Whilst moving the Orange Songbook to a new address I have added some songs as well as the following text as it answers very well the hate e.mail that I receive from time to time in regard to the collection. Enjoy....
Here is the new address:
http://mysite.verizon.net/cbladey/osong/ooooo.html
to the orange songbook
Put one of the songs in your play list today! Read on!

" To learn how much is mutually to
be loved, that we may love it; how much mutually is to be disliked, that we may forgive it. -
C.G. Duffy, wrote these lines in 1845. They should ring true for anyone who disputes the ethics of collecting the songs of all traditions
Today it is the exception rather than the rule to find musicians, cds, even record bins in the stores censoring perfectly good well written
treasures of songs, melodies and ballads just because they find themselves in disagreement with the point of view. There are all kinds of
reasons for finding a way to keep from destroying or burying the treasures of human creativity. I think Duffy makes some great points below
For my purposes in my own collection here I find myself with limited time and energy and space. My task here is not to provide an entire
collection of all the songs of the island of Ireland but to make up for past imbalances.
" In arranging the ballads we have rather contrasted
than classified them.
They are placed neither in order of time
nor in distinct classes ; but rather with a view
to suggest variety and comparison ; and to afford
the greatest amount of enjoyment. If our bardic
and our middle-age minstrelsy had become familiar
to the country, in the originals, or in
adequate translations, the time for classification
would have arrived. But we must collect before
we discriminate, and we are still in the
first stage. "When all our stores are gathered
and "—when we can read the native
songs on the Danish raids, on the English
Invasion, on the Pale, on the Reformation, on
the Penal Laws, .on the Jacobite struggles, and
compare with them the Scandinavian skalds, the
poetry and literature, (native or imported,)
which flourished inside the Pale, the songs that
were sung in the Cromwellian bawns, in the
mansions of the Orange squirearchy and in the
farm-houses of the Orange yeomanry, we will
have insights into the heart of History which a
tower-full of state papers would not afford.
Then the classification of our native poetry will
become a work of science.
…We need not apologise for making this not a
party or sectarian, but strictly a national collection. "
Whatever could illustrate the character,
passions, or opinions of any class of Irishmen,
that we gladly adopted. Our duty is to know
each other. To learn how much is mutually to
be loved, that we may love it; how much mutually is
to be disliked, that we may forgive it.
Kvrrythiog contributing to this end ought to be
regarded as precious. Some of the Ulster ballads,
of a restricted and provincial spirit, having
less in common with Ireland than with Scotland ;
two or three Orange ballads, altogether
ferocious or foreign in their tendencies, (preaching
murder, or deifying an Alien,) will be no less
valuable to the patriot or the poet on this account.
They echo faithfully the sentiments of a
strong, vehement, and indomitable body of Irishmen,
who may come to battle for their country
better than ever they battled for their prejudices
or their bigotries. At all events, to know what
they love and believe is a precious knowledge.
Every household in Scotland, from the peasant-
farmer's upwards, as Lockhart proudly assures
us, has its copy of Burns, lying side by side
with the family bible. The young men, nurtured
upon this strong food, go forth to contend
with the world; and in every kingdom of
the earth they are to be found, filling posts of
trust and honour, trustfully and honourably. In
Germany every boy—student, apprentice, or
peasant—learns the ballads of Schiller and
Goethe with his first catechism; and from boyhood
to old age they furnish a feast that never
(unreadable) that grows stronger with
use. In the Northern countries the national skalds,
recounting the early triumphs of the Sea-kings (
in which their encounters with the Irish Princes
form a large and to us unspeakably interesting
portion) are still sung or circulated habitually as
a section of their permanent literature. In Ar-
ragon and Castile the chronicles of the Cid, and
the ballads of their long and heroic struggles
against the Moor, still feud that noble pride of
race, which lifts the Spanish people above the
meaner vices, and make them in spirit and conduct
a nation of gentlemen.
It would be hasty and presumptuous to assume
that our native ballads will ever exercise
a corresponding influence. But surely it is
greatly to be desired that they should. A people
without native poetry, are naked to a multitude
of evil influence?. Not only do they want the true
nursing mother of patriotism and virtue, but their
first impressions of literature—the impressions
that pursue us through life like our shadows—are
liable to be caught from a foreign, a prejudiced,
or a poisonous source. A source perilous to their
public or their personal virtue."
-The Ballad Poetry of Ireland, Ed: C.G. Duffy, 1845.