Song of the Day 3/17: Dropkick Murphys, “The Wild Rover”

If you’re reading this before your first green-dyed beer of the day, you probably know this tune, or at least its “no, nay, never” refrain, by heart. It’s among the most widely known and performed Irish folk songs, even though it’s not originally Irish.

The lyrics have been traced to a 17th-century broadside from England, where it was a temperance ballad, not a drinking song, and soon spread throughout the English-speaking world. But like most folk music, it fell into obscurity before the folk-music revival (also known as the Great Folk Scare) of the early 1960s. The song again spread quickly, not just as a pub sing-along but as a favorite chant of rugby and football teams. Naturally it’s been covered by most modern rock bands with Irish or Irish-American roots. I like the version by Dropkick Murphys best, I think because the tin whistle gives it a jauntiness other covers lack, plus this video manages to pack the entire St. Paddy’s Day experience into 3 1/2 minutes.

Like any good folk song, “The Wild Rover” we know today isn’t exactly like the original, because the song kept evolving even after its reintroduction. As you can hear in this version by the Dubliners, recorded in 1963 shortly before the Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem did the same, the tempo is slower than we’re accustomed to, and the four-beat pause in the chorus isn’t emphasized by people clapping their hands or pounding beer mugs on the table, as it invariably is today.