Songs of Renown: Billy Bragg interprets Woody Guthrie's 'I Aint Got No Home'

"I mined in your mines and I gathered in your corn
I been working, mister, since the day I was born
Now I worry all the time like I never did before
'Cause I ain't got no home in this world anymore

Now as I look around, it's mighty plain to see
This world is such a great and a funny place to be;
Oh, the gamblin' man is rich an' the workin' man is poor,
And I ain't got no home in this world anymore."

 Woody Guthrie

No one does Woody Guthrie's songs of capitalist plundering and immiseration better than Billy Bragg.

On his most recent album, Tooth and Nail, Billy Bragg does a magnificent cover version of Woody Guthrie's Great Depression era song 'I Aint Got No Home', one of the great political folk songs.

Woody Guthrie composed 'I Ain't Got No Home'  in 1940 and recorded the song in the same year. It first appeared on Woody Guthrie Dust Bowl Ballads Volume 2.

The tune is based on a  traditional hymn titled 'I Can't Feel Home in this World Anymore' that was made famous by the Carter Family.

The song could have been written in the last 8 years. It is all there- people losing their homes to the bankers, people dying for lack of proper health care, the rich making millions by gambling on the stock market while ordinary people's wages go backwards.

The song has a contemporary resonance with its musings about "Now I worry all the time like I never did before/ Cause I ain't got no home in this world anymore", how the “rich man took my home and drove me from my door” and mention of “the banker’s store”.

Earlier versions of Guthrie's song concluded by stating that the hardship expressed in the song is happening to "a hundred thousand others and a hundred thousand more," all of whom were victimized by the more fortunate elite.  Once again, a reflection of what has happened since the 2008 economic crash.

Bragg, like Woody Guthrie, is a singer songwriter who made his name with socio-political songs and his involvement in social movements and political campaigns. Bragg is known as a combative British socialist who doggedly opposed the British Conservative Party and its leader Margaret Thatcher throughout the ’80s and ’90s.

This version of Woody Guthrie's song appears on Billy Blagg's 2013 album Tooth and Nail, which was produced by American singer songwriter Joe Henry whose work has appeared on this blog before.

Woody Guthrie's version of the song is here

The song has also been covered by Bob Dylan and Bruce Springsteen. Springsteen's version (with slightly different lyrics) is here.

I Aint Got No Home

By Woody Guthrie

I ain't got no home, I'm just a-roamin' 'round,
Just a wandrin' worker, I go from town to town.
And the police make it hard wherever I may go
And I ain't got no home in this world anymore.

My brothers and my sisters are stranded on this road,
A hot and dusty road that a million feet have trod;
Rich man took my home and drove me from my door
And I ain't got no home in this world anymore.

Was a-farmin' on the shares, and always I was poor;
My crops I lay into the banker's store.
My wife took down and died upon the cabin floor,
And I ain't got no home in this world anymore.

I mined in your mines and I gathered in your corn
I been working, mister, since the day I was born
Now I worry all the time like I never did before
'Cause I ain't got no home in this world anymore

Now as I look around, it's mighty plain to see
This world is such a great and a funny place to be;
Oh, the gamblin' man is rich an' the workin' man is poor,
And I ain't got no home in this world anymore.

© Copyright 1961  and 1963  by Woody Guthrie Publications, Inc.; TRO-Ludlow Music, Inc.

Songs as historical markers: Martin Simpson's Jackie and Murphy and the Anzac legend

The myth of Anzac was promulgated to enable Australians to live with the otherwise unbearable carnage of WW1  
Marilyn Lake

Somethings never change Jackie/But perhaps they never will/While the bloodless fools in Whitehall/ They sit in judgement still/
Martin Simpson (final lines from Jackie and Murphy)

Martin Simpson's song Jackie and Murphy is not just a magnificent tribute to John Simpson Kirkpatrick and his donkey Murphy. It is a song that speaks forgotten truths about the disastrous Gallipoli campaign.

