Good old Irish protest song, me thinks.
irish music
vietnam
social weevils
celtic music
Story behind the song
After the landlord's agent, probably one of the most hated persons in Ireland was the recruiting sergeant. The Irish peasant, destitute of worldly possessions and ground down by poverty, was forced of necessity to fight for a power which he despised. The balladmaker, being aware of this, was not slow to express his feelings in some of his most vicious ballads, always with a sarcastic edge. The earlier ballads such as this one, Mrs McGrath, The Kerry Recruit and Johnny I Hardly Knew Ye, set the tone for the later anti-recruiting songs such as Sergeant William Bailey and The Tipperary Recruiting Sergeant, written during the 1914-18 war, when England was attempting to enforce conscription in Ireland. The sarcasm of the song cannot hide the terrible conditions under which soldiers were forced to serve after they had accepted the shilling, and Arthur's words "I would not be proud of your clothes ...", are only too true, when one considers that twenty-five lashes with the cat-o'-nine-tails was the minimum punishment and a staggering 1500, the legal maximum. All this for eightpence a day. The song was collected in Limerick by P.W. Joyce about 1840. On account of its phraseology, he was disposed to think that it came from Donegal. (Frank Harte, notes 'Andy Irvine & Paul Brady')
Lyrics
Arthur McBride
I had a first cousin called Arthur McBride,
He and I took a stroll down by the seaside,
A-seeking good fortune and what might betide,
It being on Christmas morning.
And then after resting we both took a tramp,
We met Seargent Pepper and Corporal Cramp,
Besides the wee drummer who beat up for camp,
With hi rowdy dow-dow in the morning.
He says my good fellows, if you will enlist,
A Guinea you quickly shall have in your fist,
Besides a crown for to kick up the dust,
And drink the king's health in the morning.
Had we been such fools as to take the advance,
The wee bitter morning we had run to chance,
For you'd think it no scruple to send us to France,
Where we would be killed in the morning.
He says My young fellows, if I hear but one word,
I instantly now will out with my sword,
And into your bodies as strength will afford,
So now, my gay devils take warning.
But Arthur and I we took in the odds,
We gave them no chance to lunge out their swords,
Our whacking shillelaghs came over their heads,
And paid them right smart in the morning.
As for the wee drummer, we rifled his pouch,
And we made a football of his rowdy dow-dow,
And into the ocean to rock and to row,
And bade him a tedious retuning.
As for the old rapier that hung by his side,
We flung it as far as we could in the tide,
To the devil I bid you, says Arthur McBride,
To temper your steel in the morning.