I’ll Tell Me Ma is about the most Irish thing I can think of. Delivered by a Kelly family is just spiking the football, or maybe hammerin’ the sliotar home, or something:

I’ll Tell Me Ma is one of those things that’s so old and ubiquitous that it’s listed as traditional. All sorts of people have adopted it, and it’s common to change the lyrics to accommodate whatever locale you’re in. Most references to it use Belfast. The lyrics expand and contract a bit. It’s an easy singsong doggerel to improvise in, if you have a mind. The important part is the chorus:

I’ll tell me ma when I come home
the boys won’t leave the girls alone
they pull me hair and stole my comb
well that’s alright till I come home
She is handsome she is pretty
she’s the belle of Belfast city
she’s a courtin’ one two three
please won’t you tell me who is (s)he

It’s a good song to jump rope to, and many do, or did, anyway. There was a children’s game that went with it, too. Everyone stands in a circle, with one girl in the center. They sing a verse, and repeat the chorus, and at the “who is (s)he?”, the child in the center points out another to take their place, and the next verse is sung. Charming.

Of course the definitive version of the song is Van Morrison with the Chieftains, because of course it is. There are fewer cute bairns in the screencap of the Chieftains video, so we opened with the Kellys.

When I was a little kid, my older sister and her friends knew all sorts of singing and dancing things like this one. They’d skip rope and clap hands and dance in a circle in the schoolyard at recess. I wonder, is that all gone now? What’s the modern version? Do the girls go directly from diapers to a stripper pole and twerking? Do Maries still have weddings? And has anyone made Van Morrison smile since 1987?