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The Auld Triangle (aka Ould Triangle or Old Triangle)
Brendan Behan

Notes: This song was featured in Brendan Behan's play, "The Quare Fella," first produced in 1954. The sound of the triangle summoned prisoners to their meals in Mountjoy Prison in Dublin, the setting of the song. The walls of the prison border the Royal Canal, one of two canals in Dublin that join the River Liffey. 

Behan wrote this song while serving a prison sentence for his activities in the I.R.A.

A web site about Brendan Behan

sheet music

Oh! a hungry feeling, it came o'er me stealing
And the mice they were squealing in my prison cell--

Chorus:
 And the ould triangle, It went jingle jangle
All along the banks of the Royal Canal.

Now the screw was peeping while the lag was sleeping
And he was dreaming of his gal, Sal,

Chorus

And to begin the morning, the warders bawling
"Ah, get up you bowsey and clean out your cell!"

Chorus

Now in the female prison there are seventeen women
And it's among those women I would like to dwell;

Chorus

Now the wind was rising and the sun declining
While I lay there pining in my prison cell.

Chorus

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