Hardest Name That Dubliners Song Trivia Quiz | International Music

Quiz Answer Key and Fun Facts

1. These lines are from the Dubliners' signature song, but what is it called? "It's many a day I've travelled, A hundred miles or more, But a baby boy with his whiskers on, I've never seen before."

Answer: Seven Drunken Nights

This comic song tells the story of a man who comes home drunk every night and apparently misses the fact that his wife has been entertaining her fancy man - and under the circumstances, who can blame her! The Dubliners shot to fame in the 1960s after this single was picked up and played ad infinitum by pirate radio station Radio Caroline.

As Ronnie Drew usually says in his introduction "It's called Seven Drunken Nights, but we're only allowed to sing five of them."

2. This song is another old favourite that loses out in the singalong stakes as it lacks a chorus to join in with. The title? "There was Barney McGee from the banks of the Lee, There was Hogan from County Tyrone, There was Johnny McGurk who was scared stiff of work, And a man from Westmeath called Malone"

Answer: The Irish Rover

The eponymous ship sets sail for New York but hits a rock before she gets there. The Dubs recorded this with The Pogues and got back into the charts in 1987. Not bad after twenty-five years in the business and, at the time, one death (Luke Kelly in 1984).

3. Staying with the ship theme, but moving across the Irish Sea, where would you hear the following lines? "I have shipped on a Yankee clipper ship, Davey Crockett is her name, Dan Burgess is the captain of her, And they say that she's a floating shame."

Answer: The Leaving of Liverpool

A sailor takes leave of his girlfriend before setting off round the Horn to California. Liverpool and London were England's major seaports until the 1970s when containerisation meant ships got larger, and ports moved down river where there was more space. Southampton, Felixstowe and Tilbury are now the big three. The Dubliners sang this at the Royal Albert Hall in the 60s.

4. This one's set to a jig tune, but what is it called? "When I was a young one I heard my father say, He'd rather see me dead and buried in the clay, Sooner than be married to any runaway,"

Answer: The Banks of the Roses

This young man seems quite happy to sit in fields playing the fiddle to his sweetheart, but less keen on marrying her. The song was added to the Dubliners' repertoire by Sean Cannon, who joined after Ciaran Bourke's retirement due to ill-health. Ciaran died in 1987, the second and, to date, last casualty.

5. This song isn't traditional, but it's a classic. Can you name it? " I once loved a maid a spot welder by trade, She was as fair as the roses in bloom, The blue of her eye matched the blue moorland sky, And I wooed her from April till June"

Answer: The Manchester Rambler

One of the great Ewan McColl's earliest songs, written after he joined one of the mass trespasses of the 1930s. Working men from industrial cities like Manchester used to spend their weeekly day off rambling in the hills around the city. This activity didn't go down well with the rich landowners who were worried about their game birds and sent their gamekeepers to chase the ramblers off the grouse moors.

In response, the ramblers took to the moors en masse and eventually won their point, though there are still periodic spats between landowners and ramblers over public footpaths and the right to roam.

Another Sean Cannon recording for the Dubs. MacColl's most famous song is probably Dirty Old Town, which has been absorbed into the public conscious so well, that many people believe it to be traditional.

6. Back to a song with "trad. arr. The Dubliners" in the sleevenotes. The clue to the title is in the verse: "When he went to sleep hey ding doorum dah, When he went to sleep me being young, When he went to sleep out of bed I did creep, Into the arms of a handsome young man."

Answer: Maids When You're Young Never Wed an Old Man

This risqu� old favourite tells the tale of a young woman who leaves her elderly husband after a disappointing wedding night. Another one taken from the set played at the Royal Albert Hall. The live recording of that gig was my first Dubliners album.

7. This one's a proper sea shanty with plenty of heaving and hauling. Which of the titles goes with these lyrics? "There's just one thing that grieves my mind, Heave away haul away, To leave sweet Nancy Blair behind."

Answer: South Australia

An old sea shanty about the perils of rounding the Horn to get to and from Australia. 'Banjo' Barney McKenna's party piece and about the only thing he's ever heard to sing. He makes up for it with his virtuosity on the tenor banjo and squeezebox though.

8. Moving away from the sea and into politics, what is the name of this patriotic number? "When he came to the Reelin bridge the Rebels he saw there, He knew the game was up with him for at him they did stare, He said I have a permit to travel near and far, You can stick your English permit, we want your motor car."

Answer: Johnson's Motor Car

Time for a rebel song. Dr Johnson is dismayed when a group of rebels commandeer his car to make a rendez-vous with their captain. The IRA of Ireland's struggle for independence before the Second World War were very different from the terrorists and criminal gangs of recent times.

The Dubliners recorded a lot of rebel songs in their early years, but did so less and less as IRA violence increased in the 1970s and 80s. The risk of IRA bombs is why you won't find a litter bin in any railway or underground station in London.

9. This verse comes in the middle of a tragic ballad called...? "Six days passed and the lamps gave out, Caleb Rushton got up and said, We've no more water, or light, or bread, So we'll live on songs and hope instead."

Answer: The Springhill Disaster

Peggy Seeger wrote this song after she watched news broadcasts of the collapse of a coal mine in Springhill, Nova Scotia. The last verse tells how some of the men were rescued on the twelfth day, leaving their dead mates in a ready-made grave. "Two miles of earth as a marking stone." The other answers are all mining songs recorded by the Dubliners.

10. To finish, a little known, but very good protest song that oozes black humour. Take a guess at this one: "I sit at my desk in Washington in charge of this great machine, More vicious than Adolf Hitler, more deadly than strychnine, In the evening after a tiring day just to give myself laugh, I give the button a playful belt and I listen for the blast."

Answer: The Button Pusher

In a move away from Irish politics, Luke Kelly sang this satirical anti-nuclear song by Enoch Kent on The Dubliners' 1971 album "Revolution". It tells the story of the imaginary man who is employed purely to press the "big, red button" in Washington, and finishes by joining the CND.
"I'm thinking of joining the army, the army that bans the bomb,
We'll take up a large collection and I'll donate my thumb,
For without it I am helpless and that's the way to be,
You don't have to kill the whole ruddy lot to make the people free."

Source: Author Ada_Doom

This quiz was reviewed by FunTrivia editor ertrum before going online.
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Name That Dubliners Song Trivia Quiz

I give you a couple of lines, you pick the song title. The common thread is that these have all been recorded by the Granddaddies of Irish folk - The Dubliners. Be warned, they start easy and get more obscure.

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