Music Monday: Some Traditional Irish Music

family, happiness, lessons learned, music 2 Minutes

I guess the two books I’ve recently read, The Gates of Fire and The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress, put me in a bit of a rebellious mood.

So my first thought tonight was to share some Irish Rebel Music, but while searching YouTube, I came across an Irish traditional song which is a bit happier and more uplifting.

Apparently, this was performed after an Irish wedding reception, in the wee hours of the morning:

There are some classic comments on YouTube:

  • This is an Irish sobriety test when you get pulled over by the police.
  • Eminem has been real quiet since this dropped
  • When someone says she’s out of your league, this is the woman they’re talking about.
  • That’s exactly how I pictured an Irish wedding at 5 am.
  • U.S.: we have the 12 days of Christmas
     Ireland: Hold our Guinness…
  • Only the Irish can turn a tongue twister into a traditional 4 minutes song

And here is some background on the song, know as Rattlin’ Bog, courtesy of Wikipedia:

“The Rattlin’ Bog” is an Irish folk song. It is a version of an internationally distributed folk song type. In the Roud Folk Song Index it has the number 129, and carries such titles as “The Everlasting Circle,” “The Tree on the Hill,” “The Green Grass Grew All Around,” and “Down in the Lowlands,” as well as “The Rattlin’ Bog.” The adjective rattlin’ means “splendid” in the context of this song. It is a cumulative song, similar to “The Twelve Days of Christmas”, as it has a list at the end of each verse which grows throughout the piece. 

During a performance, it is typical for the song to increase in speed with each additional verse, almost as a challenge to determine who can sing the lyrics the fastest without getting mixed up. Some performances have one singer leading the song, singing the “Now on that…” lines solo. The whole group then joins in for the cumulative list and chorus. In some live performances, the audience sings along for as long as they can keep up, with most only singing the chorus by the end of the song.

So if it sounded a bit familiar to you, it probably is. It reminded me of the song “The Green Grass Grew All Around”.

Published by Jim Borden

A 60-something guy trying to figure out the world, and his place in it. Happily married for 40-plus years, three wonderful sons. Accounting teacher, fitness enthusiast, blogger, reader.

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38 thoughts on “Music Monday: Some Traditional Irish Music”

  1. That was fun to watch. It was very entertaining, even though the only musical instruments they were playing were stomping feet, and hands pounding on a table. That’s the sort of wedding I wouldn’t mind attending.

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  2. That’s a fun song, and the singer has a terrific voice. I don’t believe they have been drinking all night though. The song also reminds me of “The Green Grass Grew All Around” one of the all-time great camp songs.

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  3. I want to party with these people. That was fun, although I couldn’t take my eyes off the lady on the right who kept trying to pretend she was singing when she didn’t know the words. 🤣

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  7. Traditional Irish, Scottish and east coast Canadian music, because of its Irish Scottish roots, all give you that want-to-party feeling. You may want to check out the Newfoundland band Great Big Sea. I think you might enjoy them.

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    1. I think the fiddle often provides the want to party feeling.

      I jsut listened to a couple of songs from Great Big Sea (Ordinary Day and Clearest Indication), and they were terrific; thanks for the recommendation! It seems like they stopped performing a few years ago…

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      1. They were a great group. They did stop performing a few years ago. They really liked to party and the founding member wanted to go sober for his family. They others still liked partying so it was no longer a good fit. Too bad though because they always packed the venues when they played.

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  10. Great fun, and so typically Irish! Not sure I made out many of the words though! Seeing the earlier comment about Great Big Sea, they did a cover of Oysterband’s When I’m Up I Can’t Get Down, as I mentioned last week in Tunes. Not as good as the original, Check out their own song Good People, it’s rather nice, but they made a lot of good music in their time. Their lead singer, Alan Doyle, is also an actor: I’ve seen him in Canadian tv series, such as Murdoch Mysteries, Hudson and Rex, and Republic Of Doyle, for which he also wrote and performed the theme song.

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