A horse of a different colour
Jim Carroll

From Georges- Denis Zimmermann,s Songs of Irish Rebellion
Allen Figgis, Dublin - 1967

TEXT B: Broadside in Cambridge University Library; «

The Sporting Old Grey Mare».

All you young men both great and small take counsel and be wise,
Attention pay to what I say, my lectures don’t despise,
Let patience guide you on every side, of traitors now beware,
There is none but men that’s sound within can ride my Old Grey Mare.

Granuia’s sons great wonder done, they set olid Ireland free,
Joshua and Diavid’s sons, likewise M.cAbee,
Constant the Great will ever shine and be our standard rear,
There’s none but men chat’s sound within can ride my Old Grey Mare.

Buonaparte on her did sitant, he rode full fast, it’s true,
At Moscow plain she got lame and was beat at Waterloo,
She sailed o’er to' the Shamrock shore where Dan he did her care,
The very next chase, she won the race, my sporting Old Grey Mare.

In Erin’s Isle, when fortune smiled, there lived Brian Borue,
Phelan O’Neil, Carlinton Miles, Sarsfieild and Munroe;
Bold
Roderick you know, not long ago, ranged Wexford aod Kildare,
Tandy, Sheares and other peers, they rode on my Grey Mare.

In mutual love, as pure as a dove, when we do each other greet,
Beware of scrapes., broils and spars, or quarrels when you meet,
Don’t probe old sores, nor conquer Job, let patience guide you there,
Lest in a fog that you might bog and drown my Old Grey Mare.
[cankered jobs]

These three hundred years, as it appears, no steady statesman did her ride,
’Til Providence had gave due sense and reared the people’s guide,
Brave noble Dan, ,he now rides on, Erin’s right’s his only care,
The Parliament for to be sent -back on my Old Grey Mare.

VARIANTS: A shorter version of Text A is in a garland printed by Goggin, Limerick. Another garland printed by Grace, Dublin, has «The Adven¬tures of ithe Grey Mare, or the Answer to the Grey Hor.se»; both are in the British Museum. A broadside printed by Haly, Cork, gives a variant with the line:

At the Curragh of Kildare she was crossed1 by Dooley there ...
(cif. song 14.)
TUNE: Texts A and B are in fact two distinct songs with a similar theme, suggesting different tunes. Colm O Lochlainn gives a variant of Joyce (19-09) No. 3/03 with a more recent version of Text B.
NOTE: O’Donovan Rossa, who remembered the first lines of Text A learnt in his chidhood, was certain that the wonderful horse meant Ireland (Rossa’s Recollections, p. 40), but this does not stand the reading of the whole song. The different texts would rather evoke confused ideas of glory, victory, perhaps justice or liberty. In fact, the song has probably no emblematic meaning.
Text B, sit. 4. Phelim O’Neill was a rebel leader executed in 1653; Rode¬rick is probably Rory O’More, a rebel chieftain killed in 1578; James Napper Tandy, John and Henry Sheares were leaders of the United Irishmen.