In recounting the life story of John Simpson Kirkpatrick, the song describes the horror and carnage of the Gallipoli campaign (where Simpson Kirkpatrick was a stretcher bearer for 4 weeks before he was killed).

The song also demonstrates the ways the history of the campaign and the terrible suffering of ordinary soldiers is used to serve political and military agendas.

When I was at primary school the story of Simpson and his donkey was used to indoctrinate us about the history of the Gallipoli campaign and to conceal the truth about Australia's invasion of a sovereign nation and the horror of war. We were schooled into an interpretation of Gallipoli that affirmed a contemporary and conservative view of Australian identity.

 

As Joan Beaumont argues, this emphasis on Gallipoli and a particular view of the Anzac legend is a distinctive and powerful part of Australia's political culture.

'The Anzac legend today serves particular purposes. One is to reinforce those values which court the Anzac legend such as endurance, sacrifice, mateship. Those values continue to be very important to Australian governments who are trying in a very materialistic and secular and individualistic society to still persuade Australians to be willing to volunteer for war or even to serve as police officers or fire fighters'

 Joan Beaumont also argues that constant commemoration of  Gallipoli and the ANZAC legend works to deflect debate about the legitimacy of war.

'This was very obvious during the Iraq intervention of 2003, when the then-prime minister John Howard made it difficult to criticise the war because it was suggested you would thereby be criticising those who chose to serve. With that goes a silencing of debate about the reasons that those soldiers are being deployed, and that is a concern to a number of commentators.'

Joan Beaumont's brilliant book Broken Nation: Australians in the Great War  challenges the way that Australia's war experience is presented as the predominant historical narrative. 

A review of the book by Marilyn Lake is here.

You can listen to a live version and explanation of Martin Simpson's song here:

Jackie and Murphy by Martin Simpson
(copyright Martin Simpson)

There's a statue of a donkey on Southshield sea front
He's a decorated donkey
and with him stands a man

and the man's name is Jackie he has no decoration

though he was a war hero.
 

Down on the sands Jackie sold donkey rides

His favorite was Murphy

and they waited on the tide 

to give rides to little children and flirt with the pretty girls.
 

And he's joined the merchant navy and he's off to see the world.

Well he sailed the wide world all over Jackie

till he came to Newcastle in NSW

he'd had enough of stoking coals, rollin seas and heavy gales.
 

So you changed your name to plain John Simpson

So you jumped ship and you rambled all down the shore

shearing, droving, larrikin and a new recruit for war.

Give a dog a bad name Jackie

Somethings never change 

a hundred years are almost gone

Not a medal to your name

Somethings never change Jackie

They give a dog a bad name

but your a hero still.

Well I signed up for this army Murphy

Thought I might catch a troop ship home

Maybe change my name again and never more to roam.
But we didn't sail to England Murphy

We sailed right into hell

Now I am a stretcher bearer in the bloody Dardanelles.
 

Now I don't like taking orders Murphy

That's not the way I am

But now we've got this job to do and I'll do the best I can.
You and me are mockers here Murphy

Down here on the sand

I'll whistle and we sing our songs and we'll march to the beat of the band.

Jesus you know I am tired Murphy

Breakfast wasn't ready today

They said they would keep dinner hot

Come on lads we are on our way

Down to shrapnel gully again

To the land of blood, flesh and bone

You have been there so many times

You can damn near fetch them on your own.

Did you hear the machine guns rattle?

Did you feel those bullets tearing through?

I pray that peace and quiet and dark are the last things you know

You saved 300 wounded men

You and Murphy on their own

You died to save the very last but Murphy fetched him back alive.

