Seven Drunken Nights

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Seven Drunken Nights is a humorous traditional Irish song based on the Scottish ballad Our Goodman . The most famous version comes from the Dubliners , who finished seventh on the UK charts in 1967 . Usually only five of the seven stanzas are sung, as stanzas six and seven are very suggestive.

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Each day is described by a stanza. Every evening the husband comes home drunk and finds evidence that his wife has been visited by another man. Every time she tries to talk him out of his suspicions in an unconvincing way.

Verses 1-5

Part 1: The man finds a suspicious clue:

As I went home on Monday night as drunk as drunk could be,
I saw a horse outside the door where my old horse should be.
Well, I called me wife and I said to her: "Will you kindly tell to me
Who owns that horse outside the door where my old horse should be? "

German translation (analogous):

When I came home Monday night as drunk as you can be
I saw a horse outside my door where my old horse should be.
Well, I called my wife and asked her, “Would you have the goodness to tell me
Who owns the horse in front of the door, where my old horse should be? "

Part 2: The wife's declaration that it was a gift from her mother:

"Ah, you're drunk, you drunk, you silly old fool, still you can not see
That's a lovely sow that me mother sent to me. "
" Oh, you're drunk, you drunk, silly, old fool, still can't see it?
This is a wonderful sow that my mother sent me. "

Part 3: Man's Doubts:

Well, it's many a day I've traveled a hundred miles or more,
But a saddle on a sow sure I never saw before.
Well, many days I've been around a hundred miles or more
But I've never seen a saddle on a sow!

The remaining stanzas follow the same pattern with the following items:

  • 2nd verse: jacket - blanket (with buttons on it)
  • 3rd verse: pipe - tin whistle (with tobacco in it)
  • 4th verse: boots - flower pots (with laces)
  • 5th verse: head of a man - baby (with beard)

Verses 6-7

Verses 6 and 7 are seldom sung (at least in public) because there are clear sexual allusions in them. There are several different versions of these two stanzas:

  • Verse 6: hands on her breasts - brassiere (with fingers on)
  • 7th verse:
This stanza usually tells of the man noticing "a thing" in "her thing," whereupon the wife explains that this is a tin whistle. But he says he has never seen a flute with hair on it.
Alternatively, the man sees another man come out of the house shortly after three in the morning. His wife explains to him that this was a tax collector for the Queen. The punch line of the song is that the man really doubts it because someone who lasts until three in the morning can hardly have been an Englishman.

Recordings

The song was one of the Dubliners' biggest hits from Ireland. In March 1967 they had their first chart hit in Great Britain, where they reached number 7.

Other versions:

German-language versions of the song were published by pop singer Udo Jürgens under the title Du trinkst zuviel , by singer and actor Mike Krüger under the title Trunkenbold and by the German band Torfrock . There is also a Low German version of the North German folklore group Godewind , which was brought out in 1991 as an arrangement by Larry Evers and Shanger Ohl, both members of this group. There is also a Cologne version called “Die voll Woch” by the Cologne band Die Höhner . The punk band Sector Gasa released a Russian-language version called Метаморфоза (Metamorphosis).

Individual proof

  1. ↑ Scots Songs , archived in the Internet Archive, accessed April 23, 2019