"The Real McCoy"

[Jonathan Lighter]

OED records this spelling only from 1898.

HDAS II tells more than anyone could possibly want to know about this
phrase. One of those things is a reference to a purported "Irish ballad"
about a husband bested by his violent wife.

I called attention to a brief 1965 allusion to a 19th C. broadside that
seemed to fill the bill - though in the form "Mackay." AFAIK the song has
never been brought to the attention of lexicographers.

It is included in the collection of the Irish folklorist P. W. Joyce (1827
-1914) at

http://www.itma.ie/joyce/scrapbooks/ballad-sheet-scrapbooks

Look in Vol. II.

Or read it here instead. I've silently corrected one or two egregious
typos, others are sic. Stanzas 3 and 4 are each defective by one line:



THE REAL M'COY



You lads and you lasses draw near,

I am going for to sing you a song,

And if you attention pay

I won’t detain you long;

To my grief I married a wife,

My fortune for to try –

And the first of my misfortune

Was to marry one Kitty M'Coy.



CHORUS--

Ri tiddy tal lal de la ra lee



I was scarcely one week married,

When my wife put me in a fright

And when I came home to my break’t

She was lying stupidly drunk;

Says I you are a noted rogue

Says she will you ask my eye,

Says I you are a drunking maid

For I’m the real M’Coy.



My wife can drink like a fish in the sea

She can also curse and swear

She throws me like a dog in the corner

The britches for to wear;

She has me as tamed as a pig in a sty

And I dare not say a word

For fear of the real M’Coy.



One night as me & my wife went out,

She took the rambling rout

And with my Sunday clothes

She marched them up the spout;

For the police she loudly cried

And they marched me off to quod

For she was the real M’Coy.



When I came out of prison

Half starved I staggered home

I scarce had my hand on the latch

When she walloped me with a broom

The landlady seized me by the neck

With her fist she blackened my eye

And says she I’ll let you know

That I am the real M’Coy.



It was in a few days after

My wide shewed me a great change

Looking so ill I thought she was dead

I sent for a medical skill

She always grew worse and worse

Till the very next day she died

And when buried I proudly said

There lies the real M’Coy.



    Haly, Printer South Main Street, Cork.

The Bodleian has additional, perhaps better, copies, but the links all seem
to be broken. One however, printed by "P. Brereton, Printer, 1, Lr,
Exchange, St, Dublin" is dated to "c.1867."

JL
-- 
"If the truth is half as bad as I think it is, you can't handle the truth."

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