Give a dog a bad name Jackie

Some things never change 

a hundred years are almost gone 

Not a medal to your name

Somethings never change Jackie

But perhaps they never will.
While the bloodless fools in Whitehall

They sit in judgement still

More on the political songs of Randy Newman (Part 2)

'I feel the country is never going to be excused for slavery’
Randy Newman

'...used to worry about the poor/But I don't worry anymore"

Randy Newman, Its Money that I love

In Part 1 I wrote that the American singer-songwrite Randy Newman has written some of the sharpest critiques of US and European imperialism, capitalism and America’s treatment of its own people. 

Newman has mastered the use of irony and social and political satire as a mode of expression and a socio-political tool to illuminate complex social and political issues. 

Many of his songs echo Antonio Gramsci’s idea of ‘passionate sarcasm’, a form of irony that expresses dissent and challenges the hypocrisy and corruption of the powerful.

The World isn’t Fair engages a conversation with Karl Marx about Marxism, class, inequality and capitalist greed:

When Karl Marx was a boy/He took a hard look around/He saw people were starving all over the place/While others were painting the town (buh buh)/The public spirited boy/Became a public spirited man/So he worked very hard and read everything/Until he came up with a plan/There’ ll be no exploitation/Of the worker or his kin/No discrimination’ cause the color of your skin/No more private property/It would not be allowed/No one could raise too high/No one could sink so low/Or go under completely like some we all know/If Marx were living today/He’d be rolling around in his grave.

 

 In  A Piece of the Pie, from the 2008 album Harps and Angels, Newman crafts a rousing call to arms about continuing inequality in the US:

Jesus Christ it stinks here low and high/Some get rich/And others just get by/Bono's off in Africa - he's never around/The country turns its lonely eyes to who? Jackson Browne/A piece of the pie/That's all we're asking for/A piece of the pie

The Great Nations of Europe tells of the rapacious imperial ambitions and atrocities inflicted by the European nations on the people they colonized:
 

The great Nations of Europe/Had gathered on the shore/ They’d conquered what was behind them/But now they wanted more/So they looked to the mighty ocean/And took to the western sea/The great nations of Europe in the sixteenth century/Hide your wives and daughters/Hide the groceries too/Great Nations of Europe coming though………/Balboa found the Pacific/And on the trail one day/He met some friendly Indians/Whom he was told were gay/So he had them torn apart by dogs on religious grounds they say/ The great nations of Europe were quite holy in their way

 

Newman has made his name composing movie scores, especially scores for children's movies such as the Toy Stories series, Cars and Monsters Inc.

Even songs that appear in children’s movies engage political themes. The song Our Town from the movie Cars is sung by James Taylor, but Newman’s song ponders the destructive effects of large scale economic forces on the fictional town of Radiator Springs.

His deployment of the term ‘main street’ is telling, reflecting the belief in the US at the time that the economic interests of ordinary people (main street) were being sacrificed to benefit corporate and financial capitalism (Wall St):

Long ago, but not so very long ago/The world was different, oh yes it was/You settled down and you built a town and made it live/And you watched it grow/It was your town/Time goes by, time brings changes, you change, too/Nothing comes that you can't handle, so on you go/Never see it coming, the world caves in on you/On your town/Nothing you can do/Main street isn't main street anymore/No one seems to need us like they did before/It's hard to find a reason left to stay/But it's our town/Love it anyway/Come what may, it's our town.

Part 1 of this blog is here. Part 3  explores Newman's ballads and more personal songs.

Randy Newman's website is here. Some informative articles about Newman are here, here, here, and here.

Is there a more political songwriter than Randy Newman? Part 1

‘I’m concerned about the fact the rich are getting richer and the poor getting poorer. We’ve been complaining since the 60s about corporate America and how we’re in the hands of a plutocracy, but it’s really truer now than it ever has been. Banks and those people with tremendous economic weight are in control; they were able to do all this illegal kind of stuff, even for example selling stocks they knew were bad to clients. And they’re fine, better off than they were. It doesn’t seem right … I’ve written about it before, but I’m still angry.

