Whisky You're the Devil

DESCRIPTION: Whiskey leads the singer astray. "We're on the march and off to Portugal and Spain" "The French are fighting boldly, men dying hot and coldly ... love fare thee well" A mother threatens to haunt the singer if he takes her daughter from her.
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1901 (Edward Harrigan, _The Mulligans_)
KEYWORDS: courting war separation drink Spain nonballad mother soldier ghost
FOUND IN: Ireland
REFERENCES (4 citations):
Moylan-TheAgeOfRevolution-1776-1815 180, "Whiskey You're the Devil" (2 texts, 1 tune)
Hugill-ShantiesFromTheSevenSeas, p. 454, "Whisky, You're My Darling" (1 fragment, 1 tune - taken from the Journal of the Folk Song Society, 1924. He only gives one verse, which deals with emigration to America, and which is filed here only tentatively)
Dallas-TheCruelWars-100SoldiersSongs, pp. 14-15, "Whiskey You're the Devil" (1 text, 1 tune)
ADDITIONAL: Edward Harrigan, _The Mulligans_, G. W. Dillingham, 1901, pp. 303, 310, "(no title)" (2 excerpts)
RECORDINGS:
The Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem, "Whisky You're the Devil" (on IRClancyMakem01)
NOTES [252 words]: The references "now, brave boys, we're on the march and off to Portugal and Spain" and "the French are fighting boldly, men dying hot and coldly" seem to be a reference to the Peninsular campaign of the Napoleonic wars. On the other hand, it's a stretch to imagine a consistent story line: the chorus has whiskey leading the singer "O'er the hills and mountains and to Amerikay" - BS
The above is actually barely possible; soldiers in the Peninsula might have been sent to fight the United States in the War of 1812. But it's much easier to believe that it would happen in a songwriter's head than to an actual soldier. - RBW
Moylan-TheAgeOfRevolution-1776-1815 attributes this to 1809 on the basis of something found in Winstock Songs and Music of the Redcoats (indexed as Winstock-SongsAndMusicOfTheRedcoats). I have searched that book at length and cannot identify the basis for this attribution, so I have not changed the Earliest Date.
The lines about whiskey sending the singer to America do, however, appear in Edward Harrigan's book The Mulligan Guard, and the song does not seem to be by Harrigan and Braham, so I've used 1901 as the earliest date, with a high likelihood that Harrigan knew it well before that. - RBW, (BS)
The ballad is recorded on one of the CD's issued around the time of the bicentenial of the 1798 Irish Rebellion. See:
Franke Harte and Donal Lunny, "Whiskey in the Jar" (on Franke Harte and Donal Lunny, "My Name is Napoleon Bonaparte," Hummingbird Records HBCD0027 (2001)) - BS
Last updated in version 5.3
File: RcWYTD

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