Every year around the start of March my inbox fills up with the same panicked email. Different names, same words more or less. "Seamus, we're having a Paddy's Day thing at the office/the school/the pub, what should we sing?" And every year I mean to write the thing down properly so I can just send the link, and every year I don't, and I end up typing the same reply forty times. So. This year I'm doing it. Bookmark it. Send it to your cousin in Boston.
First, a confession that'll annoy some of you. I have a complicated relationship with St. Patrick's Day. I love it. I also watch it get turned into a green-plastic-hat festival of songs that no Irish person has voluntarily sung since about 1955, and it makes my teeth itch. There's a whole category of "Irish song" that exists ONLY on the seventeenth of March and nowhere else, the way certain biscuits only exist at Christmas. Some of that's grand harmless fun. Some of it I'd quietly leave in the cupboard. Let me sort the two for you.
Start with what to sing, because that's the useful bit and you're busy.
If you want the whole room — and I mean the whole room, the ones pretending they're not here for this — singing within ninety seconds, you sing The Wild Rover. It is undefeated. The "no, nay, never" with the four claps on the table does something to a crowd that I've never fully understood and have stopped trying to. Strangers clap together. It's the closest thing to a magic trick I know. Just, for the love of God, four claps. Not five. People do five and it falls apart and they blame the song. The song is innocent.
After that I'd reach for Whiskey in the Jar, because the "musha ring dum a doo dum a da" chorus is one of those things that lives in people's bones whether they know it or not. You'll get a few in the corner going "oh I DO know this one" with genuine surprise on their faces. That's the moment you're after. That little flicker of recognition is the whole point of a Paddy's Day sing — it's not a concert, it's a room remembering it has a voice.
Now. If your gathering has any children in it, or anyone learning the song for the first time, or honestly anyone at all, this is where I do my usual thing and tell you to sing the one this whole site is about. The Rattlin' Bog is the perfect Paddy's Day song and I'll die on this hill. It needs nobody to know the words in advance. It teaches itself as it goes. By the second time round the bog the slowest person in the room is shouting "and the FLEA on the wing" louder than anyone, and there is no greater leveller in the world than a cumulative song doing its cumulative thing. The flea verse is the CLIMAX, by the way, but you knew I'd say that.
For a quieter moment — and a good sing needs one, you can't just batter people with choruses for two hours — there's The Parting Glass. End the night on it. Lights a bit low, everyone arm in arm whether they know each other or not. I've seen grown men who'd deny they have feelings go to absolute pieces on the last verse. It's the right way to close. Don't open on it. Opening on The Parting Glass is like serving dessert first, it confuses everyone.
That's a full night, honestly. Four or five songs you can actually pull off, plus a slow one to land the plane. If you want the longer version of all this I did a whole pub-tested run-down in the best Irish drinking songs post and the rankings still stand, mostly. (I might've been harsh on one or two. Pint talk.)
Right. Now the part you came for. The skip list.
I'm not going to be precious about this. Sing whatever you want, it's your party, I'm a man with a website not the song police. But you asked.
Anything with "Galway" in the title that was written in the last thirty years and is owned by somebody with a lawyer — leave it. Not because it's bad. Because half the room will start it in three different keys and the other half will sing the wrong words with enormous confidence and it becomes a fight. There's a perfectly traditional Galway song or two if you go digging. The famous modern one is not it for a singalong.
"Danny Boy." Controversial, here we go. It's a beautiful song. It is also, and I say this with love, NOT a singalong, and someone always tries to make it one at the worst moment, usually a fella four pints deep who's decided he's a tenor. It's a solo. A proper solo, sung once, by one person, in silence. If you've got that person, give them the floor and shush everyone. If you haven't, don't reach for it. A whole room mumbling "Danny Boy" is one of the saddest sounds in creation and I won't be responsible for it.
And then there's the whole genre of song I think of as "Irish songs that were written for Americans by Americans about an Ireland that was never there." You know the ones. The shamrocks-and-shillelaghs, top-of-the-morning, everything's-green-and-twinkly stuff. Look — if it makes your nan in Chicago happy, sing it and God bless. But don't let it be the only thing. There's a real well to drink from here and it's deeper and stranger and funnier than the postcard version. That's all I'm asking. Go one layer down.
One more, gently. Resist the urge to sing things you don't actually know. Paddy's Day brings out a confidence in people that is not always matched by knowledge of the lyrics, and there is nothing that kills a session faster than someone launching into verse two of a song where they only ever knew the chorus. Pick songs you've got in you. A short list sung properly beats a long list sung badly every single time.
That's it. That's the guide. Sing the ones that pull people together, skip the ones that show off, and end on something soft. The rest is just craic, and you don't need me for the craic.
Happy Paddy's Day, wherever you're reading this. Save me a seat.
Slán go fóill, BogLord2002
P.S. — Rattlin the cat is unmoved by St. Patrick's Day, as he is by all things. Last year I put a tiny green ribbon near his bed as a joke and he looked at it, then at me, with an expression that has stayed with me. I have not done it again. Some traditions are best abandoned early.