I was listening to my local public radio station earlier this week and heard a cute tune called “The Goodman”. The song tells the story of a man who comes home to find what appears to be evidence of another man. His wife explains each piece of evidence is not really what it appears to be. The song was recorded by Kate Rusby on a CD titled “Underneath the Stars”. I checked out her web site and discovered that it was (as I suspected) a traditional English tune. Unfortunately, the lyrics were not included for that particular song, which would have made searching for it easier. The tune would make a good whistle tune, so I am looking for the music. I would also like to have the words. Anyone familiar with this one?
Sounds like the song the Dubliners did as “Seven Drunken Nights”
Here’s one version of the lyrics.
http://www.wtv-zone.com/phyrst/audio/nfld/04/traveler.htm
The Weavers did this song. Very cute.
Carol
Steeleye Span did this one, too - they list it as Four Nights Drunk, I believe: "When I come home/so drunk I couldn’t see-O . . . "
My favorite version is from one of their earlier albums with Martin Carthy singing - perfectly in-tune and in-time, but managing to sound drunk and puzzled. Nice to hear Martin singing something cheerful, too - on his own, since, he seems to favor mostly murder & incest ballads.
“But we’re only allowed to sing the first SIX verses.” is their famous quote!! 
Yep, sounds like The Seven Drunken Nights, all right (but we only do 5; the other two aren’t exactly rated G). First round goes something like …
"When I came home on a Monday, as drunk as drunk could be
I saw a horse inside the stall where my old horse should be
So I called to me wife and said "Me wife, what is this that I see?
Who owns the horse inside the stall where my old horse should be?’
'Ah … yer drunk, yer drunk, you silly old fool
And still ye canna see
Sure, ‘tis only a little Jersey cow
Me mother sent to me’
Oh, I’ve traveled the whole world over, a hundred miles or more,
But a saddle on a Jersey cow I’ve never seen before."
It goes on from there through a coat/old bedquilt (Tues), pipe/tinwhistle (Wed), boots beneath the bed/chrysanthemum pots (Thurs), and head inside the bed/baby boy (Fri) …
Ring a bell?
It sounds like “Our Goodman” which the Dubliner sang as “Seven Drunken nights” I have searched for it on the net with no luck myself. I found it in the “More Dubliners songs”. It was in C so I converted it to D.
Here is what I cut out of the exported abc file for you. Let me know if it doesn’t work and I can email you the midi or a gif of the sheet.
X:1 %Music
T:Title %Tune name
C:Composer : %Tune composer
N:Remarks : %Tune infos
Q:1/4=120 %Tempo
V:1 %
%!STAVE 0 ‘Piano’ @
%!INSTR ‘WHISTLE’ 0 7800 @
M:6/8 %Meter
L:1/8 %
K:D
z2 =c2 c z |:A2 A2 A/A/A/ z/ |G2 =F F2 =c |A2 =c d2 e |=f3 z2 f |g2 =f e2 f |d2 =c A2 G |A2 =c d2 d |d3 z =cc |A3 cc/c/c/ z/ |d2 c A2 c/c/ |d2 e f2 e |d3 z2 c |A2 c d2 c |A2 F G2 F |D2 F F2 G |F3 fff |
A2 A A2 A |GFF F2 c |A2 c e2 f |g3 z3 |g2 d ege |c3 A2 F |G G2 G2 F |F3 F2 G |AAc c2 A |GF z z2 c |A2 c d2 e |f3 z ff |f c2 (df)d |c3 A2 F |G G2 F2 E |F3 z c/B/ z :|F3 cde |f2 f dfd |cdc (AGF) |GAG F2 E |
F3 z2 z |]
%End of file
You’re right Cathy,it is only the first five-it’s a long time since I heard that tape!
The ‘Dubliners live’ that I have somewhere is a gem- the very loud Irish woman sitting in the front row (singing along) had a whale of a time!!
Dagnabbit, I just saw that link in my saved mail folder yesterday… on my computer at home. I actually found a site with all seven verses, and the last one in particular is pretty randy. (Our bodhran player swears up and down the last 2 verses are actually banned in Ireland)
Anyway, if anyone’s really interested, I’ll look it up … let me know.
http://sniff.numachi.com/~rickheit/dtrad/
has a very good version of this tune, look under the traveller,
be warned it is quite an adult version