Ireland: The A-Z Irish Glossary - 'R' is for Rebel Songs
'Rebel Songs'
Traditional Irish lyric-based songs that celebrate the story of the fun jolly Irishmen and assassinates the perfidious Britons while they occupied our country.
A good rebel song will set the scene by enumerating the nefarious deeds of some cowardly moustache-twirling Englishman against the Irish peasantry before moving to the gripping details of his murder proper, and finishing with the rousing speech the guilty Irish patriot gave from the dock before being led off by the redcoats to be executed in some ingeniously bloodthirsty fashion. Pretty depressing stuff. Alternatively, the rebel song may conclude with the lament of the patriot's grey-haired mother or his colleen as she sees her son's lover's body dumped into the lime pit; this embellishment is an optional extra, and is not required by Irish law. (Well you never know!)
The rebel song operates on the principle that 800 years of dispossession, violence, and ethnic cleansing against the Irish people were a small price to pay for all the enjoyment the Brits gave us, really (!) - We wouldn't have so many great rebel songs to sing for a start!
There is a law of the Universe that states that those who sing rebel songs can never remember more than the first verse and the chorus and who will therefore repeat both endlessly and tunelessly until drink renders them mute or a fight starts, whichever happens first.