although I’m sure when they started out they had no greater ambitions. But it was their incredible musical talent, and vision about what constituted good taste, which catapulted them into a band that achieved global adulation – though not, I believe, to any great extent in this country. While Drew left the band for four years from 1974 till 1978, he had left his stamp with the likes of his renditions of Seven Drunken Nights, Finnegan’s Wake and McAlpine’s Fusiliers.

Wikipedia says Luke Kelly was “more of a balladeer” than Drew. Indeed, when we lived in Acton, west London, in 1990 and 1991, my wife Robyn and I would sometimes visit The Shebeen, a club with a name that resonated with us because, though Irish, it is what black South Africans call illegal booze outlets in the townships, and indeed even those in former white areas (now, thankfully integrated) where booze could be bought illegally out of normal off-licence (or bottle store) hours. At this venue, most Friday nights, an Irish duo called The Crack (from the Irish word, craic, meaning to have a good time) would perform. Well one of those guys would sometimes perform an original song, which I have on tape, which was a tribute to the late Luke Kelly.

Luke Kelly, after whom we named our first son, played chords on his five-string banjo, while Barney McKenna plucked the notes. Wikipedia says he “sang many defining versions of beautiful songs: traditionals like The Black Velvet Band, Whiskey In The Jar, Home Boys Home; but also Phil Coulter’s The Town I Loved So Well, Ewan McColl’s Dirty Old Town … and Raglan Road, written by the famous Irish poet Patrick Kavanagh. Wikipedia says Kavanagh met Kelly in a pub - O’Donoghue’s perhaps? - and asked him to sing the song, which was later performed by the likes of Mark Knopfler, Van Morrision and Sinead O’Connor.

We were really into this music from about 1972, when we started frequenting pubs and drinking. The fact that Dave Tarr’s various bands also performed rousing Irish songs certainly helped. I remember once, it must have been in the summer of 1972, over Christmas, we moved out of our beachfront home in Bonza Bay for a few weeks and rented it out to some upcountry visitors to make a bit of bucks. We had to rent another house in Vincent, several kilometers inland and away from the sea we had grown up with. It was a shock to the system, but one abiding memory of that time is listening to a treasured couple of tapes of the Dubliners and Clancys. I also recall going to a jol at the Gonubie Hotel where Dave Tarr and one of his bands was playing and, instigated by my brother Alistair, drinking far too many black velvets. What he used to do was take an ice bucket and fill it up with a mixture of cheap sparkling wine (champagne) and Castle stout, there being no Guinness in SA at the time. After ceremoniously christening it by plunging his face into the froth, it would be decanted to the thirsty punters, who’d get progressively more sloshed as the night wore on. I recall plodding about the garden at that house for virtually the whole of the next day getting sick and with probably the worst headache I had ever experienced. Indeed, many of these Irish songs that we loved were about booze and women. In fact someone once said that Ireland is a land of happy wars and sad love songs.

After enduring two years in the military from July 1979 till June 1981, I worked for a few years for the Progressive Federal Party in East London as an organiser. Our futile hope was to unseat the apartheid party, officially called the National Party, and bring about a non-racial democracy. Anyway, after a few years I was retrenched due to funding shortages and found a job as a reporter on the Evening Post, a gallant, if small, regional newspaper in Port Elizabeth, 300km to the west. It was while working there that a friend, Stephen Rowles, who was on the subbing desk, informed me one day that one of the Dubliners had died. He knew of my love for the Dubliners’ music, and had spotted the story on the wire service while “pinning” copy for the Post.

I see on Wikipedia that Kelly was diagnosed with a brain tumour in 1980. After a bout of chemotherapy, things got worse. He was known to collapse on stage, but he kept performing until two months before his death. One of the last concerts he performed in was recorded and released as Live in Carre (which is in Amsterdam). It was released in 1983. He died in 1984, and the Dublin city council erected a bronze statue in his honour. But it would not have been his death that I was alerted to, since I had only just started working on the Post in September 1984, and hardly knew Stephen.

Given the band’s hard-drinking proclivity – whisky and stout are among the favourite subjects of their songs – they always ran the risk, I suppose, of overdoing it. In 1974, Cairan Bourke, who played guitar, tin whistle and harmonica, suffered a brain haemorrhage, collapsing on stage. Bourke, who did most of the Gaelic songs for the band, like Peggy Lettermore and Preab san ol’, however made what Wikipdia called a “miraculous” recovery, but then collapsed again, paralysed on one side. Always hoping he’d recover, Wikipedia says, the band never recruited a replacement and never stopped paying him, until his death in 1988. It was probably this loss that Stephen would have alerted me to.

While those three were considered the most prominent frontmen of the original band, it was Barney McKenna who provided the puckish, leprechaun-like character. Indeed, it was the long beards of the band members which certainly gave them a distinguished look – far removed, however, from that other bearded outfit, ZZ Top. These guys looked like a group of dwarves, what with Luke Kelly’s shock of orange curls and Ronnie Drew’s mop of early-greying hair, topping those broad beards and moustaches, between which a glass or two was known occasionally to sneak. McKenna, short and plump in stature, was the only band member to regularly sit on a stool during performances, no doubt in order to do full justice to the intricate banjo and mandolin parts he played. He would also sing the occasional sea shanty and other, often light-hearted, songs, often to minimal accompaniment.

Two other people joined the band two years after it was formed in 1962 – John Sheahan, another great fiddle player (who is classically trained), and Bobby Lynch, who was a temporary replacement for Kelly when he moved briefly to England in 1964.

Wikipedia is commendably accurate in noting that the band were not only famous for their rousing drinking songs and their poignant ballads. They also performed traditional instrumentals – reels, jigs and hornpipes – bringing this form of music which dates back hundreds of years and is the lifeblood, in particular, of the remote western parts of Ireland like Sligo and Clare, into the mainstream of popular music. These, for me, were undoubtedly highlights of the Dubliners’ oeuvre. Never before had we heard such tight performing, with the band combining acoustic guitars, fiddle, banjo or mandolin and penny whistle, often at breath-taking speed.

The band apparently started, according to Wikipedia, with Lynch and fiddle and tin-whistle-player Sheahan, who would perform during breaks at O’Donoghue’s. Sometimes they would stay on stage afterwards and join up with the Dubliners. So it was only natural that they themselves would eventually become Dubliners, a name, incidentally, which is derived from the title of the book by James Joyce. In 1965, with Kelly in London, the band recorded “In Concert”, on which Lynch sings Roddy MacCorley (with Bourke), Dominic Behan’s Patriot Game (which Dylan turned into With God On Our Side), the Kerry Recruit and The Leaving Of Liverpool, with Drew. When Kelly returned, says Wikipedia, Lynch left but Sheahan stayed. Lynch died in 1982.

While we savoured the few albums and tapes we could lay hands on, Wikipedia says they were pioneers of Irish folk in Europe, but were less successful in the US (where the Clancys, who had emigrated, ruled the roost). The 1967 albums, Seven Drunken Nights and The Black Velvet Band both reached the UK pop charts. But the band survived primarily on an arduous concert programme.

When Drew took time off in 1974, Jim McCann replaced him, and brought new beauty to songs like Carrickfergus, Tommy Makem’s immortal Four Green Fields and Lord Of The Dance. He left when Drew returned in 1979.

