Tuesday, March 19, AD 2024 6:41am

Pat Murphy of the Irish Brigade

Something for the weekend.  Pat Murphy of the Irish Brigade sung by Bobby Horton, who has waged a one man crusade to bring Civil War music to modern audiences.  Immigrants, especially Irish and German, were a mainstay of the Army of the Potomac, and wherever you have Irish fighting you are going to have Irish songs about the fighting.

For the great Gaels of Ireland

Are the men that God made mad,

For all their wars are merry,

And all their songs are sad.

G. K. Chesterton

Says Pat to his mother, “It looks strange to me

Brothers fighting in such a queer manner,

But I’ll fight till I die if I never get killed

For America’s bright starry banner.”

 

Far away in the East came a dashing young blade,

And the song he was singing so gayly,

‘Twas honest Pat Murphy of the Irish Brigade

And the song of the splintered shillelagh.

 

The morning soon broke, and poor Paddy awoke,

He found rebels to give satisfaction,

And the drummer was beating the Devil’s tatoo,

They were calling the boys into action.

 

Far away in the East was a dashing young blade,

And the song he was singing so gayly,

Was honest Pat Murphy of the Irish Brigade

And the song of the splintered shillelagh.

 

Sure, the day after battle, the dead lay in heaps,

And Pat Murphy lay bleeding and gory,

With a hole in his head by some enemy’s ball

That ended his passion for glory.

 

No more in the camp will his letters be read,

Or the song be heard singing so gayly,

For he died far away from the friends that he loved,

And far from the land of shillelagh.

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