Vol. 2 No. 1 - Modernist Magazines Project

BALLADS OF 1916
DONAGH MACDONAGH
There is every kind of song about 1916 except the song
of opposition—very occasionally the enemy is credited
with a verse or two but each line contains its own antidote
of sarcastic malice. For example :
In 1916 we got some hard blows
The dirty Sinn Feiners in Dublin they rose,
They shot down our soldiers just like you'd shoot crows
And it made me old blood boil within.
Chorus.
It's a rough road, a tough road,
A terrible journey we had to begin,
And but for the Huns and their dirty big guns
We'd be dining to-day in Berlin.
This has not the suave satire of Scan O'Casey's Grand
Quid Dame Britannia, but it has qualities of force and
vigour. Humour was not, however, one of the salient
characteristics of the songs of that period ; most of them
inclined to the Paudeen O'Keefe formula, ' Revenge, be
so-and-so ! Revenge ! ' or to the more traditional song
of praise and lamentation. Of the revenge ballads perhaps
the most typical is one called Vengeance :
In Dublin town they murdered them, like dogs they shot
them down,
God's curse be on you England, God strike you London
town,
And cursed be every Irishman alive and yet to live
Who dare forget the death they died, who ever dare
forgive.