My wife Robyn, whose paternal grandmother was Irish, and I caught up with the band in 1990. We saw them at a concert somewhere in west London (the precise venue escapes me, but it was quite a big concert hall). Afterwards we bought copies of their double tape (for us, it was pre-CD) called The Dubliners 25 Year Celebration. This must be the double album Wikipedia says was made in 1987 to mark their 25^th anniversary. Produced by Eamonn Campbell, who was also a guest musician, it seems he introduced them to The Pogues, with whom they performed The Irish Rover. I had been wondering where else I had heard a tribute to Kelly, and of course it was here, sung by Christy Moore who, with Paddy Reilly and Jim McCann also featured on the album. It was back in about 1988 that I obtained from Robyn’s mother in the UK a copy of The Dubliner’s Dublin, an hour-long television documentary narrated by Drew and featuring numerous songs by the line-up at the time. It offers one a very special insight into the way Dublin has rubbed off on them, providing them with all the texture and character that makes them such a key part of that city’s musical heritage. When Drew sings unaccompanied Brendan Behan’s Old Triangle, about life in jail, it is a moment to truly savour. The documentary, full of classic footage of the city, was made to mark its millennial celebrations.

Look, by 1996 when Drew quit the band after 34 years, it had made so much music, much of recorded and available on numerous original albums and compilations, he probably felt it was time to put his feet up and enjoy a stress-free retirement. New names came and went, and in 2005, 43 years on, the band was still touring. Only McKenna and Sheahan, however, were left from that original line-up which turned Irish music inside out and upside down.

The Dubliners Live

In order to really get into Irish music you had to steep yourself in Irish culture. For a while during high school and for a few years afterwards my brothers and I became engrossed in Ireland’s history of struggle against England – all due to the influence of the Dubliners and Clancy Brothers’ music. I recently found a website with the lyrics of hundreds and hundreds of Irish songs, most of them “traditional”, but many written in the past 50 to 100 years. These provided the core material for the flowering of Irish folk music which the Dubliners set in flow. And if one album captures the essence of the Dubliners, it has to be The Dubliners Live, from 1974, which we listened to avidly for years in those heady days when I was avoiding the army by studying art, and my brothers were either being snagged by it, or were out having a jol while also, miraculously, earning a living. This album, recorded at the Fiesta club in Sheffield, England, captures the spirit of the Dubliners as few others probably do. It still has the key original five members who, at this stage, seem to be at the height of their powers. It is a joyous occasion, with much singing along and clapping, but underpinning this is the extraordinary musicianship of the performers, which is first evinced on the opening track, an instrumental medley called Fermoy Lassies/Sporting Paddy. Super fast fiddle and banjo work is accompanied by much raucous clapping and cries of Yeah! And Phew! from the band members as the song progresses.

Next up, we head straight into Black Velvet Band, where one gets a first taste of Luke Kelly’s powerful voice, accompanied by the rest of the group on the choruses. Harmonica and strummed banjo are among the accompanying instruments. Written, I see on the album sleeve, by Ewan MacColl, I had long assumed this to be another of those “traditional” songs, but it is far more recent. Yet, probably thanks to performances by the Dubliners, and the many groups who followed in their wake, it has become a standard Irish pub song around the world. “Well in a neat little town they call Belfast / Apprentice to trade I was bound / And many an hour’s sweet happiness / Have I spent in that neat little town / Till a sad misfortune came over me / Which caused me to stray from the land / Far away from me friends and relations / betrayed by the black velvet band.” There can be few more popular first verses. And the chorus is even more well known: “Her eyes they shone like diamonds / I thought her the queen of the land / And her hair, it hung over her shoulder / Tied up with a black velvet band.” But what brought about this lad’s downfall? I must admit to not have fully explored the lyrics to this song, so it is perhaps worth doing so. He meets this “pretty fair maid” as she comes “a-traipsing along the highway”. “She was both fair and handsome / Her neck, it was just like a swan / And her hair, it hung over her shoulder / Tied up with a black velvet band.” But she was a naughty girl, and while walking along they pass a gentlemen, and he sees “by the look in her roguish black eye” that she meant “the doing of him”. She takes a gold watch from the gent’s pocket and puts it in his hand. The next morning he’s in front of judge and jury and he’s given “seven years penal servitude / To be spent far away from the land”. He then sounds a warning to “all you jolly young fellows” while out on the town to “beware of the pretty colleens”. “They’ll feed you with strong drink, me lads / ’Till you are unable to stand / And the very first thing that you’ll know is / You’ve landed in Van Diemens Land.”

One thing you discover about the Irish is their strong affinity for Australia. It seems many Irishmen were “transported” Down Under in the 19^th century as punishment for crimes large and small. So while this may be a great drinking song, the underlying message is both social and political.

Luke Kelly must have been a delight on stage. He has “the gift of the gab”, as the Irish say, and is able to speak in a relaxed and usually humorous way to the audience, possibly assisted by a drop of the dark stuff. Indeed, the cover of this album features a delightful photograph of the lads which may even have happened and not been staged. It shows the five on stage. On the far right, Ronnie Drew plucks away on his Spanish guitar, while far left, Luke Kelly, banjo over his shoulder, “feeds” a drink (not Coke, I’d imagine) to Cairan Bourke who fingers a tin whistle being blown by John Sheahan. He in turn holds a bow and plays a fiddle on which Barney McKenna fingers the notes. He then plucks away on the strings of his own banjo.

Luke Kelly says: “The next song, ladies and gentlemen, we’d like to dedicate to the man on the extreme right, his name is Cairan Bourke, and the subject is whisky. It’s called Whiskey In The Jar and it goes like this!” This is a traditional song, and is characterised by those well-timed claps during the chorus. I have just gone through a list of 30 or 40 songs I have selected from that trove of lyrics on the Net. There is enough material here to fill a book. The Irish are a literary people. Even their songs have a literary air to them, probably even more so than the old English folk songs. It also has a lot to do with the beautiful-sounding names which abound in the countryside. Take this song, Whiskey In The Jar, which starts: “As I was going over the far Kilkerry mountain / I met with captain Farrell and his money he was counting / I first produced my pistol, and then produced my rapier / Said stand and deliver, for I am a bold deceiver.” Then comes the chorus, which I’m seeing written out for the first time: “Musha ring dumma do damma da / Whack for the laddie-o / Whack for the laddie-o / There’s whiskey in the jar.” It is great to see precisely what is being sung here: “I counted out his money, and it made a pretty penny / I put it in my pocket and I brought it home to Jenny / She sighed and she swore that she never would deceive me / But the devil take the women, for they never can be easy.” While taking a slumber in his chamber and dreaming of gold and jewels, Jenny “took my charges and filled them up with water / And sent for captain Farrel to be ready for the slaughter”. “It was early in the morning, before I rose to travel / The guards were all around me and likewise captain Farrel / I first produced my pistol, for she stole away my rapier / But I couldn’t shoot the water so a prisoner I was taken.” He seeks aid from his brother in the army. “If I can find his station in Cork or in Killarney / And if he’ll come and save me, we’ll go roving near Kilkenny / And I swear he’ll treat me better than me darling sporting Jenny.”

The subject remains very much the tipple on the next song, All For Me Grog, which I think is sung by Cairan Bourke. As with the others, the guitar, violin and banjo accompaniment is superb. In the chorus can also be heard Ronnie Drew’s gravelly voice.

John Sheahan introduces the next instrumental medley, on which he performs solo on tin whistle: The Belfast Hornpipe and then a reel, Tim Maloney. With just a guitar backing him, it is incredible how, using this tiny instrument, Sheahan has the whole hall eating out of his hand as the tune increases in tempo and complexity.

