Name That Dubliners Song Trivia Quiz

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."

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).

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.

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.

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.

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

This risqué 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.

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.

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.

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.

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."