Right, so somebody emailed the shrine last week — a fella called Dave, from Manchester, lovely man — asking what Whiskey in the Jar is ACTUALLY about. He said he'd sung the chorus a hundred times at a hundred weddings and never once stopped to think about the words. And do you know what, Dave? That's most of us. That's nearly everybody.
So let me tell you. Because it's a cracker of a story and it's nothing like what people assume.
It's a song about a robber. A highwayman, specifically — one of those lads who'd stand out on a lonely road with a pistol and rob travellers as they passed. In the song, our man holds up an officer. Could be a captain, could be a colonel, depends who's singing it (more on THAT in a minute). He robs yer man, takes his money, and goes home all delighted with himself to his woman. Jenny, or Molly, or Ginny — again, depends entirely on the singer. He hands her the gold. He trusts her completely.
And she sells him out.
That's the heart of it. She fills his pistols with water — or sometimes she takes the charges out altogether, depends on the version — so that when the soldiers come for him in the morning, his gun won't fire. He goes to draw and CLICK. Nothing. Wet powder. He's caught, and he's done, and the woman he gave all that gold to is the very one who put the noose round his neck. It's a betrayal song dressed up as a robbing song. That's the trick of it.
People hear "musha ring dumma do dumma da" and they think it's a jaunty drinking number. It is not. It's a man telling you about the day his life ended, and the woman he loved doing it to him.
Now. Where does it come from. This is the part where I have to be honest with you the way I'm always honest with you — nobody really knows. Folk songs don't come with birth certificates. People want a tidy origin and there usually isn't one. What we DO know is that the song is old. It was kicking around Ireland for a long time, and there are broadside printings going back into the 1800s, and some folklorists reckon it may go back to the 1600s in some form. There's a notion that it relates to a real highwayman, maybe an Irish one, maybe a Scottish one. There's even a theory that the whole thing crossed the water and influenced the English ballads about Captain Patrick Fleming and the like. But "there's a theory" is doing a lot of work in that sentence, and anyone who tells you they know FOR CERTAIN where this song was born is, with respect, having you on.
What I love is that it travelled. It went to America with the emigrants and turned up in the Appalachians as "Gilgarra Mountain" and other names. The hills change. The Cork and Kerry mountains in the Irish versions become other mountains somewhere else. That's how these songs live — they put on local clothes wherever they land.
Which brings me to the great chaos of the choruses, because no two bands sing this song the same way and it drives some people mad.
The Dubliners had their go at it. Thin Lizzy did the famous one, the one with the guitars, and a whole generation knows that as THE version — Phil Lynott, God rest him, growling it out. Then Metallica covered Thin Lizzy's arrangement and won a Grammy for it, which means there are metalheads in places that have never seen a bog who can sing about the Cork and Kerry mountains. Gas, isn't it. And every one of these picks a different officer (captain Farrell is common, but you'll hear colonel, you'll hear other names), a different woman, a different spelling of the nonsense syllables. "Whack fol the daddy-o." "Musha ring." It's all the same gibberish-chorus tradition and it's all grand. There is no correct version. Anyone correcting your chorus at a session is to be ignored, gently.
Here's why I'm telling all this on a Rattlin' Bog site, in case you're wondering. It's the same family of feeling. Our Rattlin' Bog is a joyful pile-up of nonsense and nature, and Whiskey in the Jar is a tragic story buried under a daft chorus — but they share that thing where the CHORUS is the social glue. The words you actually understand are almost beside the point. You're all roaring "whiskey in the jar" together for the same reason a room full of strangers will roar "and the green grass grew all around" — it's belonging, it's the warm middle of the night, it's everyone in the one breath. I keep a whole songbook of these for that exact reason, and if you want a close cousin in spirit, go have a look at The Wild Rover, another song about a man, money, and regret that everyone bawls out like it's the happiest thing in the world.
So that's it, Dave. It's about a robber betrayed by his love and hanged for it. Sing it at the next wedding anyway. Sing it LOUDER, even. The dead highwayman won't mind.
Slán go fóill, BogLord2002
P.S. — Rattlin' the cat sat through me playing the Thin Lizzy version four times in a row while I wrote this and only left during the guitar solo, which I respect enormously. Critic.