This is followed by another instrumental medley, The Four Poster Bed/Colonel Rodney, which now features Sheahan on fiddle. What is notable here is his plucking of notes on the fiddle at the end of certain sections, and the thumping on guitar wood by other band members. Again, the fiddle playing is superb – particularly considering it is a live show.

The next song, for me, sums up the allure which Irish music had and still has for me. I have never read James Joyce’s mega-work, Finnegan’s Wake, but it seems this literary classic had its humble origins, like so much in great literature, in a simple ditty that had been passed down through the generations in Ireland, a song which, as Ronnie Drew explains on that video, turns the language inside out and upside down. It is Drew who takes the lead for the first time on the album, and his voice has just the right rich, deeply Dublin inflection for a song that captures something of the zaniness which is Ireland. The play on words is inherent in the title, and is evidently what Joyce exploited in his book, which I’m saving for my, ahem, retirement. Take the word Finnigan. Finish and begin again. And wake, to awaken and to celebrate after a funeral – again total contradictions. It is upon these paradoxes that the song, and no doubt the novel, turns. So there is Ronnie Drew, his beard already graying, pelting out these lyrics while accompanying himself on the guitar: “Tim Finnegan lived in Walkin Street, / A gentle Irishman mighty odd / He had a brogue both rich and sweet,/ An’ to rise in the world he carried a hod / You see he’d a sort of a tipplers way / but for the love for the liquor poor Tim was born / To help him on his way each day, / he’d a drop of the craythur every morn.” Just how did they spell those words from the chorus? Like this: “Whack fol the dah now dance to yer partner / round the flure yer trotters shake / Bend an ear to the truth they tell ye, / we had lots of fun at Finnegan’s Wake.” Now it makes sense. The flure is the floor and yer trotters are your legs. So anyway, Tim has a hangover – “his head felt heavy which made him shake” – and he fell off a ladder and broke his skull. So they arranged a wake. Wrapped in a sheet, they laid him out upon a bed, with “A bottle of whiskey at his feet / and a barrel of porter at his head.” This was to be one helluva wake. As the whiskey punch starts flowing Biddy O’Brien starts crying: “ ‘Such a nice clean corpse, did you ever see / Tim, auvreem! O, why did you die?’ / ‘Will ye hould your gob?’ said Paddy McGee”. Then Maggie O’Connor tells Biddy she’s wrong and Biddy fetches her a “belt in the gob”, which sends her sprawling on the floor. “Then the war did soon engage, / t’was woman to woman and man to man / Shillelagh law was all the rage / and a row and a ruction soon began.” A “bucket of whiskey” is hurled and misses a ducking Mickey Maloney. Falling on the bed, “the liquor scattered over Tim / Now the spirits new life gave the corpse, my joy! / Tim jumped like a Trojan from the bed / Cryin will ye walup each girl and boy, / t’underin’ Jaysus, do ye think I’m dead?’ ”

Luke introduces the last song on the side something like this: “Well ladies and gentlemen as you probably know one of Ireland’s biggest exports is people. And one of the biggest importers of those people is a certain English gentlemen who we in Ireland hold in the highest regard. He’s taken us out of many a hole in his time … and put us in a few as well, mind you. His name is Sir Robert McAlpine.” I remember, arriving in London in late 1989 and walking past the many construction sites which seem to permanently occupy any given part of the metropolis, and being taken aback at seeing white men working as manual labourers. Coming from apartheid South Africa, where this sort of work was almost exclusively the preserve of black people, it was a wake-up call. I was also aware, however, that a more subtle form of apartheid reigned in the UK, with Irishmen often doing the hard labouring jobs considered beneath their dignity by the English. At least that’s the sort of message which comes through in the Irish songs, poetry and plays – like Dominic Behan’s Boots for the Footless, which Robyn and I saw at the Tricycle Theatre in London around 1990.

Interestingly, I note that McAlpine’s Fusiliers was also written by Dominic Behan, brother of the more famous writer and one-time prisoner, Brendan. Ronnie Drew it is who speaks these opening lines, with the crowd, most of whom, despite this being England, knowing the words and joining in: “ ‘Twas in the year of  ‘thirty-nine / When the sky was full of lead / When Hitler was heading for Poland / And Paddy, for Holyhead / Come all you pincher laddies  / And you long-distance men / Don’t ever work for McAlpine / For Wimpey, or John Laing / You’ll stand behind a mixer  / Till your skin is turned to tan / And they’ll say, Good on you, Paddy / With your boat-fare in your hand / The craic was good in Cricklewood  / And they wouldn’t leave the Crown / With glasses flying and Biddy’s crying / ’Cause Paddy was going to town / Oh mother dear, I’m over here / And I’m never coming back / What keeps me here is the reek o’ beer / The ladies and the craic …” These last words are said with great relish, before the band gets the song going. “As down the glen came McAlpine’s men / With their shovels slung behind them / ’Twas in the pub they drank the sub / And out in the spike you’ll find them / They sweated blood and they washed down mud / With pints and quarts of beer / And now we’re on the road again / With McAlpine’s fusiliers.” The hard life endured by these workmen is captured in Behan’s next verse, sung with great passion by Luke Kelly: “I stripped to the skin with the Darky Finn / Way down on the Isle of Grain / With the Horseface Toole I knew the rule / No money if you stopped for rain / McAlpine’s god is a well-filled hod / Your shoulders cut to bits and seared / And woe to he went to look for tea / With McAlpine’s fusiliers.” In the next verse he possibly coined the line “when the going is rough you must be tough”, before concluding: “I’ve worked till the sweat it has had me beat / With Russian, Czech, and Pole / On shuttering jams up in the hydro-dams / Or underneath the Thames in a hole / I’ve grafted hard and I’ve got my cards / And many a ganger’s fist across my ears / If you pride your life don’t join, by Christ! / With McAlpine’s fusiliers.”

The humour continues on Side 2, with Drew introducing the next song by saying: “Well, ladies and gentlemen, we’ve been asked to sing a song that has seven verses, but we’re only allowed to sing five of them.” Another traditional song, the Seven Drunken Nights can become a bit tedious and repetitious, but it is still exceedingly clever, as the drunken husband comes home each night and finds evidence of another man with his wife, but is fobbed off with implausible explanations. He first finds a horse where his old horse should be, but when asked whose it is, his wife tells him: “Ah, you’re drunk, / you’re drunk you silly old fool, / still you cannot see / That’s a lovely sow that me mother sent to me / Well, it’s many a day I’ve travelled a hundred miles or more / But a saddle on a sow sure I never saw before.” And so it continues. A coat behind the door is a woollen blanket sent by her mother, but he’s never seen buttons on a blanket. A pipe on the chair she tells him is a tin whistle (again from her mother), but he’s never seen tobacco in a tin whistle. Then two boots are fobbed off as geranium pots, but he’s never seen laces in geranium pots before. On the Friday night he returns “as drunk as drunk could be” and finds “a head upon the bed where my old head should be / Well, I called me wife and I said to her: / Will you kindly tell to me / Who owns that head upon the bed where my old head should be.” This time she tells him it’s “a baby boy that me mother sent to me”. He’s bemused, because “a baby boy with his whiskers on sure I never saw before”. The last two, censored, verses which are not sung are a trifle naughty. On the Saturday, again drunk, he finds “two hands upon her breasts where my old hands should be”. His wife explains that they are “a lovely night gown” sent by her mom. But he’s never seen “fingers in a night gown” in all his travels. Finally, on the Sunday night, again drunk, he finds “a thing in her thing where my old thing should be”. When questioned she says it is, again, a lovely tin whistle, but “hair on a tin whistle” he’d never seen before. I rather prefer the last verses omitted, since they do cheapen the song.

