Monday is St. Patrick’s Day, but festivities of course will transpire throughout the weekend. For some of us the days of drinking (swilling?) green beer may be long past, but dancing a jig or two to a fine Irish tune will never be out of fashion.
I’ve been a life-long afficionado of Irish folk songs and can mark my immersion to an album me mam played when I was wee lad, by the Abbey Tavern Singers (ABS).
Two songs still stand out: “The Orange and the Green,” and “Mick Maguire.” And while ABS were obscure even then (as I later learned when trying to track them down), fortunately their repertoire of traditional Irish standards is not.
We’ve offered the former song in this space – by the great (and getting even better with historical hindsight) Irish-Canadian band The Irish Rovers – and now it’s time for the latter.
With trademark Irish humour – “I’ll quickly tell to you/of a young girl I admired one Katie Donoghue/ She was fair and fat and 40…” – the song considers the courtship of a woman by a man of means, and his changing fortunes with her mother.
So, just sit where you are, listen up, and never you dare give old McGuire that chair…
Lyrics
Me name is Mick Maguire and I’ll quickly tell to you
Of a young girl I admired one Katie Donoghue
She was fair and fat and forty and believe me when I say
Whenever I’d come in at the door you could hear her mother say
Johnny get up from the fire get up and give your man a seat
Can’t you see it’s Mick Maguire and he’s courtin’ your sister Kate
You know very well he owns a farm a wee bit out of the town
Ah get out of that ya impudent brat and let Mister Maguire sit down
Well, the first time I met her was at a dance in Donnahadee
I very kindly ask her would she dance a step with me
I asked if I could see her home if she’d be going my way
But whenever I’d come in at the door you could hear the ould one say
Johnny get up from the fire get up and give your man a seat
Can’t you see it’s Mick Maguire and he’s courtin’ your sister Kate
You know very well he owns a farm a wee bit out of the town
Ah get out of that ya impudent brat and let Mister Maguire sit down
But now that we are married her mammy’s changed her mind
Just because I spent the money that me daddy left behind
Now she hasn’t got the decency to tell me time of the day
And whenever I’d come in at the door you could hear her mammy say
Johnny come up to the fire come you’re sitting in the draft
Can’t you see it’s ould Maguire and he nearly drives me daft
Sure, I don’t know what gets in him and he’s always on the tear
So, sit where you are and never you dare, give ould Maguire the chair