Dublin City Ramblers - Come Out Ye Black and Tans (Ireland, 1974)
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 19 ส.ค. 2024
- Written by Dominic Behan, brother of Brendan, from the perspective of their Irish Republican Army father Stephen Behan, who drunkenly taunts their neighbors with the insult, "Come out ye Black and Tans."
The Black and Tans, or Dúchrónaigh in the Irish, were an auxiliary force assembled by the British colonial government to help the Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC) fight the IRA during the Irish War of Independence (1919-1921). They were reviled for their brutality and depravity, particularly their attacks on civilians. A subtlety of the song that I only recently grasped, thanks to Wikipedia, is that the elder Behan was not directing his belligerence at actual members of the Royal Irish Constabulary, but at his working class Dublin neighbors, both Catholic and Protestant, who were too eager to collaborate with the British government.
This song has been done by many different performers, including, most successfully, The Wolfe Tones.
[Excerpt]
"Come out ye Black and Tans
Come out and fight me like a man
Show your wives how you won medals down in Flanders
Tell her how the IRA made you run like hell away
From the green and lovely lanes of Killashandra
Come tell us how you slew
Them poor Arabs two by two
Like Zulus they had spears and bow and arrows
How bravely you faced each one
With your 16-pounder gun
And you drove them poor natives to theirs 'morrows"