Randy Newman

I’d like it to be clearer which side I’m on

Randy Newman

The American singer-songwrite Randy Newman is not associated with anti-imperialist critique and class analysis.  But Newman is a profoundly political singer-songwriter, having written some of the sharpest political critiques of US and European imperialism, capitalism and America’s treatment of its own people. 

Newman has written songs about US foreign policy and imperialism (Political Science, A Few Words in Defence of our Country), militarism (Song for the Dead),  the Gulf war (Lines in the Sand) the US slave trade (Sail Away), western imperialism (The Great Nations of Europe), the hypocrisy of organized religion (God’s Song), southern prejudice (Birmingham, Rednecks) political neglect (Louisana 1927), racism, race bigotry and prejudice (Rednecks), capitalist greed and class privilege (Its Money that I want, Its Lonely at the Top, My Life is Good), inequality (A Piece of the Pie), Marxism (The World isn’t Fair), industrial pollution (Burn On), child abuse and child murders (Germany before the war), prejudice (Short People) and misogyny (Marie).

Newman’s songs express genuine anger about inequalities and injustice, but in a way that is funny and neither didactic nor ideological. Newman has mastered, like no other songwriter, the use of irony and social and political satire as a mode of expression and a socio-political tool to illuminate complex social and political issues. 

Many of his songs echo Antonio Gramsci’s idea of ‘passionate sarcasm’, a form of irony that expresses dissent and challenges the hypocrisy and corruption of the powerful.

Political songs are rarely so funny. You can’t help chuckling at Newman’s lyrics as you sing along with lines from Political Science:

We give them money- but are they grateful?/No they’re spiteful and they’re hateful/They don’t respect us- so let’s surprise them/We’ll drop the big one and pulverize them.
 

And then there is the slave trader doing a sales pitch to convince his slaves of the benefits of being a slave in America in Sail Away, a song from the 1972 album of the same name:
 

In America you’ll get food to eat/Won’t have to run through the jungle/And scuff up your feet/You’ll just sing about Jesus and drink wine all day/It’s great to be an American/Ain’t no lions or tigers- aint no mamba snake/Just the sweet watermelon and the buckwheat cake/Ev’rybody is as happy as a man can be/Climb aboard little wog-sail away with me.

Newman's songs shed light on concealed or submerged features of American political and social culture. They speak of events, experiences and truths that reverberate through American and western history and are animated by the experiences of ordinary people.

 

During the 2012 US Presidential election Newman released the song I’m Dreaming (of a White President) a song of racial politics written from the perspective of voter who casts his ballot based on skin color who hopes for the election of a white President:
 

I’m dreaming of a white President/just like the ones we’ve always had/a real live white man/who knows the score/how to handle money or start a war/....... /I’m dreaming of a white President/buh buh buh buh/‘cause things have never been this bad/so he won’t run the hundred in ten seconds flat/ so he won’t have a pretty jump shot/or be an Olympic acrobat/so he won’t know much about global warming/is that really where you’re at?/he won’t be the brightest, perhaps/but he’ll be the whitest/and I’ll vote for that

In Louisanna 1927, Newman tells of the deceitful manner in which governments managed the destructive floods that destroyed communities and farms in Louisiana in 1927. Written in 1974, the song has contemporary resonance, serving as an anthem to the abandonment of New Orleans by the Bush Administration in the wake of the destruction caused by Hurricane Katrina.

What has happened down here is that the winds have changed/clouds roll in from the north and it starts to rain/rained real hard and it rained for a real long time/ six feet of water in the streets of Evangeline/the river rose all day/the river rose all night/some people got lost in the flood/some people got away alright/the river has busted through clear down to Plaquemines/President Coolidge come down in a railroad train/with a little fat man with a notepad in his hand/the President say” Little fat man, isn’t it a shame what the river has done/to this poor crackers land.

Political Science was written amidst the ruins of the second Vietnam War and appeared on Newman’s 1972 album Sail Away. 

