Here’s a song I was reminded of, in a roundabout way, by performing “On Ilkley Moor ‘Baht ‘At” to the tune of The House Of The Rising Sun last weekend at the Wolverley Summer Of Love festival.

And, just like The House Of The Rising Sun, it’s a song in which a gambler laments his ruined finances, moans about his addictions, and generally shuns company. What a cheery soul he is.

The song has a fabulous tune, and one that can sit quite happily on one chord for a lot of the time.

This version comes from the John Jacob Niles collection “Ballads, Love Songs and Tragic Legends from the Southern Appalachian Mountains” published by Schirmer & Co. He collected it in Jefferson County, Kentucky, and says of it:

Verses collected from workmen engaged by my father between the years of 1910 and 1917. The tune is well known throughout the United States. I am not prepared to say whether it was first sung as a sacred song or as a secular folk-song, like the one given above. “Hallelujah, Thine the Glory” is one of the sacred versions, and “Hallelujah, I’m a Hobo” is a well-known secular version[...]

I’m not entirely sure that the narrator of this version is celebrating his hobo status. I’ve recorded this quite simply - acoustic guitar and Maccann duet concertina with a double tracked vocal in octaves.

Download Jack O’ Diamonds (2.6 MB)

Jack o’ Diamonds, Jack o’ Diamonds, I know you of old
You’ve robbed my poor pockets of silver and gold.
My woman is hungry, my children are too
My troubles, Jack o’ Diamonds, were all caused by you

Oh whisky and brandy are no friend to my kind
They shattered my liver and poisoned my mind*
My daddy drunk whisky, my daddy drunk ale
They whopped him with the rawhide and sometimes with a flail

I’ll build me a cabin on yon mountain high
Where the wild birds will cheer me and they fly on by
Go away now young ladies, and let me alone
Cause you know I’m just a poor boy and a long way from home

Jack o’ Diamonds, Jack o’ Diamonds, I know you of old
You’ve robbed my poor pockets of silver and gold
Oh I’ve gambled and gambled from sundown till morn
And I’ve got no more money than the day I was born

* Niles has “Hit bothered my poor daddy and troubled my mind”