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The Wild Rover

[ Roud 1173 ; Ballad Index MA069 ; trad.]

A.L. Lloyd sang The Wild Rover in 1958 on the Wattle LP Across the Western Plains. He commented in the album's sleeve notes:

In the nineteenth century, this popular street ballad was issued over and over again on broadsheets by Catnach, Such, Bebbington and other stall-ballad printers. An older song, The Green Bed, describing the adventures of a sailor in an uncharitable boarding house, seems to be the parent of Wild Rover. It appears to have survived better in Australia than in the country of its origin. As late as the early thirties it was quite common along the Bogan and Lachlan Rivers, and presumably elsewhere. I heard two or three tunes for it, but this version learned in the Condobolin district in 1929, from a South Australian named E. Barratt, is the best I know. I never heard in the bush the tune used by Burl Ives but that's not to say it wasn't sung. Other versions are to be found in Ashton's Modern Street Ballads, Creighton's Songs and Ballads from Nova Scotia, Paterson's Old Bush Songs, likewise in Old Bush Songs ed. Stewart and Keesing.

Concerning “survived better in Australia”—of course just a few years later in 1964 the Dubliners had a huge hit with The Wild Rover. They learned it from Ewan MacColl and Peggy Seeger's 1960 album The Singing Island, who themselves collected it at the end of the 1950s from Sam Larner. His version was published in 1961 on his Folkways album Now Is the Time for Fishing.

Louis Killen sang Wild Rover in a midnight concert in May 1963 in London. This concert was publish on the Decca LP Hootenanny in London. Nearly ten years later he sang in with the Clancy Brothers in a live recording from the Bushnell Auditorium in Hartford, Connecticut on their LP Live on St. Patrick's Day.

Sandy Denny recorded The Wild Rover on November 7, 1966 for the BBC broadcast “The Johnny Silvo Folk Four”. I don't know of any official publication or bootleg of this recording.

And Wild Rover No More is the title track on Jimmy McBeath's 1967 Topic album Wild Rover No More.

Lyrics

A.L. Lloyd sings The Wild Rover

I've been a wild rover for a number of years
I've spent all me money on whisky and beer
Now I save up me wages, keep money in store
And I never shall play the wild rover no more

Chorus:

Wild rover, wild rover, wild rover no more
And I never will play the wild rover no more

I went to a pub where I used to resort
I told the landlady me money was short
I asked for to trust me, her answer was nay
Such custom as yours we can get any day

Chorus:

So save up your wages, keep your money in store,
Don't you never play the wild rover no more

Put me hand in me pocket so manly and bold,
And down on the table threw a handful of gold.
Here's beer and here's whisky, saying, Bob you're good bloke,
And it's don't you take no notice I was having a joke.

Chorus:

Never mind about your wages nor your money in store,
And you can be a wild rover ever more

You can keep all your whisky and your beer likewise too,
For not another penny I'm spending with you.
For the money I've got mine I'm taking good care
And I never will play the wild rover no more.

Chorus:

Wild rover, wild rover, wild rover no more
And it's never will I play the wild rover no more

I'll go home to me parents and I'll tell what I've done
And ask them to pardon their prodigal son.
And if they'll forgive me as they've done before
Oh, it's never will I play the wild rover no more.

Chorus:

Wild rover, wild rover, wild rover no more
No never will I play the wild rover no more

Acknowledgements and Links

Transcribed by Reinhard Zierke. Compare to this the version on Mark Gregory's Australian Folk Songs website.

See also the Mudcat Café thread Origins of The Wild Rover.