Origins: Wearin' o' the Green

Subject: RE: Origins: Wearin' o' the Green
From: Malcolm Douglas
Date: 01 Nov 08 - 12:02 PM

Michael Joseph Barry, The Songs of Ireland (1845) can be seen at Google Books:

http://books.google.co.uk/books?hl=en&id=j3cWAAAAYAAJ

The verses ascribed to Curran are on pages 217-219. Mick Bracken posted some of them earlier in this thread (nine years ago), though without any source information.

Subject: RE: Origins: Wearin' o' the Green
From: Lighter
Date: 01 Nov 08 - 02:16 PM

While perhaps recognizable as a relative of "The Wearing of the Green," Oswald's "Tulip" doesn't sound to me like anything that could reasonably be called a "version" of it. That's both surprising and disappointing, as Oswald's melody is sometimes referred to as the "earliest printing" of the standard tune.

"X: 3" from 1841 is a different melody entirely.

"X: 2" is very close to the modern tune, but it has a few noticeable points of difference. Perhaps Boucicault himself popularized the modern melody, just as he rewrote the words?

Subject: RE: Origins: Wearin' o' the Green
From: GUEST,big tim
Date: 02 Nov 08 - 05:18 AM

Thanks for the link Malcolm. Very interesting to also note that on page 182 of Barry's book there is a song called 'Up for the Green - a song of the United Irishmen A.D. 1796' and the air given as 'Wearing of the Green'!

Subject: RE: Origins: Wearin' o' the Green
From: GUEST
Date: 12 Feb 21 - 09:34 PM

I have heard there is a 'parody' version, something about: "O my mother she was orange and my father he was green" etc.
Does anybody have those words?

Subject: RE: Origins: Wearin' o' the Green
From: Lighter
Date: 13 Feb 21 - 10:25 AM

Precisely the first part of "The Wearing of the Green" is used for the song "Benny Havens Oh!" composed and sung at West Point by Arnold O'Brien before 1842.

https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015096411270&view=1up&seq=6

The entire tune seems to have been published (quite recognizably) as "To Ballance a Straw" in 1747.

The tune, the "Wearing of the Green" title, and the anonymous words of the broadside posted by Gargoyle appeared in The Citizen; or Dublin Monthly Magazine in Jan., 1841 (Vol. III, p. 65). The tune, nearly identical to the current version, has been slightly modified by the editor on the basis of various oral-traditional versions;

"We cannot trace, from remembrance, the ballad which was sung with it. Scraps here and there we can recollect....Some make 'Buonoparte' [sic] the hero of the song - but 'tis oftener, and we think more truly 'Napper Tandy' - for he was an Irishman - and although he has not left behind him a pure reputation for patriotism, yet, doubtless, he was once, in his day, admired and trusted by the people. Here is one version of four of the lines:

      I met with Buonoparte, he took me by the hand,
      Saying 'how is old Ireland and how does she stand,'
      "'Tis the most distressed country that ever I have seen,
      They are hanging men and WOMEN for the wearing of the green."

"Others will have them thus:--

      I met with Napper Tandy, he took me by the hand,
      Saying, 'how is old Ireland, my own dear native land?'
      "'Tis the most distressed country that ever yet was seen,
      They are hanging men and WOMEN there for wearing of the green."'


The anonymous editor (who takes credit for the broadside lyrics) associates the air with a song sung by Sarah Curran (1782-1808), fiancee of Robert Emmet, which he identifies as "Green on the Cape." (He appears to have heard her himself.)

Those lyrics are here, from an American broadside of 1829-34:

https://www.americanantiquarian.org/thomasballads/items/show/51

Subject: RE: Origins: Wearin' o' the Green
From: Lighter
Date: 13 Feb 21 - 11:08 AM

Loudon [Tenn.] Free Press (Apr. 15, 1853), p. 5:

Up stips Gineral Bonapart, and tuck me be the hand.
How duz ould Ireland, and how duz it stand?
'Tis a poor distressed country as ever yet was seen,
For they're hanging men and wimmin for the wearing of the green.

(Sung by an Irish chambermaid.)


New York Irish American (Apr. 25, 1863), p. 2:

"ARRIVAL OF GEN. SHIELDS IN SAN FRANCISCO, CAL. ...
The band then played 'Hail Columbia,' 'The Wearing of the Green,' 'The Last Rose of Summer,' and several other airs."

Subject: RE: Origins: Wearin' o' the Green
From: Thompson
Date: 15 Feb 21 - 07:23 AM

The Irish and French revolutionaries of the 1790s were indeed in close contact, and in the genocidal aftermath of the 1798 Rising, many United Irishmen migrated to France - either to Paris, or to the other areas where the Wild Geese had arrived during the preceding 200 years. Here they continued to work for Irish independence and for a country where no division would be made between people of different religions.

The meaning of "the wearing of the green" is that supporters of the United Irishmen wore a green ribbon or a green cockade (three concentric circles of pleated ribbons), or sometimes a sprig of green leaves, to signify their loyalty. Anyone wearing such a symbol was likely to find him- or herself summarily hanged after the Rising; for instance I was told by a historian that some 3,000 people were hanged at the barracks that is now Collins Barracks and part of the National Museum; the Liffey, a tidal river, did not then have quays holding it in, and the bodies were left on the green that was subsequently known as Croppies' Acre, where the next tide carried them away and out to sea.

Subject: RE: Origins: Wearin' o' the Green
From: Thompson
Date: 15 Feb 21 - 07:28 AM

Incidentally, if you're interested in reading a contemporary report from one village of the brutality that followed the 1798 Rising, take a look at The Leadbeater Papers: The Annals of Ballitore, Volume 1 in Google Books - "search inside" for the word fencibles to get to the part where she is describing the reprisals. Better still, buy the book, it's excellent.