The man that shot the dog - Michael Quinn

I was born a collie sheepdog with a white ring around my neck.

And for nine days my eyes were closed and I couldn’t see a speck

I had four lovely sisters, me being an only boy.

And for six weeks we played around, our mother’s pride and joy.

Till a gentleman from Mullaghbawn, to me a liking took,

He held me in his arms, then my masters hand he shook.

He took me to his motor car and started for the road,

So in less than twenty minutes I was in my new abode.

Well the first thing that my family did was to look for me a name

And they called me this and they called me that, but it sounded all the same.

Till my master he came round the house and this to me he said,

Consider now yourself a dog, henceforth your name is Ned

My one great distinction was I had a bunty tail,

And I wagged it for my master as we walked o’er hill and dale.

I rounded sheep and cattle and likewise the nanny goat

And my master often threatened that he’d cut my flaming throat

As the months went by and I grew up and learned to do my chore,

I growled at postmen, soldiers and likewise the man next doo.r

They loved to see me working and said it was a treat

And before we got into the car, I always washed my feet.

But sometimes dogs grow lonesome and I longed to have a pal,

So I met a great big labrador and she said her name was Sal

She said that she was lonesome too that she had a pedigree

I said ‘that ain’t a problem Sal, you just leave that to me.’

When her master overheard the news, and found out with her I slept,

We didn’t use protection, so out across the fence he leapt.

Saying ‘You bunty tailed black so-and-so from heyant in Conway Park

I’ll stop your gallivanting around my house after dark.’

With his gun up top his shoulder, a careful aim he took

And the noise that came out of it the valley round if shook.

It left me hide a burning as the bullet tore my head

And the woman says, ‘He shot that dog that belongs to Michael Ned’

When my master he did hear the shots and it happened just by luck

He stepped up to the gunman and he said ‘You Newry Knuck’

Then he let him have the one two three up in the ould phisogue

Saying ‘That’s the medicine I dish out to any man would shoot my dog’

Then he brought me to his kennel, and now on the straw I lie,

And I hear the neighbours asking ‘will poor Ned live or die?’

‘I’m getting great attention, for my body’s full of lead

And for the first time in my life I get my breakfast here in bed’

My master’s all forlorn, as he sits and strokes my head,

And he searches round my body for those little balls of lead.

He’s using awful language, as he sits there on the log

And these are some of the things he says about the man that shot the dog.

‘May scabs like crabs grow up in flabs round everything he feels,

And green snothers flow down to his toe and hacks come on his heels.

May his hair fall out may his woman pout, may his farts smell like a hog

And the divil’s luck fall on that Newry knuck, the man that shot the dog.

May piles surround his big backside, like strawberries on their stalk

And everytime he lifts his gun that his stomach it may baulk

And as he goes a hunting over heather, hill or bog

May the diorrhoea skite with all it’s might from the man that shot the dog’

Now to conclude and finish, I’m on all fours once more

And I feel that urge coming over me that did one day before,

And I’ll slip out some dark evening in mist or the thick fog,

And leave another half a dozen pups with the man that shot the dog.