The Kerry Recruit
   HOME
*





The Kerry Recruit
"The Kerry Recruit" ( Roud 520; also known as "The Irish Recruit", and sometimes appearing with the subtitle "''The Lawyer Outwitted''") is a humorous Irish song about an Irish soldier from Kerry who enlisted into the Crimean War, with references made to various locations and battles of the Crimean War, such as Balaclava, the Alma, and Inkerman. The song originally derives from previously published broadside ballads, many of which were printed before the Crimean war and were instead about other battles or wars, such as the Battle of Trafalgar or the Irish Rebellion of 1798. Lyrics The content of the song focuses on the titular (unnamed) Kerry recruit, a peasant beginning the song by "digging turf in Tralee" (or "digging turf on the lea"), who abandons his tool out of desire to do more with his life. Later encountering a recruiting sergeant, the protagonist of the song is enlisted into the army. The humorous aspects of the song come from the inexperience of the recruit ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Roud Folk Song Index
The Roud Folk Song Index is a database of around 250,000 references to nearly 25,000 songs collected from oral tradition in the English language from all over the world. It is compiled by Steve Roud (born 1949), a former librarian in the London Borough of Croydon. Roud's Index is a combination of the Broadside Index (printed sources before 1900) and a "field-recording index" compiled by Roud. It subsumes all the previous printed sources known to Francis James Child (the Child Ballads) and includes recordings from 1900 to 1975. Until early 2006, the index was available by a CD subscription; now it can be found online on the Vaughan Williams Memorial Library website, maintained by the English Folk Dance and Song Society (EFDSS). A partial list is also available at List of folk songs by Roud number. Purpose of index The primary function of the Roud Folk Song Index is as a research aid correlating versions of traditional English-language folk song lyrics independently documented ove ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


Recruiting Sergeant
A recruiting sergeant is a British or American soldier of the rank of sergeant who is tasked to enlist recruits. The term originated in the British army of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The playwright George Farquhar served as an infantry officer, and the characters in his play ''The Recruiting Officer'' (1706) are drawn from life. The unscrupulous methods used by some to trick the innocent have been the subject of several traditional songs composed by their victims as a warning to others, popular examples being the Irish traditional song ''Arthur McBride'' and the Scots ''Twa Recruiting Sergeants''. A recruit would be given the King's shilling as a mark of the contract made. The term has passed into the English language to mean any set of circumstances which recruits or fails to recruit volunteers to the army. See ''Daily Telegraph'' headline The CIA is al-Qaeda's best recruiting sergeant' See also * Press gang ''Press Gang'' is a British children's tel ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Irish Folk Songs
Irish traditional music (also known as Irish trad, Irish folk music, and other variants) is a genre of folk music that developed in Ireland. In ''A History of Irish Music'' (1905), W. H. Grattan Flood wrote that, in Gaelic Ireland, there were at least ten instruments in general use. These were the ''cruit'' (a small harp) and '' clairseach'' (a bigger harp with typically 30 strings), the ''timpan'' (a small string instrument played with a bow or plectrum), the ''feadan'' (a fife), the ''buinne'' (an oboe or flute), the ''guthbuinne'' (a bassoon-type horn), the ''bennbuabhal'' and ''corn'' ( hornpipes), the ''cuislenna'' ( bagpipes – see Great Irish warpipes), the ''stoc'' and ''sturgan'' (clarions or trumpets), and the ''cnamha'' (bones).''A History of Irish Music: Chapter ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


Johnny, I Hardly Knew Ye
"Johnny I Hardly Knew Ye" (Roud 3137), also known as "Johnny We Hardly Knew Ye" or "Johnny I Hardly Knew Ya", is a popular traditional song, sung to the same tune as "When Johnny Comes Marching Home". First published in London in 1867 and written by Joseph B. Geoghegan, a prolific English songwriter and successful music hall figure, it remained popular in Britain and Ireland and the United States into the early years of the 20th century. The song was recorded by The Clancy Brothers & Tommy Makem on their eponymous album in 1961, leading to a renewal of its popularity. Originally seen as humorous, the song today is considered a powerful anti-war song. Except for an initial framing stanza, the song is a monologue by an Irish woman who meets her former lover on the road to Athy, which is located in County Kildare, Ireland. After their illegitimate child was born, the lover ran away and became a soldier. He was badly disfigured, losing his legs, his arms, his eyes and, in some v ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Irish Nationalism
Irish nationalism is a nationalist political movement which, in its broadest sense, asserts that the people of Ireland should govern Ireland as a sovereign state. Since the mid-19th century, Irish nationalism has largely taken the form of cultural nationalism based on the principles of national self-determination and popular sovereignty.Sa'adah 2003, 17–20.Smith 1999, 30. Irish nationalists during the 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries such as the United Irishmen in the 1790s, Young Irelanders in the 1840s, the Fenian Brotherhood during the 1880s, Fianna Fáil in the 1920s, and Sinn Féin styled themselves in various ways after French left-wing radicalism and republicanism. Irish nationalism celebrates the culture of Ireland, especially the Irish language, literature, music, and sports. It grew more potent during the period in which all of Ireland was part of the United Kingdom, which led to most of the island gaining independence from the UK in 1922. Irish nationalists believ ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Irish Language
Irish ( Standard Irish: ), also known as Gaelic, is a Goidelic language of the Insular Celtic branch of the Celtic language family, which is a part of the Indo-European language family. Irish is indigenous to the island of Ireland and was the population's first language until the 19th century, when English gradually became dominant, particularly in the last decades of the century. Irish is still spoken as a first language in a small number of areas of certain counties such as Cork, Donegal, Galway, and Kerry, as well as smaller areas of counties Mayo, Meath, and Waterford. It is also spoken by a larger group of habitual but non-traditional speakers, mostly in urban areas where the majority are second-language speakers. Daily users in Ireland outside the education system number around 73,000 (1.5%), and the total number of persons (aged 3 and over) who claimed they could speak Irish in April 2016 was 1,761,420, representing 39.8% of respondents. For most of recorded ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

