The Rocky Road to Dublin

I’ve been listening to a lot of Irish Traditional music recently, and one of my favorites is the “Rocky Road to Dublin“. It’s a 19th century music hall tune, per Wikipedia, and concerns the adventures of an Irishman who travels away from home to find work. He’s heartbroken, and his belongings are stolen; eventually he takes ship to Liverpool (the captain makes him travel with the pigs), where he gets into a fight with the locals who make fun of him and of Ireland. It’s a regular catalog of misfortunes; but at the end a bunch of Galway boys see him losing the fight and come and give him a hand, which I suppose is a happy ending.

Here’s a recording by the Dubliners, in best traditional pub band style:

And here’s a slightly less raucous version by the High Kings:

Whack-fol-lol-de-ra!