The album continues in high spirits, with Barney McKenna playing what Luke Kelly introduces as “a selection of I don’t know what”. Indeed, he plays three reels on his banjo, a medley which again virtually has the crowd on their feet. Luke then thanks the audience who are “in great form tonight”, before launching into Home Boys Home. Then follows a Ewan MacColl song for which Luke became famous, Dirty Old Town. I remember being part of the “folk club” in high school at Clifton Park (now Hudson Park). It was more a case of our going to listen to a young biology teacher, Ms McGee, who was Scottish. And she would play all manner of folk songs which she sang quite beautifully. We kind of joined in the choruses. This was one of them. Anyway, Luke Kelly raised the rafters with his version. I’m sure Ewan won’t mind my quoting it in full, since I think it is a great piece of writing: “I met my love by the gas works wall / Dreamed a dream by the old canal / I kissed my girl by the factory wall / Dirty old town / Dirty old town.” Verse two: “Clouds are drifting across the moon / Cats are prowling on their beat / Spring’s a girl from the streets at night / Dirty old town / Dirty old town.” And then: “I heard a siren from the docks / Saw a train set the night on fire / Smelled the spring on the smoky wind / Dirty old town / Dirty old town.” Then comes a change of mood, an unexpected anger. “I’m going to make me a good sharp axe / Shining steel tempered in the fire / I’ll chop you down like an old dead tree / Dirty old town / Dirty old town.” The first verse is then repeated.

I was enthralled, while in the UK in 1990 and 1991, to catch a series on TV called Bringing It All Back Home. It had nothing overtly to do with Dylan, despite borrowing the title from a song of his, but rather dealt with the phenomenon whereby Irish and British songs were taken across the Atlantic Ocean by the numerous waves of emigrants over the past centuries, how they found a new form in the United States and then, in some cases, how they returned to Ireland. Just such a case is the next track on the album, which John Sheahan introduces by saying he intends playing “a bluegrass tune, an American tune, called Blue Mountain Rag”. This is another of those rollicking instrumentals in which the fiddle and banjo travel note for note alongside much clapping and general adulation.

The Wild Rover became a standard Irish drinking song, and on this album you can hear how well versed the audience is in it, as they enthusiastically take Luke Kelly up on his invitation to join in as he gives another stellar performance.

Ronnie Drew introduces the next song by first thanking the crowd, saying “you’ve been a marvelous audience – as a matter of fact you’ve been the best Friday night audience we’ve had this week”. It is clear from the response, and the droll way in which Drew says it, that this was an old joke and that Drew was probably going through the motions – which in the end makes it even funnier – a sort of self-parody. He then introduces a song “that the children in the tenements in Dublin sing”, and it is a rather violent traditional song called Weila Waile. “And there was an auld woman / And she lived in the woods / A weila weila waila / There was an auld woman / And she lived in the woods / Down by the riverside.” The story goes that she had a baby three months old and she had a penknife long and sharp. And she “stuck the penknife in the baby’s head” and “the more she stuck the more it bled”. And three loud knocks came knocking at the door. These are sounded out on the guitar box. The lyrics say “there were two policemen and a man”, but Ronnie Drew, ever conscious of the security police’s vigil on Irishmen during these times of “the troubles” perhaps, sings “two policemen and a special branch man”. The woman is jailed and, in the next two verses, sans trial it seems, is hanged. “They pulled the rope and she got hung…” And, well, that was the end of the woman in the woods, and, sings Drew, that was the end of her “babby too”. At least that’s what I hear. The lyrics I have say “that was the end in the fabby tune”, which makes no sense to me.

A fiddle surges high and clear, joined by a banjo and the cry of “fine girl you are!”, as the last track gets under way. The Holy Ground is another traditional gem given a new, exciting arrangement by the Dubliners. It is a real foot-stomping finale to a brilliant album. Wikipedia, God bless them, inform us that the song is about an area in the town of Cobh in County Cork on the south coast of Ireland. The Holy Gound was actually the town’s red-light district in the 19^th century when it was known as Queenstown and was a major stopping point for ships crossing the Atlantic. The Dubliners version goes: “Adieu to you, my Dinah. / A thousand times adieu. / For we’re going away from the holy ground / and the girls we do love true. / We’ll sail the salt seas over, / and then return for sure, / to see again the girls we love / and the holy ground once more.” Then that crazy chorus: “Fine girl, ye are! / You’re the girl I do adore. / And still I live in hopes to see / the holy ground once more. / Fine girl, ye are!” This is a story about the rigours of sea travel at a time when it could often be perilous. “I see the storm a risin’, / I feel it coming soon. / And the sky it is so cloudy, / you can scarcely see the moon. / The good old ship is tossin’ about, / and the riggin’ is all tore. / But still I live in hopes to see / the holy ground once more.” After the chorus, things are safer: “And now the storm is over / and we are safe on shore. / We’ll drink a toast to the holy ground / and the girls we do adore. / We’ll drink strong ale and porter / and make the rafters roar, / And when our money is all spent, / we’ll go to sea once more.”

And that’s just one of the Dubliners many, many albums.  Their first album, The Dubliners and Luke Kelly, was recorded in 1964, says Wikipedia. Since then they did an album or two each year throughout the Sixties and Seventies, and almost as many in the subsequent decades. There have been numerous compilation albums released. Often, as I said, we only got to hear the albums on audio cassette tapes, but we did have Plain and Simple from 1973, and Parcel of Rogues from 1976, both of which became massively popular during our serious jolling phase in the late 1970s when, as a group of young men, we spearheaded the Progressive Federal Party’s youth wing in East London, conducting numerous canvassing sessions and manning voter registration tables on a regular basis.

There are songs off these two albums, and many of the others we heard on those tapes, which are vintage songs; absolute classics performed by geniuses in their field. I also picked up Together Again, a 1979 album, on tape while in the UK in 1991. This was the album which reunited Ronnie Drew with the group, and includes such gems as The Mero, The Rare Ould Times, Johnny McGory, The Lag Song, And The Band Played Waltzing Matilda and The Parting Glass. I remember when Robyn and I attended those performances by the Crack at the Shebeen in Acton, west London, how at the end of each evening, no matter how wrecked people were after umpteen Guinnesses, they would stand while the Irish national anthem was sung. Then the band would end with this song, The Parting Glass, another traditional song that is part of Irish culture. “Oh all the money that e’er I had, I spent it in good company. / And all the harm that e’er I’ve done, alas it was to none but me. / And all I’ve done for want of wit to memory now I can’t recall, / So come fill to me the parting glass, Good night and joy be with you all.” It’s like an Irish farewell blessing. It continues: “If I had money enough to spend, and leisure time to sit awhile. / There is a fair maid in this town, that sorely has my heart beguiled. / Her rosy cheeks and ruby lips, I swear she has my heart beguiled, / Then come fill to me the parting glass, Good night and joy be with you all.” Finally: “Oh all the comrades that e’er I had, they’re sorry for my going away. / And all the sweethearts that e’er I had, they wished me one more day to stay. / But since it falls unto my lot, that I should rise and you should not, / I gently rise and softly call, Goodnight and joy be with you all.” It’s enough to bring tears to your eyes, I tell you.

