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A modern polemic? Young Ned of the Hill by the PoguesBased on ‘Young Ned of the Hill and the Reemergence of the Irish Rapparee: A Textual and Intertextual Analysis’Ray Cashman, University of Indiana, U.S.A., Cultural Analysis Volume 1, 2000http://ist-socrates.berkeley.edu/~caforum/colume1/vol1_article4.html1. SummaryIn 1989, the Pogues, an eclectic Irish folk/punk/rock band, included ‘Young Ned of the Hill’, a songwritten by Ron Kavana and Pogues member Terry Woods, on their ironically titled album, Peace and Love.The song is somewhat remarkable as a political statement, fiercely condemning Oliver Cromwell and hisruthless seventeenth-century campaign through Ireland.It is really about the conflict in Northern Ireland. It selectively draws upon and re-interprets the folk-loreof Ned of the Hill and Irish musical traditions to lend support and legitimacy to the IRA.Given the song’s juxtaposition of Ned and Cromwell - resistance fighter and English invader - the songprovides commentary on the role of republican paramilitary groups such as the Irish Republican Army (IRA)in contemporary Northern Ireland, a commentary that draws on the aura of tradition for its authority.As an allegory for contemporary political conflict in Northern Ireland, ‘Young Ned of the Hill’ is an attemptto provide that assignment of virtue and blame and to render the world in black and white. If the IRAvolunteer can be equated with the rapparee of folklore, he, too, partakes of the transgressive power and appealof one who can simultaneously be bad and do the right thing by breaking the law. He, too, is a heroic outlawenforcing social justice and invoking laws higher than those legislated at the expense of the oppressed.The song’s tone ‘is also standard fare for this now defunct London-based band of mostly Irish ex-patriots,who cultivated an image of hard-drinking, blue-collar machismo.’2. The textIn this song Ned’s function is to provide a platform for the denunciation of Cromwell and the ills hevisited on Ireland and the Irish and to create an ‘us’ and ‘them’ conflict between the Irish and the English.There are four stanzas and a refrain that appears after the first two stanzas and last two stanzas. The firsttwo stanzas, each of seven lines, can be taken as a unit, as can the last two, each of eight lines.The first stanza establishes the bleak and lonesome existence of the rapparee in ‘lonesome hill’ , while thesecond populates the hills with noble men, the victims of Cromwell, willing to fight with Gaelic honourheld up high. Then comes the vilification of Cromwell in the refrain (‘A curse upon you OliverCromwell/You raped our motherland’) and fourth stanza.Ned is mentioned by name only twice, briefly, and not until the second to last stanza. In fact, only oneof the four stanzas, the third, is entirely devoted to him, whereas Cromwell is introduced in the secondstanza and remains the narrator’s addressee in the refrains and possibly in the fourth stanza. The lyricsprovide meagre information about Ned, although they establish that Ned was prompted to become arapparee as a result of his family being dispossessed and slaughtered. Consequently, the English put aprice upon his head for which he was murdered.The use of an authoritative narrator (‘I’ - possibly one of Ned’s fellow resistance fighters and thus agallant man) creates ‘us’ (lines 8, 9, 10) and ‘them’ groups: Cromwell’s victims described as noble andbrave in their resistance, on the one hand, and oppressors - Cromwell and the English on the other. Thesegroups are in timeless opposition for the narrator indicates that ‘Since Cromwell pushed us westward’(line 8) - from the mid-seventeenth century onwards indefinitely - everyone who resists Englishcolonization is effectively part of the same solidarity.The use of ‘you’ changes from signifying the imagined listener in the line 1 to Cromwell in the refrain(lines 15-18, 20-1, 38-41, 43-4) and probably in stanza four (lines 30, 32-3). The change signals a shiftin attention to the antagonist in the story of Ned’s life. Not only is Cromwell addressed, in the thirdstanza he is cursed with ‘A curse upon you . . . and may you burn in Hell tonight’. The narrator’s curseIiS, Irish history in song 1 & 2, page 22
