Do not let the title fool you. You hear "The Banks of the Roses" and you picture some weepy, rose-tinted ballad about a lad pining by a river. It is not that. Well, it sort of starts that way, and then the whole thing turns into a flirty, slightly daft bit of carry-on with a grumbling auld father in it and a chorus you can barely sing without grinning. It is a courting song. A cheeky one. And the lilt — that "whack fol the diddle" business — is pure joy.
I love a song that promises you roses and gives you a young one telling a fella to mind himself and his "tow-row-row." This is one of those. Far more fun than the title lets on, I'm telling you.
A Bit of History
Here's where I have to be honest with you, the way I always try to be on this site: nobody really knows where this one came from, and anybody who tells you a precise date is having you on.
It's an old Irish song — that much is fairly safe to say. It turns up in collections through the 20th century and has been sung up and down the country for generations, and there are versions floating about in the Greig-Duncan Scottish collection too, so it's one of those songs that walked back and forth across the water the way so many of them did. The melody and the words drift around. Different singers, different verses, different running order. Some versions are gentler, some are a good deal more suggestive (lads, you can imagine), and the comic edge sharpens or softens depending on who's holding the pint.
What I CAN say with confidence is that it's traditional and public domain, which is why it lives happily here in the songbook. Beyond that — origins murky, as ever. Folk songs don't carry birth certificates. That's half the charm of them.
The shape most people sing now is the courting version: a young man and a young woman, a bit of back-and-forth, a father who is NOT impressed, and that swinging nonsense chorus tying it all together.
Lyrics
On the banks of the roses, my love and I sat down, And I took out my fiddle for to play my love a tune. In the middle of the tune, O she sighed and she said, "O Johnny, lovely Johnny, would you leave me?"
"O when I was a young man I heard my father say That he'd rather see me dead and buried in the clay, Sooner than be married to any runaway By the lovely sweet banks of the roses."
"O then I am no runaway and soon I'll let them know That I can take a glass or leave it alone. And the man that doesn't like me, he can keep his daughter home, And young Johnny will go roving with another."
And when I get married, 'twill be in the month of May, When the leaves they are green and the meadows they are gay. And I and my true love we'll sit and sport and play By the lovely sweet banks of the roses.
With me whack fol the diddle and me whack fol the day, With me whack fol the diddle and me whack fol the day.
How to Sing It
This one rewards a bit of cheek. Don't sing it solemn. The first line sets you up to expect a tender thing, and the joke only works if you lean into the swing of it once that chorus arrives.
The "whack fol the diddle" lilt is the bit the room waits for, so let everyone in on it — it's the same job the four claps do in the Wild Rover, a daft little hook that turns a song-you're-listening-to into a song-you're-IN. Pitch it so people can join even if they've never heard it before. A couple of run-throughs of that nonsense line and the whole table has it.
Tempo: brisk, but not a race. Let the words land, especially the auld father's grumbling and Johnny's reply, because that's where the comedy lives. A wink helps. So does a fiddle, given there's literally a fiddle IN the first verse (you'd be a fool not to).
It pairs grand with the other flirty, comic songs in a session — slot it somewhere in the warm middle of the night, after something boisterous and before something a touch quieter. If you want a companion piece with a similar light, knowing humour about courting and carry-on, reach for Courtin' in the Kitchen next, or follow it with a big communal one like the Rattlin' Bog when you want the whole room roaring again.
And don't worry too much about which verses you've got "right." There isn't a right. Sing the ones you like, in the order that feels good, and let the chorus carry the rest. That's how this song has survived a couple hundred years — by being too much fun to get precious about.
Slán go fóill, and mind that fiddle, BogLord2002
P.S. — Rattlin' the cat is deeply unmoved by love songs but perks right up at "whack fol the diddle." Make of that what you will.