Parcel of Rogues

Parcel of Rogues was an album where, with the absence of Ronnie Drew, Luke Kelly brought a more serious tone. It contains some quite beautiful renditions of old favourites like Spanish Lady, Avondale and Foggy Dew, in which Kelly gives full rein to his vocal abilities. Isn’t this wonderfully evocative: “Oh, have you been to Avondale / And lingered in her lovely vale? / Where tall trees whisper low the tale / Of Avondale’s proud eagle.” Then: “Where pride and ancient glory fade, / Such was the land where he was laid, / Like Christ was thirty pieces paid, / For Avondale’s proud eagle.” Verse three: “Long years that green and lovely glade, / Have lost for now our grandest Gael, / And Cursed the land that has betrayed, / Our Avondale’s proud eagle.” But of course I have no idea what it means.

Again there are instrumentals, like the fiddle extravaganza Acrobats/Village Bells. And on Blantyre Explosion, Kelly traces the impact of a mining disaster on a community. The traditional rebel song Boulavogue is another of those timeless Irish tunes which, when sung by someone as talented as Kelly, become simply awesome, the place names giving it an incredible sense of place. “At Boolavogue as the sun was setting / O’er the bright May meadows of Shelmalier / A rebel hand set the heather blazing / and brought the neighbours from far and near.” This is followed by: “Then Father Murphy from old Kilcormack / Spurred up the rock with a warning cry: / ‘Arm! Arm!’ he cried, ‘For I’ve come to lead you / for Ireland’s freedom we’ll fight or die!’” Steeped in Ireland’s freedom struggle, the song pays tributes to past heroes. “He leads us on against the coming soldiers / And the cowardly Yeomen we put to flight / ’Twas at the Harrow the boys of Wexford / Showed Bookey’s regiment how men could fight.” Next: “Look out for hirelings, / King George of England / Search every kingdom where breathes a slave / For Father Murphy of County Wexford / Sweeps o’er the land like a mighty wave.” This is a history lesson in one song. “We took Camolin and Enniscorthy / And Wexford storming drove out our foes / ‘Twas at Slieve Coilte our pikes were reeking / With the crimson blood of the beaten Yeos .” And just look at these place names. “At Tubberneering and Ballyellis / Full many a Hessian lay in his gore / Ah! Father Murphy had aid come over / The Green Flag floated from shore to shore!” Small wonder we battled to fully divine what he was singing. “At Vinegar Hill, O’er the pleasant Slaney / Our heroes vainly stood back to back / and the Yeos at Tullow took Father Murphy / and burnt his body upon a rack.” The song ends with Kelly singing with great passion. “God grant you glory, brave Father Murphy / And open Heaven to all your men / the cause that called you may call tomorrow / in another fight for the Green again.”

The liberation struggle in South Africa has echoes of that in Ireland – to which Nelson Mandela alluded when I heard him first address the Irish Dail in 1990. But I wonder if, in the native languages of the Xhosa, Zulu and Sotho people, there are equally inspired songs about the struggle. It would be interesting to have them translated and see if they bare any likeness to the great songs of Ireland’s past. There are so many, all of which inspired us as we identified with their lot while in a way equating it with our own country’s sorry plight, where the black majority had been subjugated for so long, particularly under the apartheid government which came to power in 1948.

I wrote an autobiography in the early 2000s titled Apartheid’s child … freedom’s son. I got the idea from the traditional Irish song, Freedom’s Sons, which is yet another of those great songs of struggle: “Born into slavery they were freedom’s sons.” As we’ll see, it was the Clancy Brothers in the United States who really explored this avenue of Irish music to its fullest and most theatrical effect.

I lose track of which precise album which song was on, but another superb Dubliners song was A Nation Once Again, in which a young man is inspired to fight for his country’s freedom. It must, however, be contrasted with Brendon Behan’s iconic Patriot Game, which questions blind adherence to nationalism. “When boyhood’s fire was in my blood / I read of ancient freemen, / For Greece and Rome who bravely stood, / Three hundred men and three men; / And then I prayed I yet might see / Our fetters rent in twain, / And Ireland, long a province, be / A Nation once again!” This if followed by a rousing chorus: “A nation once again, / A nation once again, / And Ireland, long a province, be / A Nation once again!” Reading the rest of the song, the first is clearly the greatest verse.

Thirty Foot Trailer traces the demise of the travelling lifestyle and is certainly also worth exploring lyrically. It also finds Luke Kelly in his finest form. “The old ways are changing you cannot deny / The day of the traveller is over / There’s nowhere to gang and there’s nowhere to bide / So farewell to the life of the rover.” The song is then cranked up for the rousing chorus. “Goodbye to the tent and the old caravan / To the tinker, the rover, the travelling man / And goodbye tae the thirty foot trailer.” Hendrix identified with the gypsies and I suspect Luke Kelly did as well. But isn’t this lovely old English? “Farewell tae the cant and the travelling tongue / Farewell tae the Romany talking / The buying, the selling, the old fortune telling / The knock on the door and the hawking.” The song slows for the following: “You got to move fast to keep up with the times / For these days a man cannot dander / There’s a bylaw to say you must be on your way / And another to say ye can’t wander.” In Afrikaans a broom is a besem, and so too, the Oxford dictionary says, is a besom. “Farewell to the blossom and besoms of broom / Farewell tae the creels and the baskets / The folk of today would far rather pay / For a thing that is made oot o plastic.” It is a lovely tale of the cost of progress, which has left the world the wreck it is today. “The old ways are passing and soon will be gone / And progress is aye a big factor / Its sent to afflict us and when they evict us / They tow us away wi a tractor.” Nothing is sacred. “Farewell tae the pony, the cob, and the mare / The reins and the harness are idle / You don’t need a strap when you’re breaking up scrap / So farewell tae the bit and the bridle.” The language itself must be threatened as rustic terms become redundant. “Farewell tae the fields where we’ve sweated and toiled / At pulling and hauling and lifting / They’ll soon have machines and the travelling queens / And their menfolk had better be shifting.”

Plain and Simple

On Plain and Simple, the song which probably had the most impact was Luke Kelly’s rendition of the Phil Coulter song, The Town I Loved So Well. Northern Ireland had suffered years of strife and this song, which is set in what the Catholics called Derry and the Protestants Londonderry, explores the impact of “the troubles”. “In my memory I will always see / The town that I have loved so well / Where our school played ball by the gasyard wall / And we laughed through the smoke and smell / Going home in the rain running up the dark lane / Past the jail and down beside the fountain / Those were happy days in so many many ways / In the town I loved so well.” While there were economic hardships, in many ways it was idyllic. “There was music there in the Derry air / Like a language that we all could understand / I remember the day when I earned my first pay / as I played in a small pickup band …” He then marries and moves away. “But when I returned how my eyes were burned / To see how a town could be brought to it’s knees / By the armoured cars and the bombed out bars / And the gas that hangs on to every breeze / Now the army’s installed by that old gasyard wall / And the damned barbed wire gets higher and higher / With their tanks and guns / Oh my God, what have they done / To the town I loved so well.” He prays for peace and a “bright brand new day / In the town I loved so well.” Happily, as I write, a lasting peace seems finally to have settled. But clearly the republican demand for a single, united Ireland will continue to be heard.

