Hi…
Ok really hope that you ca help me.
I have to do a big Schoolwork g sorry don´t have the word for Seminararbeit in English.
Ok I´m surching for Songs about the Rebellion in Irish History?
And a further question is why are so many Songs about REbellion in Irish Music?
Ok so wide so good…
Thanks
Markus
Your second questions suggests that you have already found a lot of songs about rebellions in Ireland, so there isn’t much point in directing you to more.
Why are there so many songs about rebellion? There are so many songs about everything and rebellion is just one of them. Also, there have been a few rebellions, all with bad results. The rebels get credit for trying against impossible odds. There is a lot of song composing and singing that goes on in Ireland.
Good luck with your school project. If you have any more specific questions, ask away.
Tony
ähm… no… i don´t found much songs about rebellion … but my teachers said that there are tons of them…
so …please give me name of songs of rebellion
mark
The Wind that Shakes the Barley is a favourite of mine. The Foggy Dew, Bold Fenian Men, and Skibbereen are also particularly poignant rebel songs, in my opinion. I think that the Irish musical tradition was very important to them, and songs convey ideas and feelings very effectively. A lot of these songs made me cry the first time I heard them, which is something a political pamphlet could never do.
You’d probably do better asking this question at the Mudcat](http://www.mudcat.org/threads.cfm%3EMudcat) café. It’s a folksong site and has quite a few Irish members. It also has several German members, so I suggest that you mention the fact that you are a German speaker in your post, to make subsequent communication easier for you. You can post there as a guest, but membership is free and open, so it would be easier for people to communicate with you by Personal Message if you register.
The main problem is that there are so many songs, and so much knowledge among Mudcat members (several of them are academics and extremely knowledgeable), that it becomes a vast topic and difficult to keep manageable for the purposes of a college essay (which is the most appropriate translation I can suggest for Seminararbeit). I suggest that you indicate roughly how long your essay has to be in order to give people an idea of how much detail they might give in their replies.
Alles Gute,
Roger (verkommener Germanist)
The Clancy Brothers & Tommy Makem recorded a LOT of Irish Rebel songs. Their first album, “The Rising of the Moon”, consisted entirely of rebel songs. It has been released on CD in the last couple years. You can find it at www.traditionrecords.com You can also find some rebel songs in “The Clancy Brothers & Tommy Makem Songbook.” You could probably find that at Amazon.com
William Cole’s book “Folksongs of England, Ireland, Scotland, and Wales” has 9 Irish rebel songs in it. It had a new printing last year; you might be able to get it from Amazon.com as well.
Also, both the Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem have web sites. You could find a lot of rebel songs listed in their discographies.
Here are some of the rebel songs I know: Eamon a Chnoic, O’Donnel Abu, Let Erin Remember the Days of Old, Kevin Barry, Roddy McCorley,
Kelly the Boy from Killan, The Wearin’ o’ the Green, Boulavogue, God Bless England.
How about “Arthur McBride”:
http://www.acronet.net/~robokopp/eire/ioncehad.htm
I’ve never been sure if its Irish or Scottish, but suspect the latter from
the language. O, Ignorance is not bliss!
Best Wishes,
I think Arthur McBride is really more a song about the recruiting practices of the English Army than about rebellion. It touches on the fact that if you accepted the recruiter’s advance (his “shilling”) you were considered to have volunteered and you could be forced to uphold the bargain, that is: you were carried off to the barracks. (Compare the lines about “if we took your advance…”). Also, the advance paid to recruits was offen eaten up by charges for uniform, gear, and spurious items designed to enrich the officers and recruiters.
As for songs of rebellion, there are of course old ones and new ones. I quite like one that I think is rather obscure, but I wouldn’t know if it were well-known in Ireland. I have it off an obscure Eddie & Finbar Furey recored from the Seventies, and I like to sing it at the sessions when we get too many O’Carolan requests. The Fureys say in the liner notes that it was written by a band called Men of No Property and that the record company refused to publish the song brecause of its contents. I’ve never heard of the group (and don’t even know if I remember the name correctly). The song anyway is set to an old Scottish air, and here are the words. Crossmaglen is in Armagh, near the border between N.I. and the Republic and it is renowned/notorious for its freedom fighters/rebels. McVerry was killed by British Army in November 1973 (aged 21, I think), and he is remembered in that area to this day. (Newry Town in Northern Ireland.)
While one can only abhor acts of violence on either side of a conflict, it’s an interesting question how one should feel about songs like this one. For one thing, it is a cut above the crude, simple songs of the Wolfe Tones.
As I came down from Newry Town
A band of yeomen saw
It was the First Battalion
Of the men from South Armagh
With me viddy-I-O and fol-diddy-do and a diddy-I-O-I-ay [or something to that effect, repeats after every verse]
Have you crossed the border, man
And did you travel afar?
Did you see some soldiers on the road
Were they in armoured cars?
I have crossed the border, man
And I have travelled afar
I saw the soldiers on the road
They were in two armoured cars
If this be true our leader said
We’ll lie in Speaker’s Sand
McVerry gave the order
with a Thompson in his hand
This band of freedom fighters
They numbered barely ten
They feared neither devil nor God
They came from Crossmaglen
The soldiers came around the bend
And into view at last
A yeoman pulled the plunger out
There was a mighty blast
We opened up along the stretch
With every gun we had
Before the ambush finished
Oh we knew we’d hit them bad
When politicians raise their hands
In acts of parrot’s say
They let us rot for fifty years
And it was the only way
As I came down from Newry Town
A band of yeomen saw
It was the First Battalion of
The men from South Armagh