Tune Req: Take It Down From the Mast

Subject: Tune Req: Take It Down From the Mast
From: IrishMike
Date: 17 Jun 08 - 02:30 PM

Hi Everybody,

I'm looking for the melodyline of the Irish song Take it down from the mast.
It would be nice if someone could help me.

Many greetings Mike

Subject: RE: Tune Req: Take It Down From the Mast
From: GUEST,Shaneo
Date: 17 Jun 08 - 02:52 PM

No offence but this is an anti Irish song [republic that is] of all the ballad sessions I've attended over the years I've never heard it played, not even The Wolfe Tones play it.
It may not have started out as anti Irish but that's how I hear it.

Sorry if that put you off a bit.

Subject: RE: Tune Req: Take It Down From the Mast
From: PoppaGator
Date: 17 Jun 08 - 03:15 PM

Google yielded 230 results for ["Take it Down from the Mast" + lyrics]. Here's a link to the first listing:

http://www.triskelle.eu/lyrics/takeitdownfromthemast.php?index=080.010.080

I don't see it as "anti-Irish," but rather anti-Free-State/pro-Republic (in Irish Civil War terms), and more specifically, in support of an all-inclusive Ireland incorporating Protestants as well as Catholics and encompassing the entire island.

Subject: RE: Tune Req: Take It Down From the Mast
From: Gulliver
Date: 17 Jun 08 - 03:25 PM

I've often heard it sung at sessions frequented by Provisional Sinn Féin members. The words are available all over the web--here's a BBC site with some info and lyrics: BBC

Don

Subject: RE: Tune Req: Take It Down From the Mast
From: GUEST,Shaneo
Date: 17 Jun 08 - 03:43 PM

That song has caused more trouble than it's worth, to slag off one side over the other about the civil war is asking for trouble, and I have seen it many times, whether it be a fundraiser for republicans or the other side of republicanism.
The first line of the song says it all, I can't even bring myself to type it here, the song nearly makes me sick.

Subject: RE: Tune Req: Take It Down From the Mast
From: GUEST
Date: 17 Jun 08 - 03:53 PM

It's on an LP called "The Battering Ram" Rounder 4002. Side 1 Track 1. You can buy the CD here http://www.rounder.com/index.php?catalog_id=3444&id=album.php&musicalGroupId=1205

Subject: RE: Tune Req: Take It Down From the Mast
From: PoppaGator
Date: 17 Jun 08 - 03:56 PM

The more I think about it, the more I come to agree with Shaneo.

Although not necessarily "anti-Irish," the song definitely expresses hatred on the part of some Irish for other Irish ~ hardly an attitude to be memorialized and encouraged.

Subject: RE: Tune Req: Take It Down From the Mast
From: Wolfgang
Date: 17 Jun 08 - 04:01 PM

Dubliners singing it in YouTube

Wolfgang

Subject: RE: Tune Req: Take It Down From the Mast
From: Gulliver
Date: 17 Jun 08 - 06:13 PM

It was written by Dominic Behan, whose Republican beliefs were influenced by the killing of 77 anti-Treaty Republicans by the Free State forces in 1922/23. These executions engendered a hatred on the anti-Treaty side that lasted for generations. Even today the differences between Fianna Fáil (anti-Treaty in the 20s) and Fine Gael (pro-Treaty) go back to their differing political viewpoints in the 20s.

Behan wrote a number of other songs that showed his hatred of the "Free State" forces of that time, which then extended to De Valera's government, as Dev interned IRA members during WW2 and executed a few of them.

It's just one of many, many Irish political songs...

Don

Subject: RE: Tune Req: Take It Down From the Mast
From: Barry Finn
Date: 17 Jun 08 - 06:33 PM

Don't buy it from Rounder. They haven't paid any Royalities to Shay Walker or any other members of the Battering Ram. They didn't even tell them it was rereleased.

Barry