I can think of nowhere else in the world where a band, like the Dubliners, could have had so much “traditional” music to draw on. The best part probably was that they did not have to pay royalties to the composers of songs written way back when no-one bothered to record who wrote them. One of the great “rebel” songs we used to enjoy in those early days was about Admiral Lord Nelson, who’s statue used to stand in the main street of Dublin, O’Connell Street. The version we had was recorded live and introduced by Luke Kelly who read the first verse of a poem, Dublin, by “Louis MacNeice, poet, and as it turned out, prophet”. “Grey brick upon brick, / Declamatory bronze / On sombre pedestals - / O’Connell, Grattan, Moore - / And the brewery tugs and the swans / On the balustraded stream / And the bare bones of a fanlight / Over a hungry door / And the air soft on the cheek / And porter running from the taps / With a head of yellow cream / And Nelson on his pillar / Watching his world collapse.” The rest of the poem is equally poignant, but it is here that Kelly stops before the band launches into a Joe Dolan composition, Nelson’s Farewell, which is a light-hearted look at a little act of, well, sabotague, I suppose they’d call it. “Oh well, poor aul’ Admiral Nelson is no longer in the air / On the eighth day of March, in Dublin city fair / from his stand of stones and mortar / he fell crashing through the quarter / where once he stood so stiff and proud and rude! / So let’s sing our celebration / as a service to the nation / so poor aul’ admiral Nelson, toodle-oo!” This is a prime example of how the Irish were able to turn political events into poetry. Verse two is as much fun, and the humour in Kelly’s voice as he sings it is infectious. “Of fifty pounds of gelignite it sped him on his way / and the lad that laid the charge, we’re in debt to him today! / In Trafalgar Square it might be fair / to leave aul’ Nelson standing there / but no one tells the Irish what they’ll view! / So the Dublin Corporation / can stop deliberations / for the boys of Ireland showed them what to do.” It gets even better in verse three: “A hundred and fifty-seven years it stood up there in state / to mark aul’ Nelson’s victory o’er the French and Spanish fleet / But 1:30 in the morning / without a bit of warning / aul’ Nelson took a powder, and he blew! / So at last the Irish nation / had Parnell in higher station / than good old admiral Nelson, toodle-oo!” And the final verse is the coup de grace: “Oh the Russians and the Yanks with their lunar probes they play / and I hear the French are trying hard to make up lost headway / But now the Irish join the race / we have an astronaut in space! / Ireland, boys, is now a world power, too! / So let’s sing our celebration / as a service to the nation / so poor aul’ admiral Nelson, toodle-oo!”

In the 1970s we identified with the struggle of the Catholics in northern Ireland for the same reason, really, as we identified with the struggle of the oppreseed in this country. It was about siding with the underdog. The wonderful thing about the Irish, and about black South Africans, is that they had such a great sense of humour. I befriended a young black waiter at the Bonza Bay Hotel in East London – which was sadly demolished in the mid-1990s. Warwick Khotobe – that’s how it was pronounced anyway – had a delightful way of parodying the apartheid regime, and particularly its police force, who were at the cutting edge when it came to enforcing laws like the Group Areas Act, Immorality Act (which barred inter-racial sex) and myriad other oppressive laws. We weren’t Catholics, but became engrossed with the wonderful “struggle” poetry coming out of Ireland through songs like the one above.

But the Irish found all manner of things to write songs about, and one which I loved all those years back was about a Saint Kevin. Robyn and I visited the historic early Chrisitian site of Glendalough in the early 1990s. Not far from Dublin, it is marked by ruins over 1000 years old and a tower up which the students – for this was a kind of seminary – used to escape when the Vikings raided, hauling their ladder up with them afterwards. The Glendalough Saint is a delightful piece, sung by Ronnie Drew in that gravelly voice of his. “In Glendalough lived an auld saint / Renowned for his learning and piety. / His manners were curious and quaint, / And he looked upon girls with disparity.” The chorus is a cheeky: “Fol-la-de-la-la-de-la-lay, fol-la-de-la-la-de-la-laddy / Fol-la-de-la-la-de-la-laaay ... fol-la-de-la-la-de-la-laddy” His story is then told: “He was fond of reading a book / When he could get one to his wishes. / He was fond of casting his hook / In among all the young fishes. / Well one evening he landed a trout, / He landed a fine big trout, sir, / When Cathleen from over the way / Came to see what the auld monk was about, sir. /  ‘Well, get out of me way,’ said the saint, / ‘For I am a man of great piety, / And me good manners I wouldn’t taint / Not by mixing with female society.’ / Ah, but Kitty she wouldn’t give in, / And when he got home to his rockery, / He found she was seated therein / A-polishing up his auld crockery. / Well, he gave the poor craythur a shake, / And I wish that a garda had caught him, / For he threw her right into the lake, / And she sank right down to the bottom.” Ah, what a man wouldn’t do to maintain his piety.

The list of marvelous Dubliners tunes is virtually endless. There is the beautiful Luke Kelly version of Farewell To Carlingford, written by Tommy Makem, who teemed up with the Clancy Brothers at the height of their fame. Lord Of The Dance, by Sydney Carter, was also given the Kelly treatment at one stage, and was almost surely the inspiration for the series of Celtic dance extravaganzas over the past decade by the same name. This song is a celebration of Jesus’s life. “I danced in the morning when the world was young / I danced in the moon, and the stars, and the sun / I came down from Heaven and I danced on the Earth / At Bethlehem I had my birth.” The chorus: “Dance Dance wherever you may be / I am the lord of the dance said he / And I lead you all wherever you may be / And I lead you all in the dance said he.” Then: “I danced for the scribes and the pharasies / They wouldn’t dance, they wouldn’t follow me / I danced for the fisherman James and John / They came with me so the dance went on.” The next verse reads: “I danced on the Sabbath and I cured the lame / The holy people said it was a shame / They ripped they stripped they hung me high / Left me there on the cross to die.” You have to hand it to the Christian religion, it lends itself to literature. “I danced on a Friday when the world turned black / It’s hard to dance with the devil on your back / They buried my body they thought I was gone / But I am the dance, and the dance goes on.” This is better by far than most of the hymns I have heard.

There are other brilliant songs, like Champion At Keepin’ Them Rollin’, a traditional tune which explores the gruelling lives of truckers, Springhill Mining Disaster by Ewan McColl and Peggy Seeger, where the poignant lyrics capture the horrors of being trapped underground.

 

Together Again

There is also the nostalgic look at Dublin, The Mero, sung by Ronnie Drew on Together Again, in which the violence of modern times is contrasted with the peaceful innocence of the past. The Irish blarney, an ability to speak or sing at a cracking pace, is most evident in The Rocky Road To Dublin, another Dubliners favourite. The first verse goes: “In the merry month of June from me home I started, / Left the girls of Tuam so sad and broken hearted, / Saluted father dear, kissed me darling mother, / Drank a pint of beer, me grief and tears to smother, / Then off to reap the corn, leave where I was born, / Cut a stout black thorn to banish ghosts and goblins; / Bought a pair of brogues rattling o’er the bogs / And fright’ning all the dogs on the rocky road to Dublin.” This flows into the chorus: “One, two, three four, five, / Hunt the Hare and turn her down the rocky road / all the way to Dublin, Whack follol de rah !” I can just hear Luke Kelly’s voice, with always a hint of humour lurking within it. 