 

Forty-three years later the song stands as a profound critique of American hubris and exceptionalism in foreign affairs and military policy and its willingness to pursue imperial ambitions through the use of force and violence against those who challenge US power.
 

No one likes us- I don’t know why/We may not be perfect but heaven knows we try/But all around, even our old friends put us down/Lets drop the big one and see what happens/We give them money- but are they grateful?/No they’re spiteful and they’re hateful/They don’t respect us- so let’s surprise them/We’ll drop the big one and pulverize them/Asia’s crowded and Europe’s too old/Africa is far too hot/And Canada’s to cold/And South America stole our name/Let’s drop the big one/There’ll be no one left to blame us/We’ll save Australia/Don’t want no hurt no kangaroo/We’ll build an all American theme park there/They got surfing too/ Boom goes London and boom Paris/More room for you and more room for me/And every city the whole world around/Will just be another American town/We’ll set everyone free/You’ll wear a Japanse kimono/ And there’ll be Italian shoes for me/They all hate us anyhow/So lets drop the big one now/ Lets drop the big one now

Song for the Dead (from the 1983 album Trouble in Paradise) is a post Vietnam elegy for those who died in the war:
 

Pardon me, boys/if I slip off my pack/ and sit for a while with you/ I’d like to explain/why you fine young men had to be blown apart/to defend this mud hole/now our country boys/though its quite far away/found itself jeopardized/endangered boys/by these very gooks who lie beside you

Part 2 of this piece can be found here. Part 3 explores Newman's ballads and love songs.

Randy Newman's website is here. Some informative articles about Newman are here, here, here, and here.

Songs of Renown: Lal Waterson, Norma Waterson and a song in memory of Freddie Mercury

"Read your letter, tore the page; wondered whether to write in rage; then I thought it better you use your trade."
Lal Waterson, Reply to Jo Haines

Legendary British folk singer  Lal Waterson wrote Reply to Joe Haines  in response to an article published in the UK tabloid press just days after the death of Queen star Freddie Mercury which criticised the singer’s promiscuous lifestyle and essentially blamed him for being a victim of AIDS.

Lal Waterson was so incensed by Joe Haines's article that she wrote the song as a direct response.

The song was recorded by Lal Waterson's sister Norma Waterson’s for her second solo album The Very Thought Of You (1999).

Read more about the song here and here

Reply to Jo Haines
Lal Waterson

Read your letter, tore the page
Wondered whether to write in rage
Then I thought it better to use your trade
No-one should ever die of AIDS
No ordinary fellow, centre stage
No Cinderella, what a face
Gave us so much pleasure and some change
His likes will never come again
Read your letter, such a shame
And I think it better you think again
What's it matter how he came
Bye bye Bulsara—what a name
No ordinary fellow, centre stage
No Cinderella, what a face
Gave us so much pleasure and some change
No-one will ever take his place

© 1999 Topic Records

Songs of Renown: Paul Robeson, Hirsh Glik and the Hymn of the Jewish Partisans

The song Zog Nit Keynmol (in Yiddish), also known under various titles- the Hymn of the Jewish Partisans, the Partisans Song or the Song of the Warsaw Ghetto- was written in 1943 by Hirsh Glik, who was a young Jewish poet, resistance fighter and inmate of the Warsaw Ghetto. 

More about Hirsh Glik is here on the website Music and the Holocaust.

The song was adopted by Jewish partisans and resistance fighters and was a symbol of Jewish resistance against the Nazis. The song was often sung by people in concentration camps.

The song was a regular concert performance by Paul Robeson who sang the song in Yiddish and English.

Paul Robeson sang the song in a Moscow concert in 1949 during the height of Stalin's anti-Jewish purge. It was his protest against Soviet persecution of Jews.  In that concert, Robeson spoke in support of Jewish writers and actors in Russia and his friendship with Jews who had perished in Stalin's purges.

