The Irish Rover

The song describes a gigantic ship with "twenty-three masts" (versions by the Dubliners and the Pogues claim twenty-seven), a colourful crew and varied types of cargo in enormous amounts.

The seven-year voyage culminates in a disastrous end, after the ship suffers a measles outbreak, killing all but the narrator and the captain's dog.

[1] A manuscript version of the song dated in 1937 and 1938 is currently in the Irish National Folklore Collection in Dublin, attributed to Lisgorman Townland (a place, not a person) of Cloonlogher, County Leitrim.

[2] The next source for Roud 4379 in the Vaughan Williams Library catalogue is the singer Denis Murray from County Cork, collected by Fred Hamer, possibly 1946.

A Canadian source, Oliver John Abbott (1872–1962), was born in England and worked in farms in an Irish community in the Ottawa Valley.