on Cromwell ironically appropriates and turns on its head a curse directed at the Irish, traditionallyattributed to Cromwell - ‘To Hell or Connaught’, i.e., move westward or die.The [repeated] curse on Cromwell is performative speech. In doing social work, it has illocutionary force -the act of saying the curse accomplishes it, and therefore sends Cromwell’s soul to Hell. Its perlocutionaryforce is persuading the song’s audience of Cromwell’s unparalleled wickedness. The curse also has potentialperlocutionary force in the wider socio-political world outside the song if it compels audience members to defyin some way the dispossession and colonialism that Cromwell stands for in the songs [especially since] in faceto face performance contexts, the refrain is the part in which the audience would feel most free to join in thesinging.The ‘they’ in line 25 and ‘you’ in the fourth stanza could mean the English army - all those murderouspillagers of whom Cromwell is the most infamous example. The song would personify both sides - theIrish as Ned and the English as Cromwell - and characterize only seventeenth-century conflict in rigidbinary terms: Irish/English, good/bad. Yet by leaving the historical period in question open to any time(‘Since Cromwell pushed us westward’, line 8), Kavana and Woods allow them to mean any party thatoppresses us, and those Irishmen at any time since Cromwell who ‘have deemed to fight’ (line 10).3. The ‘aura of tradition’Historical realityKnown in Irish folk-lore as Éamonn an Chnoic or Ned of the Hill, Éamonn Ó Riain (Edmund O’Ryan)really did exist. He was one of many Irish Catholic landholders forcibly dispossessed by English andScottish Protestant settlers in the seventeenth century. Rather than fleeing to the continent, many likeÓ Riain chose to remain in Ireland, hoping to frustrate their supplanters. Living the lives of politicalbandits - harassing British troops, robbing Protestant planters and landlords, and aiding the Irish poor -these men were outlawed and termed rapparees and torie by Crown authorities.Ned was active in Tipperary in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, long after Cromwell’sdeath in 1658. Historically, William III and not Cromwell would have been his antagonist. The choiceof Cromwell as Ned’s nemesis might have been the result of faulty historical research, but it could alsohave been deliberate because of the resonance Cromwell has for Irish audiences as the archetypal antiheroand quintessential evil invader.Folk-loreAfter the historical Ó Riain’s death, ballads, chapbooks, and local legends immortalized him as a RobinHood-like figure. The two extant lyric texts paint a very different picture of Ned from that given in ‘Nedof the Hill’. In the Irish one, ‘Éamonn an Chnoic’, for example, he is seeking shelter from theinhospitable wilderness and bemoans his miserably isolated life as a wanted man.Such men were not concerned with battling against the English. They were concerned with social justiceand traditionally their lonely plight and defeat of them attracted commiseration. It was their humanityand vulnerability which lent rapparee lore a sense of romantic quasi-defeatism.Re-interpreting (distorting?) folk-loreIn the interests of pitting good against evil, the Irish versus the English, the song ‘Young Ned of the Hill’transforms this tradition. Its purpose is vigorously to condemn English oppression. Ned’s defeat solicitsanger and indignation, not commiseration.To emphasise the conflict between nations, ‘Young Ned of the Hill’ deliberately ignores facets of his life.First, although outlawed with a price upon his head (line 25), Ned actually received a pardon. Secondly,although despite the pardon, the price on Ned’s head was his downfall, he was murdered by his own kin -a foster brother or cousin by the name of O’Dwyer. Ignorant of the pardon, the cousin sheltered Ned butonce he was asleep O’Dwyer chopped off his head with an axe. Such destruction is consistent with almostall Irish outlaw legends: the rapparee can only be defeated by foul or unfair means, most often throughbetrayal.This common motif of betrayal by confederates is rather inconvenient for the purposes of ‘Ned of theHill’. While it enhances the rapparees’ quasi-martyr status in Irish folklore, it also prevents any clear-cutdistinctions being made between us and them in rapparee lore.IiS, Irish history in song 1 & 2, page 23
Page 1 and 2: ‘Ireland in Schools’Irish histo
Page 3 and 4: Hunger02. The Famine Song (The Prat
Page 5 and 6: 04. The Fields of AthenryPatrick Sa
Page 7 and 8: 06. The Foggy Dew Written in 1919 b
Page 9 and 10: Conflict in Ireland - perspectives0
Page 11 and 12: 10. Through the Barricades Inspired
Page 13 and 14: ‘Ireland in Schools’Irish histo
Page 15 and 16: The concept of ‘rebel song’ was
Page 17 and 18: Irish history in song 1: songs of h
Page 19 and 20: A case study - from home rule to in
Page 21: The ballad maker has also recorded

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