Traditional · Key of Bb · Public domain
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This is The Wild Rover moved from D to the key of Bb, with every chord already worked out. In this key the song uses Bb, Eb, F7. If you would rather keep open chord shapes and still sound in Bb, play it capo 1 with the A shapes, or capo 3 with the G shapes, or capo 6 with the E shapes.
The story behind the song and tips for playing it are on the main The Wild Rover chords and lyrics page. Other easy guitar keys: key of D, key of E, key of F, key of G, key of A, key of C.
Tap any chord for its diagram, other voicings, and the notes inside it.
In the key of Bb, The Wild Rover uses 3 chords: Bb, Eb and F7. The chords sit over the words in the chart above, and tapping a chord name under Chords in This Song opens its diagram.
This chart is in the key of Bb. The other easy guitar keys for it are the key of D, key of E, key of F, key of G, key of A, key of C, each with the whole song rewritten. Pick the key whose chords you know, or the one that sits best for the singers: all twelve are one tap away at the top of the chart, with capo options for keeping the open shapes.
Right after "And it's no, nay, never": the whole room claps four times in the gap, then sings "no, nay, never, no more". On guitar you hold the A7 through the claps, or stop strumming and clap too, and come back in on the D at "no, nay, never". Some rooms bang the table instead; the count is the same.
Nobody knows. The words were being sold on printed broadsides before 1829, and the folk scholar Brian Peters has traced the song back to a seventeenth-century English broadside by Thomas Lanfiere. The Dubliners made the version everyone knows famous in 1964, but they did not write it. Anonymous words that old and a traditional tune are public domain everywhere; only particular recordings and arrangements are protected.
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