A regular feature on traditional songs of County Wexford. This week: Pol and Nancy Hogan

If you’re looking for a traditional song for children, this one is always a favourite in my song workshops. I got the song from the singing of Paddy Berry and it features a verse written by him. The song is featured on the 1960 recording ‘As I Roved Out’ where it is named as ‘Wexford Mummers’ Song’.

It is sung by Sean Óg Ó Tuama who introduces it by saying that ‘in Wexford it is sung by two people and instead of singing the refrain they dance it’. The lilted chorus would indeed lend itself to dancing and the style and character of the song would suit the mumming tradition which is not always as formal as the well-known Wexford plays which are most popular now.

Mumming refers to a wide-ranging custom in which masked figures sing, recite and perform and is associated with various times of the year including Christmas, Halloween, Easter and Mummers also traditionally appeared at weddings. Many traditional Irish songs in the English language feature an odd Irish word and this song contains ‘coileán’ meaning ‘pup’. Here it refers not to a young dog however, but to the sort of a ‘pup’ who might also earn the description ‘blackguard’, also featured, which is an old English word for a fella up to no good.

Pol and Nancy Hogan

Lyrics: Anon (except verse seven by Paddy Berry) Air: Traditional

In Wexford town there is a place, A place called Ballybogan,

And in that place there lived two maids Called Pol and Nancy Hogan

Chorus

With my too ri ah, fol de diddle da, Too ri fol de diddle day ro

Now Nancy had a little pig,

And she hired Pol to mind it, And just like any other little pig, It carried its tail behind it

Old Pol she bought another one,

And isn’t it a wonder,

That in a week you wouldn’t know these, Two little pigs asunder

Two coileáns walking down the road, As the two little pigs were feeding, Pulled out their knives cut off their tails And sent them home a-bleeding

Old Nancy went to a court of law, Before the judge and jury,

And up steps Pol before the bench, For to read her story saying…

“If your honour was a pig,

Which I hope you’ll never be sir,

If a blackguard came and cut off your tail, Wouldn’t you roar and bawl and squeal sir”

Well the magistrate stood up and said: “Their rumps will soon be mending And pigs will snore and fatten more Without their tails attending”

These two aul’ women Pol and Nan,

They lived a life quite airy,

There wasn’t a word that ever they spoke, But every word contrary.

Aul’ Nancy died on a Saturday night

And Pol she died on Sunday,

They waked them both on a Sunday night And buried them both on Monday.

To hear eight-year old Nellie Fortune sing this song please go to the ‘Songs of Wexford’ Facebook page.