"The Rare Old Mountain Dew" is an Irish folk song dating from 1882.
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It was written by Edward Harrigan with music by Dave Braham, from the Irish drama The Blackbird.[1] It was printed in "Irish street Ballads", 1916. It was later recorded under the title The Rare Old Mountain Dew. It is about the intoxicating properties of Irish moonshine, or Poitín. The earliest recording is by John Griffin, 1927 on the Columbia label, New York, under its original title.
It is sung to the traditional air The Girl I Left Behind (also known as Brighton Camp).
The song is referenced in The Pogues song "Fairytale of New York":
And then he sang a song
The Rare Auld Mountain Dew
I turned my face away
And dreamed about you.
Let grasses grow and waters flow
In a free and easy way
But give me enough of the rare old stuff
That's made near Galway Bay
Come gougers all from Donegal,
Sligo and Leitrim too
We'll give them the slip and we'll take a sip
Of the real old mountain dew.
There's a neat little still at the foot of the hill
Where the smoke curls up to the sky
By a whiff of the smell you can plainly tell
That there's poteen boys close by.
For it fills the air with a perfume rare
And betwixt both me and you
As home we roll, we can drink a bowl
Or a bucketful of mountain dew.
Now learned men as use the pen
Have writ' the praises high
Of the sweet poteen from Ireland green
That's made from wheat and rye
Away with your pills, it'll cure all ills
Be ye pagan, Christian, or Jew
So take off your coat and grease your throat
With a bucket of the mountain dew.
Vocables are often sung with the song, either after every second verse or once at the beginning and once at the end, to the same tune as the lyrics. While these vocables vary with the singer, one typical version is "hi dee diddley idle dum, hi dee doodle dydle dum, hi dee doo dye diddly aye day", repeated once.