Four Nights Drunk: A Song History
"Four Nights Drunk" is one of many names for "Our Goodman," number 274 in Francis James Child's collection and Roud 114: a comic ballad in which a husband stumbles home drunk on successive nights, finds signs of another man in the house, and is fobbed off by his wife with ever more ridiculous explanations.[1] Child printed two texts, one from David Herd's Ancient and Modern Scottish Songs (1776) and one from a London broadside titled "The Merry Cuckold and Kind Wife."[2] He also traced its travels abroad: a German version by Friedrich Wilhelm Meyer, written in 1789 and printed in 1790, became a broadside hit and spread on into Scandinavia and Hungary, and Child noted related Gaelic and Flemish songs as well.[2]
Philippe Jacques de Loutherbourg, Drunkard Lifting a Beer, etching, 1755–71. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Public domain (CC0). Shown in fun; it has no connection to the ballad.
The Traditional Ballad Index records the song across Britain, Ireland, Canada, Australia, the Bahamas and throughout the United States, and cites the view of Joseph Hickerson, archivist at the Archive of American Folk Culture, that it is the most often collected of all the Child ballads, ahead even of "Barbara Allen."[1] American singers counted the nights differently, and the Index lists early records under titles such as "Three Nights Experience" by Earl Johnson & his Dixie Entertainers (1927), "Four Night's Experience" by Thomas C. Ashley (1928) and "Three Nights Drunk" by Gid Tanner & his Skillet Lickers (1934).[1] The story also crossed into blues, from Lena and Sylvester Kimbrough's "Cabbage Head Blues" (1926) to Sonny Boy Williamson's "Wake Up Baby" (1958).[1]
Folklorist Steve Winick identifies the Dubliners' "Seven Drunken Nights" with Child's "Our Goodman" and dates their first recording to the 1967 album The New Dubliners.[3] He also notes that the group stopped after five nights, that official media banned the record as obscene, and that heavy play on the pirate station Radio Caroline helped carry it to number five on the British pop charts.[3]
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