In case some wonder what song is talked about, the lyrics are in Mudcat, but not yet harvested for the DT (hint!). If you follow that link you'll find also a note about the origin of the song.

James N. Healy, Ballads from the pubs of Ireland, has this note on the origin:

Irishmen often served in the British Army during Napeolonic [sic!] times and for long after. There seemed an opportunity to get away from poverty and to grips with adventure by serving abroad.
Not until the Boer war was a real effort made to resist recruiting, but many thousands of Irishmen fought in Europe during the war of 1914, despite agitation at home.
The male population became to some extent divided between the man in uniform and those who felt that 'England's weakness is Ireland's opportunity.'
One of the most attractive peculiarities of Irish balladmakers is to laugh at a situation when you can't do anything else about it; and so the following rather bawdy ballad became current in Cork during the first war. Eventually there were two versions - one by those involved in the war; and the other by those who sympathised with the volunteers. It is hard to say with whom some of the verses originated, because they could be a cynical reference either way, but I have marked them 's' (soldiers) and 'v' (volunteers) as a guide. There were many more verses as you can imagine: many unprintable.

Of the verses posted by Frank McGrath in the link above, Healy has marked verses 1, 2, 6, 7 as 's' and verses 4 and 5 as 'v'. If Healy is right, we have here a song and it's parody entwined in one.

We are grateful for your attempt to help, Alex, but no, that is not meant.

Wolfgang