"The Rare Old Mountain Dew" is a folk song dating from 1882.
"The Mountain Dew" was a song aboutpoitín (Irishmoonshine) with lyrics by New York musical theater greatEdward Harrigan and music credited to Harrigan's orchestra leaderDavid Braham. The tune, however, owes an obvious debt to the older song "The Girl I Left Behind."[according to whom?] It was first performed as part of the 1882 Harrigan productionThe Blackbird.[1] and was later printed in Colm Ó Lochlainn's 1916Irish Street Ballads. The earliest recording in the78 rpm era was made in New York in 1927 by John Griffin for theColumbia label. Some later recordings used the title "The Rare Old Mountain Dew."
The song is referenced inThe Pogues' song "Fairytale of New York":
And then he sang a song
The Rare Auld Mountain Dew
I turned my face away
And dreamed about you.
Lilting is often added to the song, either after every second verse or once at the beginning and once at the end, to the same tune as the lyrics. While these vocables vary with the singer, one typical version is "hi dee diddley idle dum, hi dee doodle dydle dum, hi dee doo dye diddly aye day", repeated once.
