Fire-Whisky.net

Ah, a classic if there ever was one. Chances are, if you’ve heard more than one Irish song, you’ve heard this one.

For better or worse, a number of people came to the song via Metallica, a band that became increasingly dissatisfied with ruining their own songs by the late-1980s. They likely came to the song via Thin Lizzy, which (for you youngsters) was quite a novelty in the 1970s as an Irish hard rock band with a black singer (amusingly, Wikipedia now lists “Whiskey in the Jar” before “The Boys are Back in Town” or “Jailbreak”).

But it was The Dubliners who originally put the song back on the map in the 1960s, after a few centuries of knocking around the Irish pub/folk repertoire. According to Alan Lomax (a man who knows a thing or two about folk music), the song initially dates from the 17th Century.

Contrary to the hard-drinking connotations of the title, it is far less about the virtues of whiskey than it is about the romantic heroes of the highway — a relatively common trend in folk music of the period, and beyond (one might think that Metallic would be against this sort of “piracy”, lol).

Basically, the tale is this: the singer, a highwayman of note, robs Captain Farrell (or whomever fit the description of a bit too wealthy and unpopular, and almost always with some sort of official authority) and takes his plunder back home to Jenny, his woman.

Alas, our hero is undone by his Jenny (ain’t it always the way?), who, among other things, replaces his gunpowder with water and runs straight to Captain Farrell. Unable to defend himself, the narrator is taken captive.

The song falls apart a bit at this point. The singer talks about escaping to or with his brother (who he realizes is much more faithful than his Jenny), and then a bit about how much he likes whiskey. And throughout all of this tale, the rousing chorus:

Musha rum duma du rumma da

Whack fol the daddy-o

Whack fol the daddy-o

There’s Whiskey in the Jar!