ARTHUR MCBRIDE
Traditional
I had a first
cousin called Arthur McBride
He and I took a stroll down by the seaside;
Seeking good fortune and what might betide
It was just as the day was a'dawnin'
After restin' we both took a tramp
We met Sergeant Harper and Corporal Cramp
Besides the wee drummer who beat up the camp
With his row-dee-dow-dow in the morning
He says my
young fellows if you will enlist
A guinea you quickly will have in your fist
Besides a crown for to kick up the dust
And drink the King's health in the morning
And we have no desire to take your advance
All hazards and danger we barter on chance
and you'd have no scruples to send us to France
Where we would be shot without warning
And now
says the sergeant, if I hear but one word
I'll instantly now will out with my sword
And into your bodies as strength will afford
So now my gay devils take warning
But Arthur and I we took the odds
We gave them no chance to launch out their swords
Whacking shillelaghs came over their heads
And paid them right smart in the morning
As for the wee
drummer, we rifled his pow
And made a football of his row-do-dow-dow
Into the ocean to rock and to roll
And bade it a tedious returnin'
As for the old rapier that hung by his side
We flung it as far as we could in the tide
To the Devil I pitch you, says Arthur McBride
To temper your steel in the morning
Footnote:
The best of the Irish anti-recruiting but
versions have been collected in Scotland, England and America. The
song was collected around 1840 in Limerick by P.W. Joyce. He believed it to
originally come from Donegal, based on the phraseology of the song. It's an
anti-recruiting song similar in theme to
The
Kerry Recruit,
Mrs.
McGrath and
Johnny I Hardly Knew Ya..; and there are many more. Along with "The
Landlord" and "The Excise Man", the "Recruiting Sergeant" was a popular
target for poetic ire, because he conscripted young Irishmen to fight on
behalf of England.
In the mid-eighteenth century, if an
English soldier took off his uniform, the minimum penalty was
twenty-five lashes with a cat-o-nine-tails, and 1500 lashes the maximum.
Average pay was eightpence a day. |
