A Man You Don't Meet Every Day

[poliphilo]

A fragment of melody slipped sideways into my head and it took me a while to work out what I was hearing. Once I'd put a name to it I decided I wanted to run it to earth.

I know the song- and I expect that goes for most people- from the Pogues' album- Rum, Sodomy and the Lash- where it is sung by Cait O'Riordan. It's a real oddity- boozy- but with a melancholy lilt and a sinister undertow; guns come into it and a dog is mysteriously shot. You get the feeling there could be a price to pay for refusing the singer's invitation to "be easy and free when you're drinking with me". His boast of having "acres of land (and) men at command." seems to carry an unspoken threat. Who is he anyway- an IRA godfather?

Well maybe- but there's a longer version- presumably the original- in which he's a stage Irishman on a trip to Liverpool- where he hopes to marry "a neat little maiden"- and there falls in with a bunch of his old drinking buddies. He's flash with the cash but there's no menace to him. Stereotypes abound- the house made of mud, the spuds, the booze. It's racial insult disguised as japery- the Anglo-Irish equivalent of a minstrel song. Wikipedia suggests it started on on the music halls- but doesn't identify the original composer or singer.

Whatever it once was it clearly went a journey- and eventually surfaced in Scotland, shorn of its paddywhackery - and with the speaker having aquired a name- and a Scottish name at that- Jock Stewart. The narrative has gone too and the only element of the original lyric that remains is the chorus. It is now close to being the song Cait sings. What the Pogues have done is re-Irish it- keeping the name Jock Stewart but locating him back where he originally came from, in County Kildare- and having him shoot the dog.

Shooting the dog is a touch of genius. It changes everything.

And that's the folk process. The pebble tumbles and gets bashed about in the stream. In this case the original lyrics were trash, but the tune was too good to throw away.  There's been conscious reinvention- helped along, perhaps by Chinese whispers - and the result is this ambiguous and beautiful thing

"I'm A Man You Don't Meet Every Day" (Watch on YouTube)

Comments

[cmcmck]

Otherwise known as Jock Stewart. It was a favourite of Alex Shaw, A Glaswegian who was a resident singer at my folk club in the days when I ran such a thing.

[poliphilo]

You ran a folk club? So did Ailz- in the station buffet at Staleybridge.

[cmcmck]

The Dog and Gun in Maidstone! :o)

[poliphilo]

Curiouser and curiouser

[cmcmck]

'Away I did run
With my dog and my gun'

Which is from that very song :o)

here via Sovay

[lauradi7dw]

I am pretty sure the source of the version the small female group I sang with in the late 1970s was Archie Fisher, on the 1976 album "the Man with the rhyme" (according to wikipedia - I haven't rummaged through the hundreds of LPs it would take to find it). I find the switch to shooting the dog quite shocking.
AF here, speaking directly to the difference, at the 1986 Philadelphia Folk festival (with Garnet Rogers)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=icHkCr0KKHg

Much more recent version, in which JS was a bagpiper (!)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-dzdYPbI_Hk

Re: here via Sovay

[poliphilo]

I had been thinking it was the Pogues who shot the dog, but it seems from Fisher's testimony that it happened before they got their hands on the song. It's my suspicion that the dog-shooting arose out of a simple error in transmission- but it makes all the difference- and transforms J.S. from an affable boozer into an untrustworthy psychopath- and gives the song a layer of danger and mystery it didn't have before.

[sovay]

What the Pogues have done is re-Irish it- keeping the name Jock Stewart but locating him back where he originally came from, in County Kildare- and having him shoot the dog.

Thanks for tracing the song. I hadn't heard it.

[poliphilo]

Ailz says she knows the original version- but can't say where she first heard it. She thinks Martin Carthy may have recorded a version.

[sovay]

Ailz says she knows the original version- but can't say where she first heard it.

Speaking of the tune: I realized that although I didn't know "I'm a Man You Don't Meet Every Day," I recognized it when I hummed it. I just managed to place it from Nathan Rogers' "The Jewel of Paris," where it has been repurposed into an entirely different kind of story.

[poliphilo]

When 'Omer smote 'is bloomin' lyre,
He'd 'eard men sing by land an' sea;
An' what he thought 'e might require,
'E went an' took - the same as me!

The market-girls an' fishermen,
The shepherds an' the sailors, too,
They 'eard old songs turn up again,
But kep' it quiet - same as you!

They knew 'e stole; 'e knew they knowed.
They didn't tell, nor make a fuss,
But winked at 'Omer down the road,
An' 'e winked back - the same as us!

[oakmouse]

I've heard another version of this somewhere, but I'll be dipped if I can remember who did it. Not the Dubliners, nor the Tannies; I wonder if it was the Clancys, with or without Tommy Makem?

[poliphilo]

There is a version by the Dubliners. I noticed it on YouTube but didn't play it because there are only so many different versions of a song you can listen to in day without wanting to tear your hair out.

[oakmouse]

*nods* Yesterday on Youtube I tried to listen to the Dubs version and also the Tannies (Tannahill Weavers) version, but couldn't get through either. The Dubs version was sung by Barney, and I hate his singing. The Tannies version was sung by Roy Gullane, whose singing I generally love, but they did it in approximately the same tempo as Pavane for a Dead Princess, and although I know this song isn't exactly a cracking tune, it shouldn't be a dirge either.

[poliphilo]

Having allowed a little time to pass I did finally listen to the Dubliners version- and it's very, very slow. They sound like they've been locked in the pub overnight and have all but lost the will to live.

[oakmouse]

ROTFLMAO! That's the perfect description.