Here is how the concert is described on the website of the  Jewish Partisan Educational Foundation:

Four years after the fall of Hitler, the tune would be used as a form of resistance against another 20th century tyrant. Paul Robeson traveled to Moscow in June of 1949 to give a performance to an audience that included many Communist Party elites, as well as what little remained of the Jewish intelligentsia after Stalin's purges. At the end of the concert, Robeson stunned the audience with a surprise rendition of the Partisan Hymn. His introductory remarks contained references to the Yiddish language, the deep and enduring cultural ties between the US and Russian Jewish communities, as well as to leading Jewish intellectuals who had been "disappeared" by the regime. 

The remarks, the spontaneous translation of the song to the shocked audience, and thunderous applause that followed were cut from the recording by Stalin's censors, but the chaos is evident in the mixture of applause and jeers that follows the actual performance.

Here is a heavily censored live version of Robeson's performance from that 1949 concert:

The following comments are from Paul Robeson's son Paul Robeson Jr's biography of his father:

... One could hear a pin drop during my father remarks about the deep and enduring cultural ties between the Jewish communities of the Soviet Union and the United States, about the common tradition of the great Jewish writer Sholem Aleichem, and about the continued vitality of the Yiddish language. Finally he announced that he would sing a song of the Jewish partisans who fought to the death against their Fascist oppressors in the Warsaw Ghetto. 

Since the song had to be sung in Yiddish, he would explain the lyrics in Russian, as follows: 

'Never say that you have reached the very endWhen leaden skies a bitter future may portend;For sure the hour for which we yearn will not arriveArid our marching steps will thunder: we survive'. 

For a moment there was no sound from the stunned audience; then a single intrepid young woman stood up and applauded, and the entire audience joined in a swelling wane of applause before my father could sing a single note. Only this response to my fathers remarks remains on the recording; Stalin's censors simply cut out his remarks, and they have disappeared..." 

The Song of the Wamaw [sic] Ghetto Rebellion sung in Yiddish (Zog Nit Keynmol) - remains an a crowning jewel of this recording of the Concert. The combination of power and pathos with which my father delivered this song transfixed his listeners. When he finished, the audience released its accumulated tension like an explosive charge. Although his listeners included many of Moscows Jewish intellectual elite who were waiting for Stalins axe to fell on them, the great majority were Russian members of the Party elite which was being decimated by a purge. Jews and Russians alike, in some places seated side-by-side, were either walking in the shadow of death or had lost someone close... 

After that first release, the ovation continued to swell and recede in a series of waves which ebbed and flowed. People stood, applauded and cried out; they called my father by his patronymic-Pavel Vasilevich; some who were total strangers fell info each others arms and wept; still others sat silently with tears streaming down their faces. The first part of the audiences response is captured on this recording, but the rest has been cut by the censors. Still, the sound of this cry of hope is unforgettable, and there is little doubt that it was heard by the Master himself"

**********
Zog Nit Keynmol Hymn of the Jewish Partisans

Never say that this is the end of the road.
Wherever a drop of our blood fell, there our courage will
grow anew.
This song, written in blood, was sung by a people fighting
for life and freedom.
Our triumph will come and our resounding footsteps will
proclaim "We are here!"

From land of palm-trees to the far-off land of snow.
We shall be coming with our torment, with our woe;
And everywhere our blood has sunk into the earth
Shall our bravery, or vigor blossom forth.

We'll have the morning sun to set our day aglow;
Our evil yesterdays shall vanish with the foe.
But if the time is long before the sun appears,
then let this song go like a signal through the years.

This song was written with our blood, and not with lead;
It's not a song that summer birds sing overhead;
It was a people, amidst burning barricades,
That sang this song of ours with pistols and grenades.

The Foggy Dew and the 1916 Irish Easter Uprising

In 1919, Canon Charles O'Neill wrote the Foggy Dew, one of the great Irish ballads, in response to the execution of the Irish leaders of the 1916 Easter Uprising by the British Government and military authorities. 

