The Wearing of the Green
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"The Wearing of the Green" is an anonymously-penned Irish street ballad dating to 1798.[citation needed] The context of the song is the repression around the time of the Irish Rebellion of 1798.[citation needed] Wearing a shamrock in the "caubeen" (hat) was a sign of rebellion[citation needed] and green was the colour of the Society of the United Irishmen, a republican revolutionary organisation. During the period, displaying revolutionary insignia was made punishable by hanging.
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[edit] Lyric
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Many versions of the lyric exist.[1] The best-known version is by Dion Boucicault, adapted for his 1864 play Arragh na Pogue, or the Wicklow Wedding, set in County Wicklow during the 1798 rebellion.[2] In the second verse, Boucicault's version recounts an encounter between the singer and Napper Tandy, an Irish rebel leader exiled in France. In earlier versions of the ballad,[3][4] and the similar "Green Among the Cape",[5] it is Napoleon Bonaparte who asks how Ireland is.
Boucicault's addition of the third and last verse is in notable contrast to the middle verse, in advocating emigration to America rather staying in defiance. Boucicault himself fled to New York after leaving his wife for a young actress.
[edit] Recordings
Artists to have recorded the song include John McCormack (1904, again in 1912), Judy Garland (1940), The Wolfe Tones (1985), and Orthodox Celts (1997)
[edit] Related songs
- Each Dollar A Bullet by The Stiff Little Fingers makes reference to the song.
- "Monto" makes reference to the song.
- "The Orange and the Green", "The Rising of the Moon" and Sae Will We Yet (The Corries) are sung to the same tune.
- Another 1798 ballad also entitled "The Wearing of the Green" references the more famous song in its chorus:
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- Her faithful sons will ever sing "The Wearing of the Green"[6]
- Another 1790s ballad, Green Among the Cape, recounts a Belfast croppy's flight to Revolutionary France, with similar elements.[5]
- Sung to the same tune, "The wearing of the gray" is a lament for the fallen of the defeated Confederate States of America.
[edit] References
- ^ Blaisdell, Robert (2002). Irish Verse: An Anthology. Courier Dover. p. 84. ISBN 0486419142.
- ^ Vance, Norman (2002). Irish Literature Since 1800. Pearson Education. pp. 81–2. ISBN 0582494788.
- ^ "The Ballad Poetry of Ireland". The Living Age: p.107. 1845-10-18.
- ^ "Celtic Gossip". The Celt: p.94. April 1858.
- ^ a b Carpenter, Andrew (1998). Verse in English from Eighteenth-Century Ireland. Cork: Cork University Press. p. 573. ISBN 1859181031.
- ^ Hayes, Edward (1855). The Ballads of Ireland (4th ed.). New York: Fullarton. Vol I, p.271.
