The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #65119   Message #1071042
Posted By: GUEST,Philippa
12-Dec-03 - 01:39 PM
Thread Name: Lyr Req: The Orangeman's Hell
Subject: Have we settled the question?
Dinny McLaughlin of Buncrana, well-known as a fiddler and music teacher, does a recitation like that. He ends it "... if we all loved one another, We'd find that there's no hell at all"

The switching of Orange and Green roles is a common enough theme. Earlier this year I participated in a singing weekend organised by the Antrim Glens Traditions Group in memory of Archie McKeegan. The group has produced a recording of Archie's songs including "They have settled the question". I think the song was composed for a BBC Northern Ireland political satire. But I'm also thinking something about a revue in the Group Theatre (did the mention of Jimmy Young put that into my head??). Whatever, there was some wonder that Archie, who had led an old-fashioned life, had picked up this song somewhere and included it in his repertoire. I'm sure John Moulden could fill us in on the details.

You have to know the placenames, mostly areas of Belfast, to appreciate much of the song. For instance Glengall St. is the site of the Unionist Party headquarters:

Father Simmons is running a mission in the Shankill Road Methodist Hall
And they're running a dance in Glengall St. in aid of St. Vincent de Paul.


I haven't learned or written out the whole song yet, but I have bits of it. The song begins:

We have settled the question that rankles
How everyone crosses the Boyne
Hibernians live in the Shankill
And the Orangemen march to Ardoyne.


and goes on with verses and lines like

The women are out with their tables
In the streets all around Sandy Row
Scrubbing William the third
(?) from the gables
And they don't tell the Pope where to go.
...
And Gerry himself is delighted
To agree that the border should stay
To Hell with ould Eireann united,
Two parliaments means double pay.

...
the last lines are
We've all done or said something rash
Let us all join in and sing Kevin Barry
And a stave or two of the Sash.


tune as for "The Salt" (which is posted elsewhere in Mudcat); if you play it a bit faster it's a dance tune, but I can't recall the title for the instrumental version.