The rebel song,  The Foggy Dew was O'Neill's response to the ferocity and savagery of the British response to the Easter Uprising.

In chronicling the Easter Rising of 1916, O'Neill encouraged Irishmen to fight for Ireland and not for Britain in WW1. Hence, the immortal line:

'Twas better to die 'neath an Irish sky than at Sulva or Sud El Bar.

The Foggy Few has been recorded by many iconic Irish musicians including the Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem, Sinead O'Connor and The Chieftans, The Dubliners, Wolf Tones and Shane McGowan. (3 versions are below).

On Easter Monday 1916, in Dublin, 1500 armed Irish revolutionaries seized a number of strategic buildings and locations across the city, including the Court House and the iconic Dublin Post Office, with the goal of immobilizing the British forces in Dublin and inspiring a revolutionary uprising throughout Ireland.

The uprising was  mounted by Irish Republicans at the height of WW1 with the aim of ending British rule in Ireland and establishing an Irish rebellion.  All this occured at the time that the British empire was engaged in the slaughter on the Western Front across France and Belgium.

The British response to the Easter uprisings was unsurprisingly savage and ferocious. They shelled and attacked the insurgents with artillery and massive firepower. In their book titled The Easter Uprising, Foy and Barton write:

The fighting in Dublin at Easter 1916 was multifaceted, ranging from rifle fire into and out of houses and large buildings, to ambushes and pitched battles. Grenades and bombs were thrown from roofs while snipers operated from windows, barricades, church spires and clock towers and were, in turn, hunted down by individual enemy marksmen or units. Sometimes combat was at close quarters, almost hand to hand.

The Post Office siege was perhaps the most iconic. The insurgents held out against British artillery and direct fire for days.

The rebellion was suppressed within a week and its leaders were arrested and deported to Britain where they were either executed or imprisoned. Many of those involved became leaders in the ongoing struggle against British rule that eventually lead to Irish independence, including legendary figures in Irish history such as Michael Collins, Eamon de Valera, James Connolly (executed) and Roger Casement (executed). 

Despite its apparent failure at the time the Easter uprising was a definitive event that largely united the counties of Southern Ireland against their British masters and ultimately forced the British  to the bargaining table. In particular, the savagery of the British was a critical factor in turning many Irish people to the Republican cause.

This live version of the Foggy Dew is by the Clancy Bros and Tommy Makem, and includes evocative poetry read by Liam Clancy and documentary photos.

This version is by the Spanish group Banshee

This is Sinead O'Connor and the Chieftan's version of the Foggy Dew.

The Foggy Dew  

As down the glen one Easter morn to a city fair rode I
There Armed lines of marching men in squadrons passed me by
No fife did hum nor battle drum did sound it's dread tatoo
But the Angelus bell o'er the Liffey swell rang out through the foggy dew

Right proudly high over Dublin Town they hung out the flag of war
'Twas better to die 'neath an Irish sky than at Sulva or Sud El Bar
And from the plains of Royal Meath strong men came hurrying through
While Britannia's Huns, with their long range guns sailed in through the foggy dew

'Twas Britannia bade our Wild Geese go that small nations might be free
But their lonely graves are by Sulva's waves or the shore of the Great North Sea
Oh, had they died by Pearse's side or fought with Cathal Brugha
Their names we will keep where the fenians sleep 'neath the shroud of the foggy dew

But the bravest fell, and the requiem bell rang mournfully and clear
For those who died that Eastertide in the springing of the year
And the world did gaze, in deep amaze, at those fearless men, but few
Who bore the fight that freedom's light might shine through the foggy dew

Ah, back through the glen I rode again and my heart with grief was sore
For I parted then with valiant men whom I never shall see more
But to and fro in my dreams I go and I'd kneel and pray for you,
For slavery fled, O glorious dead, When you fell in the fog