Foggy Dew (Irish ballad)

"Foggy Dew" is the name of several Irish ballads, and of an Irish lament. The song chronicles the Easter Uprising of 1916, and encourages Irishmen to fight for the cause of Ireland, rather than for the British Empire, as so many young men were doing in World War I.

Not to be confused with Foggy Dew (English song).

Early title

"The Foggy Dew" as the name of an Irish traditional song first appears in Edward Bunting's The Ancient Music of Ireland (1840),[1] where the tune is a different one than that mostly sung today (also different from the lament and the rebel song below). Bunting's source for the tune was a "J. Mc Knight, Belfast, 1839", but the same melody already appears in O'Farrell's Collection of National Irish Music for the Union Pipes (London, 1804), where it is called "Corraga Bawn".[2]

Easter Rising

Another song called “Foggy Dew” was written by Fr (later in life) Canon Charles O’Neill from Portglenone, County Antrim (1887–1963), a parish priest of Kilcoo and later Newcastle, County Down, sometime after 1919 when he was a curate at St. Peter's Cathedral, Belfast.[3][4]

The music is from a manuscript that was in possession of Kathleen Dallat, sister of Michael Dallat of Ballycastle. That manuscript gives Carl Hardebeck as the arranger.[5] It is the same air as the traditional love song The Moorlough Shore.

"The Foggy Dew" is a product of the political situation in Ireland in the aftermath of the Easter Rising and World War I.

Approximately 210,000 Irishmen joined up and served in the British forces during the war.[6] This created mixed feelings for many Irish people, particularly for those with nationalist sympathies. While they broadly supported the British war effort, they also felt that one of the moral justifications for the war, "the freedom of small nations" like Belgium and Serbia, should also be applied to Ireland, which at that time was under British rule.[7] The 1915 Gallipoli slaughter of the young and mainly middle-class Irishmen who had joined up in response to John Redmond's call turned many people against the war.

In 1916, Irish patriots led by James Connolly and Patrick Pearse, taking advantage of Britain being occupied by World War I, seized some of the major buildings in Dublin including the General Post Office, while others came out in Ashbourne and Galway in the Easter Rising.

The brutal response to the Rising, and the execution of its leaders that followed, marked a turning point for many Irish people. The public revulsion at the executions added to the growing sense of alienation from the British Government.[7]

Canon O'Neill reflected this alienation when he wrote The Foggy Dew commemorating the few hundred brave men who had risen out against what was then the most powerful empire in the world. In 1919, he[8] attended the first sitting of the new Irish Parliament, Dáil. The names of the elected members were called out, but many were absent. Their names were answered by the reply faoi ghlas ag na Gaill – "locked up by the foreigner".[8]

These events had a profound effect on O'Neill and some time after this he wrote The Foggy Dew telling the story of the Easter Rising and reflecting the thoughts of many Irish people at the time who now believed that the Irishmen who fought for Britain during the war should have stayed home and fought for Irish independence instead.

O'Neill sums up this feeling in the line ‘Twas far better to die ‘neath an Irish sky, Than at Suvla or Sud el Bar.[8]

Recording artists

The song (also sometimes known as Down the Glen) has been performed and recorded by most Irish traditional groups, including The Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem, The Dubliners, The Chieftains, Shane MacGowan and the Wolfe Tones among others.

References
  1. Bunting, Edward: The Ancient Music of Ireland (Dublin: Hodges & Smith, 1840), tune no. 150, p. 109; facsimile reprint, Dublin: Waltons, 1969.
  2. Fleischmann, Aloys (ed.): Sources of Irish Traditional Music c.1600–1855, 2 volumes (New York: Garland Publishing, 1998), ISBN 0-8240-6948-X, vol. 2, p. 717 and 1106, tunes no. 3913 and 6068.
  3. O'Boyle, Cathal (1973). Songs of the County Down. Skerries, Co. Dublin: Gilbert Dalton. ISBN 0-86233-012-2.
  4. Down & Connor Diocesan Archives in Belfast, record for Father Charles O'Neill
  5. Harte, Frank (1978). Songs of Dublin. Skerries, Co. Dublin: Gilbert Dalton. ISBN 0-946005-51-6.
  6. Keith Jeffery. Ireland and the Great War. (Cambridge University Press, 2000)
  7. "History - British History in depth: Ireland and World War One". BBC. Retrieved 2012-08-11.
  8. "History - 1916 Easter Rising - Rebel Songs (Part 4)". BBC.
  9. https://www.discogs.com/Major-Lingo-Ride/release/11661142
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