‘The Rats’ by Stump
A few words on ‘The Rats’ by Stump taking in: Rob McKahey, Kaught at the Karpark, ‘The Waterford Boys’, The Dubliners, Stephen Street, Ron Kavana and ‘Charlton Heston’.
“For fun and diversion we have met together
I tell you from Cork City hither we came
We crossed the big ocean in dark stormy weather
Our pockets were light and our hearts were the same”
‘The Rats’ by Stump
Paul McDermott and Rob McKahey at Kaught at the Karpark. Photograph by Judith.
Kaught at the Karpark took place on Culture Night in Cork (19 September, 2025). The gig was held on the fourth floor of North Main Street car park and featured performances from Big Boy Foolish, Stump’s Rob McKahey, Sean and Livvy O’Hagan and …And NUN Came Back. In advance of Culture Night I spoke to Ricky Dineen, Sean O’Hagan, Pretty Happy’s Arann Blake and Rob McKahey for the Irish Examiner. That feature can be read here.
It was an excellent night, a really unusual place for a gig but it totally worked. It was lovely being up high and seeing the city lights all round and an illuminated Shandon off in the distance.
The sound was really good, there was a lot of chatter for the quieter sets but sure that’ll always happen at a free event - it didn’t spoil it though. There was a lot of goodwill and good energy.
Rob McKahey sat on a chair holding his guitar and played a few tunes. Highlights for me were: ‘Scutting’, his evocation to his youth in Cork (“I’ve had my fill of scutting and blaggarding, me mother said, for jaysus sake cop on”), and a raw stripped down version of Stump’s ‘Boggy Home’. Sean O’Hagan turned to me and said, “Rob plays the guitar like only a drummer can, I mean that in the best possible way, he makes it sound like a bodhrán.” I knew exactly what Sean meant.
Rob finished with Stump’s ‘The Rats’.
Except it’s not really Stump’s.
And it’s also not really ‘The Rats’…
I love ‘The Rats’ by Stump. I used it at the very start of Lights, Camel, Action - the story of Stump, my documentary about the band.
I used the first few lines from the song, Rob sings of coming from Cork and crossing a big ocean. It set up my narrative of Mick and Rob emigrating to London perfectly. A lot of listeners to the documentary didn’t realise that it was Rob singing and they also didn’t know that the song is tucked away as an extra track on the 12” of ‘Charlton Heston”.
‘The Rats’ is Rob’s version of an old trad tune called ‘The Waterford Boys’ sometimes it’s referred to as ‘Wrestling with Rats’. It dates from the mid-1800s and the lyrics are by Harry Clifton, Rob simply changed Waterford to Cork.
The best known version of ‘The Waterford Boys’ is by The Dubliners, it appeared on their 1983 album, Prodigal Sons. But it’s been covered by countless musicians over the years.
But how did an Irish traditional tune, with simple accompaniment of banjo and bodhrán end up on the ‘Charlton Heston’ 12”?
“There’s a real story behind that” says Rob.
“We were recording demos in Camden and the engineer happened to be Stephen Street, before he became more well known. We stopped for lunch for an hour and I walked out and I met a good friend of mine from Cork, the musician, Ron Kavana, with his banjo.”
“Ron was from Fermoy and he’s actually dead now, but Ron had played with everybody. He was a multi-instrumentalist.”
“I said, have you got half an hour? He said, why boy, what do you want? I said, look, I’ve got a studio here and I’ve got an hour, would you help me to whack down this song. So, in half an hour, we recorded ‘The Rats’ with Ron on the banjo and I put the bodhrán down later.”
“Stephen was, of course, completely fucking perplexed, as you can imagine, with the circumstances. I said goodbye to Ron and later that night we met and had a couple of pints. But he was never credited by Chrysalis, which really made me angry, they almost willfully didn’t credit him. Mick and the lads were like, for fuck’s sake, Rob, what are you doing going behind our backs?”
“And I said, look, I had half an hour to spare. I whacked it down for myself. Chrysalis were hardly going to be listening to it. And I thought, if they did listen to it, they’re hardly going to want me singing a fucking silly song.”
“We forgot about it, and it just so happened that Chrysalis ended up listening to the tapes because it was with the rest of the demos. And they decided then to put ‘The Rats’ as a B-Side on the 12” of ‘Charlton Heston’. And then a few BBC DJs played ‘The Rats’ and not ‘Charlton Heston’. So there’s a bit of a history behind ‘The Rats’.”
Ron Kavana passed away in May 2024. Donal O’Keefe wrote a lovely piece in the Echo about him. It can be read here.