In each verse the narrator notices a flaw in each explanation, but seems content to let the matter rest: "Ah, you're drunk, you're drunk, you silly old fool, still you can not see That's a lovely sow that me mother sent to me." His wife tells him it is merely a sow, a gift from her mother: 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?"
On the first night (generally Monday), the narrator sees a strange horse outside the door:Īs 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. ( February 2013) ( Learn how and when to remove this template message)ĭifferent versions of the lyrics exist right from the start of the song though variation increases for the last two nights. Statements consisting only of original research should be removed. Please improve it by verifying the claims made and adding inline citations.
This section possibly contains original research. Ī music video for the song was shot in late 1967 in the Anglers Rest Pub in the Strawberry Beds. Although it was banned from the Irish national broadcasting station, the song also charted at No.1 in Ireland. The record reached number 7 in the UK charts in 1967 and appeared on Top of the Pops, thanks to its diffusion on Radio Caroline. The song passed from oral tradition to a global mass market with The Dubliners recording of "Seven Drunken Nights". The song also became part of American folk culture, both through Irish-Americans and through the blues tradition. In the version known as "Seven Nights Drunk", each night is a verse, followed by a chorus, in which the narrator comes home in a drunken state to find evidence of another man having been with his wife, which she explains away, not entirely convincingly. Unusually for such a popular and widespread song, it appears in only a few nineteenth century broadsides. The broadside was translated into German, and spread into Hungary and Scandinavia. Another version was found in a London broadside of the 1760s entitled "The Merry Cuckold and the Kind Wife". "Our Goodman" was collected in Scotland in the 1770s.