Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem - The Wild Colonial Boy

My mom used to sing this song when I was little.

I like Dr. Hook's version of this song.

I love this song!!! its so cool when they start singing it in The Quiet Man... and this version is amazing...

Brilliant song...The Quiet Man is my fav film and when this song is played its my favourite part! :)

Love the Clancy's + Tommy!!

clssic i used to ask my da to sing this and then i'd cry!! nothing to do with his singing though!!

In Australia the name is often Jack Doolan Whether the song is about an actual bushranger is not clear. Bold Jack Donahue was a real bushranger who died in 1830. However the wild colonial boy is set in the gold rush days of the 1860s. No bush ranger from that era with a similar name is known.

No Australian version would refer to praries or mocking birds. We don't have these. For these Americanisms they should be clapped in irons and sent to Botany Bay!

Otherwise a nice version.

Correction. There was a bushranger called John Doolan, born in Castlemaine, Victoria, Australia, who was active in 1871-2 at the age of 15 or 16. Otherwise he was not like "the wild colonail boy", he did not die in a shoot out.  The Beechworth mail was robbed, but by Harry Power. Song seems to be a combination of different bushrangers and events,including Jack Donahue, who did die in a shoot-out,. Song is first noted in Australia in 1880, are the Irish versions later?

You shouldnt talk about you great grandaddy like that :)

it's a folk song, and there are many different versions of it (both Australian and Irish) - nobody is sure exactly who it was originally written about - it could have been completely fabricated.

it doesn't matter, there were thousands of Jack Duggans in Australia during the 1800s.

One of my earliest memories is of this being sung and acted at my school's fair (North East Victoria, 1988).