The Rising Of The Moon and Johnson’s Motorcar were two classic “rebel” songs which we enjoyed, as was the hauntingly beautiful, Foggy Dew: “As down the glen one Easter morn to a city fair rode I / There armed lines of marching men in squadrons passed me by / No fife did hum nor battle drum did sound it’s dread tattoo / But the Angelus bell o’er the Liffey swell rang out through the foggy dew.” While I’m no expert, I suspect this is about the 1916 Easter Rebellion, and was indeed a favourite of the Clancy Brothers too, so more of this later. Both groups also made superb versions of Eric Bogle’s famous song about Australian forces lost at Gallipoli during the First World War, The Band Played Waltzing Matilda. It is an absolute classic: “When I was a young man I carried me pack / And I lived the free life of the rover / From the Murray’s green basin to the dusty outback / I waltzed my Matilda all over / Then in 1915 my country said: Son, / It’s time to stop rambling, there’s work to be done / So they gave me a tin hat and they gave me a gun / And they sent me away to the war.” Then that mournful chorus: “And the band played Waltzing Matilda / When the ship pulled away from the quay / And amid all the tears, flag waving and cheers / We sailed off for Gallipoli.” The writing in this song is superb. Herewith a few snippets from that bloody battle. “It is well I remember that terrible day / When our blood stained the sand and the water / And how in that hell they call Suvla Bay / We were butchered like lambs at the slaughter / Johnny Turk, he was ready, he primed himself well / He rained us with bullets, and he showered us with shell / And in five minutes flat, we were all blown to hell / He nearly blew us back home to Australia.”  Eventually a “big Turkish shell knocked me arse over head”, and he awoke in hospital to find he had lost both legs. “Oh no more I’ll go Waltzing Matilda / All around the green bush far and near / For to hump tent and pegs, a man needs both legs / No more waltzing Matilda for me.” The “armless, the legless, the blind and the insane” are shipped home. “And when the ship pulled into Circular Quay / I looked at the place where me legs used to be / And thank Christ there was no one there waiting for me / To grieve and to mourn and to pity.” So each April he watches the parade. “I see my old comrades, how proudly they march / Renewing their dreams of past glories / I see the old men all tired, stiff and worn / Those weary old heroes of a forgotten war / And the young people ask ‘What are they marching for?’ / And I ask myself the same question.” The song ends on a plaintive note, not the high-spirits one normally associates with the unofficial Oz anthem: “And the band plays Waltzing Matilda / And the old men still answer the call / But year after year, their numbers get fewer / Someday, no one will march there at all -- Waltzing Matilda, Waltzing Matilda / Who’ll come a-Waltzing Matilda with me? / And their ghosts may be heard as they march by the billabong / So who’ll come a-Waltzing Matilda with me?”

On a somewhat lighter note is a nostalgic song about Dublin, The Rare Old Times, which I heard Ronnie Drew do on that video marking the city’s millennium. “Based on songs and stories, heroes of renown / Are the passing tales and glories, that once was Dublin town / The hallowed halls and houses, the haunting children’s rhymes / That once was Dublin city in the rare old times.” The chorus is a lilting: “Ring a-ring a-Rosie, as the light declines / I remember Dublin city in the rare oul’ times.” He loses his lover “to a student chap, with skin as black as coal / When he took her off to Birmingham, she took away my soul”, then turns to the drink, while watching Dublin change: “The Pillar and the Met have gone, the Royal long since pulled down / As the great unyielding concrete, makes a city of my town / Fare thee fell sweet Anna Liffey, I can no longer stay / And watch the new glass cages, that spring up along the Quay / My mind’s too full of memories, too old to hear new chimes / I’m part of what was Dublin, in the rare old times.”

As I said, Ireland is a land of music and song, of lyrics and verse. This is just a small sample of the Dubliners’ output. Much like Joyce’s book, Finnegan’s Wake, this story has no real beginning or ending. The songs, many of them, were there before the Dubliners, and thanks to those gallant musicians, they will remain once they’re gone. But anyone wishing to acquaint themselves with what being Irish is all about could do worse than to explore the avenues taken by the Dubliners over the past four decades and more.

That said, it is incredibly sad that in all this writing I found no space for the The Pub With No Beer, which is such a witty piece of writing it must be the ideal note on which to end this story. Written by Australian Gordon Parsons in 1957, it was another Dubliners classic and goes like this: “It’s lonesome away from your kindred and all / By the camp fire at night where the wild dingos call / But there’s nothing so lonesome so dull or so drear / Than to stand in a bar of a pub with no beer.” This, in Australia, was clearly a crisis: “Now the publican’s anxious for the quota to come / There’s a faraway look on the face of the bum / The maid’s gone all cranky and the cook’s acting queer / What a terrible place is a pub with no beer.” And trouble was brewing, as it were. “Then the stock-man rides up with his dry dusty throat / He breasts up to the bar a wad from his coat / But the smile on his face quickly turns to a sneer / When the barman said sadly: ‘The Pub’s got no beer’.” The humour in this is delightful. “There’s a dog on the veranda-h for his master he waits / But the boss is inside drinking wine with his mates / He hurries for cover and cringes in fear / It’s no place for a dog round a pub with no beer.” The sneer with which the word “wine” is sung is palbable. “Old Billy the blacksmith first time in his life / Has gone home cold sober to his darling wife / He walks in the kitchen she says ‘You're early my dear’ / But he breaks down and tells her ‘The pub’s got no beer’.”

Finnegan’s Wake

This song, sung by Ronnie Drew, for me epitomized everything that was best about the Dubliners. But, try as I may, I can’t leave them here. I’ve just been playing a treasured tape, The Dubliners Collection, from 1987, and it made me realise that one of the albums we must have been listening to, on another treasured tape, was Finnegan’s Wake, from 1966. If, indeed, many of those songs are live, then the live versions on this collection are from there. Indeed, the collection is a classic, since it is both crisply recorded, and also allows one to enjoy the band at the height of their talents, when their on-stage humour is remarkable. We loved it then, in our teens, hearing the totally irreverent attitude of Luke Kelly and Ronnie Drew towards the perceived establishment. I’ve been trying to pin down what really attracted me to their sound, and one song here really fits that bill. On Hot Asphalt, Luke Kelly’s voice and the banjo of, presumably, Barney McKenna run in a rollicking tandem that never wavers. And you can hear the audience being drawn along with them each time a new verse starts and those notes are plucked and sung in tight accord. But if that, musically, is one of the high points, it is the chit-chat before songs that set this group apart. These are guys who are brash, gung-ho, in your face musicians. They take no enemies, musically. Or politically. Everyone is fair game.

I started listening to this tape on Side 2, which kicks off with Ronnie Drew singing the wise old song about how love grows cold, called Love Is Pleasing. Then we get our first taste of Luke Kelly’s infectious humour. I have already dealt with Nelson’s Farewell, about how a statue in Dublin was reduced to rubble. I had forgotten, though, how Luke prefaces it by explaining how they were “looking through some books of poetry, Irish poetry, and we came across a poem by Louis McNeice, poet and as it turns out, prophet”. He then clears his throat, ummh!, before asking, “is that recorded or not?”, to howls from the audience. He then reads that lovely McNeice verse from the poem, Dublin, before Ronnie launches into the song. Barney McKenna achieves a frenetic pace in the banjo solo, Within A Mile Of Dublin, before another delightful touch of humour from Ronnie, as he introduces Finnegan’s Wake: “My Lord Bishop, Reverend Fathers, Reverend Mothers, Your Excellencies, my Lord Mayor, ladies and gentlemen, and fellow peasants!” It is clear on this song what a great acoustic guitarist Ronnie Drew was.