English Language
English is a West Germanic language of the Indo-European language family, with its earliest forms spoken by the inhabitants of early medieval England. It is named after the Angles, one of the ancient Germanic peoples that migrated to the island of Great Britain. Existing on a dialect continuum with Scots, and then closest related to the Low Saxon and Frisian languages, English is genealogically West Germanic. However, its vocabulary is also distinctively influenced by dialects of France (about 29% of Modern English words) and Latin (also about 29%), plus some grammar and a small amount of core vocabulary influenced by Old Norse (a North Germanic language). Speakers of English are called Anglophones. The earliest forms of English, collectively known as Old English, evolved from a group of West Germanic (Ingvaeonic) dialects brought to Great Britain by Anglo-Saxon settlers in the 5th century and further mutated by Norse-speaking Viking settlers starting in the 8th and 9th ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


Anti-war Song
Some anti-war movement, anti-war songs lament aspects of wars, while others satirize war. Most promote peace in some form, while others sing out against specific armed conflicts. Still others depict the physical and psychological destruction that warfare causes to soldiers, innocent civilians, and humanity as a whole. Many of these songs are considered protest songs, and some have been embraced by war-weary people, various peace movements, and List of peace activists, peace activists. General pacifist and anti-war songs American Civil War American Indian Wars World War I Spanish Civil War World War II Cold War and nuclear annihilation Korean War Vietnam War Dominican Civil War Soviet-Afghan War The Troubles of Northern Ireland Falklands War Contras, Latin America Yugoslav Wars Gulf Wars, Iraq, 9/11, and the War on Terror Russian invasion of Ukraine Anti-draft Traditional music Apart from the various genres of modern music, som ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Cockade
A cockade is a knot of ribbons, or other circular- or oval-shaped symbol of distinctive colours which is usually worn on a hat or cap. Eighteenth century In the 18th and 19th centuries, coloured cockades were used in Europe to show the allegiance of their wearers to some political faction, or to show their rank or to indicate a servant's livery. Because individual armies might wear a variety of differing regimental uniforms, cockades were used as an effective and economical means of national identification. A cockade was pinned on the side of a man's tricorne or cocked hat, or on his lapel. Women could also wear it on their hat or in their hair. In pre-revolutionary France, the cockade of the Bourbon dynasty was all white. In the Kingdom of Great Britain supporters of a Jacobite restoration wore white cockades, while the recently established Hanoverian monarchy used a black cockade. The Hanoverians also accorded the right to all German nobility to wear the black cockade in th ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Man-of-war
The man-of-war (also man-o'-war, or simply man) was a Royal Navy expression for a powerful warship or frigate from the 16th to the 19th century. Although the term never acquired a specific meaning, it was usually reserved for a ship armed with cannon and propelled primarily by sails, as opposed to a galley which is propelled primarily by oars. Description The man-of-war was developed in Portugal in the early 15th century from earlier roundships with the addition of a second mast to form the carrack. The 16th century saw the carrack evolve into the galleon and then the ship of the line. The evolution of the term has been given thus: The man-of-war design developed by Sir John Hawkins had three masts, each with three to four sails. The ship could be up to 60 metres long and could have up to 124 guns: four at the bow, eight at the stern, and 56 in each broadside. All these cannons required three gun decks to hold them, one more than any earlier ship. It had a maximum sailing ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Tralee
Tralee ( ; ga, Trá Lí, ; formerly , meaning 'strand of the Lee River') is the county town of County Kerry in the south-west of Ireland. The town is on the northern side of the neck of the Dingle Peninsula, and is the largest town in County Kerry. The town's population (including suburbs) was 23,691 census, thus making it the eighth largest town, and List of urban areas in the Republic of Ireland by population, 14th largest urban settlement, in Ireland. Tralee is well known for the Rose of Tralee (festival), Rose of Tralee International Festival, which has been held annually in August since 1959. History Situated at the confluence of some small rivers and adjacent to marshy ground at the head of Tralee Bay, Tralee is located at the base of an ancient roadway that heads south over the Slieve Mish Mountains. On this old track is located a large boulder sometimes called Scotia's Grave, reputedly the burial place of an Egyptian Pharaoh's daughter. Anglo-Normans founded the to ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Music Of Ireland
Irish music is music that has been created in various genres on the island of Ireland. The indigenous music of the island is termed Irish traditional music. It has remained vibrant through the 20th and into the 21st century, despite globalising cultural forces. In spite of emigration and a well-developed connection to music influences from Britain and the United States, Irish traditional music has kept many of its elements and has itself influenced many forms of music, such as country and roots music in the United States, which in turn have had some influence on modern rock music. It has occasionally been fused with rock and roll, punk rock, and other genres. Some of these fusion artists have attained mainstream success, at home and abroad. In art music, Ireland has a history reaching back to Gregorian chants in the Middle Ages, choral and harp music of the Renaissance, court music of the Baroque and early Classical period, as well as many Romantic, late Romantic and t ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]