Equally humorous – and I recall these from our days as teenagers listening to this stuff – was Ronnie’s introduction to the next song, Monto: “We’d like to take you to a part of Dublin that is probably not in any guide book.” He then describes an area bounded by certain streets, and says in the middle of the area was a place called Montgomery Street. “the whole area has since been closed down – by the Legion of Mary, I believe.” The audience guffaws. “But,” adds Ronnie, “at one time it was one of the most famous red light districts in Europe. That’s probably why it’s not in your guide book.” Then Luke launches into the Monto, unaccompanied but for a stomping on the stage, while the others join in the choruses. It is another song that elicits laughter often just due to the way in which it is sung, the peculiarly Irish enunciation, and the obvious delight of the performers: “Well if you’ve got a wingo take her up to Ringo / Where the waxies sing-o all the day / If you’ve had your fill of porter and you can’t go on any further / Just give your men the order back to the quay...” Then the chorus: “And take her up to Monto, Monto, Monto / Take her up to Monto Langeroo, to you.” There is a lot of ironic laughter at the “to you” bit. The whole mood of the song and the audience suggests maybe a four-letter word starting with an ‘f’ might have been intended. But the guys insist on keeping it clean. “You’ve heard of Butcher Foster, the dirty old imposter / He took a mot and lost her up the Furry Glen / He first put on his bowler, then he buttoned up his trousers / And he whistled for a growler and he said ‘My men … Take her up to Monto, Monto, Monto... / Take her up to Monto, Langeroo, to you.” While we were not always sure what they were saying, it had a certain naughtiness about it that we loved: “The fairy told him, ‘Skin the goat’, O’Donnell put him on the boat / He wished he’d never been afloat, the dirty skite / It wasn’t very sensible to tell on the Invincibles / They took aboard the principals, day and night … Be goin’ up to Monto, Monto, Monto...... / Take her up to Monto Langeroo to you.” The next verse has a reference to Queen Victoria (Vick), which places this in the late 19^th century. “You’ve seen the Dublin Fusiliers, the dirty old bamboozaliers / They went and got the childer, one, two, three / Marchin’ from the Linen Hall, there’s one for every cannon ball / And Vicky’s goin’ to send youse all o’er the sea … But first go up to Monto, Monto, Monto.... / Take her up to Monto Langeroo to you.” I loved how Russia and Prussia were pronounced in the next verse: “When the Czar of Rooshia, and the King of Prooshia / Landed in the Phoenix in a big balloon / They asked the Garda band to play ‘The Wearin’ o’ the Green’ / But the buggers in the lower didn’t know the tune . .. So they both went up to Monto, Monto, Monto..... / Take her up to Monto Langeroo to you.” At this point, Ronnie stops and says: “You may have noticed that we have left out a word. We were advoised against singing it in case someone should come along and be insulted. Well, someone hasn’t come yet, whoever he is.” He then says that all Irish writers who had had their books banned in the country, should translate them into Irish, which would be “a marvellous incentive for the Irish to learn their own language!”. As the crowd burst out laughing, he adds: “We make our contribution with this verse.” And it is a verse in which the Dubliners clearly take devilish delight in pulling the piss out of the Queen: “The Queen she came to call on us, she wanted to see all of us / I’m glad she didn’t fall on us, she’s eighteen stone / ’Mr Neill, Lord Mayor,’ says she, ‘Is this all you’ve got to show to me?’ / ‘Why no, ma’am, there’s some more to see - pog mo thoin … And he took her up to Monto, Monto, Monto / Took her up to Monto, langeroo. Liathroidi to you.” We’ll all have to brush up on our Gaelic to find out just what he told the Queen.

The mandolin features on another classic on the other side, The Leaving Of Liverpool, also sung by Ronnie, with Cairan doing a few verses. The Old Orange Flute, also sung by Ronnie, is a lovely parody of religious intolerance. Bob Williams, a Catholic performer has a flute which only plays Protestant tunes. Eventually it gets so bad the instrument appears before a council of priests “who decided to banish the old flute / they couldn’t knock heresy out of its head / To they gave Bob a new one to play in its stead”. The flute is burnt at the stake as a heretic, but as the flames roar around it it continues to play “The Protestant Boys”. Cairan takes us through Jar Of Porter, which has a tale about the benefits of strong drink. “If you want your child to grow, your child to grow, your child to grow / If you want your child to grow, give him a jar of porter.” Even when he’s dead and gone, he doesn’t forget the stuff. “I’ll call St Peter aside and say / brought you a jar of porter.” The next song on this compilation I’ve spoken of already, The Glendalough Saint. But it is interesting to recall how Ronnie Drew introduces it. As the crowd applauds the previous song, he says: “Ah the man Luke is a communist. He gives pennies to the poor and everything. For the ladies and gentlemen in the audience – not to mention those certain people, who are not – we have a little religion.” As we have seen, the tale of St Kevin is not your typical sermon.

Listening to Off To Dublin In The Green reminded me poignantly of how this song set my own mind racing. I would have been in my teens when I heard it. It is about “a merry plough boy”, who joins the IRA. It crossed my mind many times, as I contemplated having to serve as a conscript in the apartheid army, “that I should go away”. I don’t think I really thought of joining the ANC, but I certainly had a naïve thought about going to Brazil, there to forge a wonderful career as a professional soccer player.

The politics of rebellion are dealt with in an insightful way in Dominic  Behan’s Patriot Game, sung here by Cairan Bourke. “Come all ye young rebels, and list while I sing / For the love of one’s country is a terrible thing / It banishes fear with the speed of a flame / And it makes us all part of the patriot game. / My name is O’Hanlon, and I’ve just turned sixteen / My home is in Monaghan, and where I was weaned / I learned all my life cruel England’s to blame / So now I am part of the patriot game. / It’s nearly two years since I wandered away / With the local battalion of the bold IRA / I learned of our heroes, and wanted the same / To play my own part of the Patriot game. / This island of ours has for too long been half free / Six counties lie under John Bull’s tyranny / So I gave up my boyhood to drill and to train / And that made me a part of the Patriot game. / They told me how Connolly was shot in his chair / His wounds from the fighting all bloody and bare / His fine body twisted, all battered and lame / They soon made me part of the patriot game. / But now as I lie here, my body all holes / I think of those traitors who bargained in souls / And I wish that my rifle had given the same / To those Quislings who sold out the patriot game.”

One final thought on this album: The Irish gift of the gab. Blarney, call it what you will. Consider how Luke Kelly gets his tongue around the lyrics of The Rocky Road To Dublin, as noted earlier. But the nicest turns of phrase are probably to be found in a song with an Irish title, which also has a sweet philosophy about life. Pread San Ol is sung on this unaccompanied by Luke, with Cairan doing alternate verses in Gaelic. Indeed, it is fascinating to think that large parts of Britain and Ireland originally spoke a language other than English. But consider this philosophy: “Why spend your leisure bereft of pleasure / Amassing treasure why scrape and save? / Why look so canny at ev’ry penny? / You’ll take no money within the grave / Landlords and gentry with all their plenty / Must still go empty where ‘re they’re bound / So to my thinking we’d best be drinking / Our glasses clinking and round and round.” This appealed to my fatalistic attitude to life at this time, faced as I was with years of military conscription. “King Solomon’s glory, so famed in story / Was far outshone by the lilies guise / But hard winds harden both field and garden / Pleading for pardon, the lily dies / Life’s but a bauble of toil and trouble / The feathered arrow, once shot ne’er found / So, lads and lasses, because life passes / Come fill your glasses for another round.” And we certainly were drinking many rounds in the late 1970s. “The huckster greedy, he blinds the needy / Their strifes unheeding, shouts ‘Money down!’ / His special vices, his fancy prices / For a florin value he’ll charge a crown / With hump for tramel, the scripture’s camel / Missed the needle’s eye and so came to ground / Why pine for riches, while still you’ve stitches / To hold your britches up? Another round!”

On that note I think it’s perhaps best I take my leave of the fabulous Dubliners.