|
"Foggy Dew" (or "The Foggy Dew") is the name of two distinct Irish songs. The earlier version (originally an English song), is a lamentful ballad of a young lover.
- When I was a bachelor, airy and young, I followed the roving trade,
- And the only harm that ever I did was courting a servant maid.
- I courted her all summer long, and part of the winter, too
- And many's the time I rode my love all over the foggy dew.
The song has some of the elements of the common rake archetype that is repeated throughout many Irish folk songs, in which a young man (often a soldier) comes to a young maid in the middle of the night, leaving her "in the family way", and, in fact, leaving her for good. In this song, however, it is the maid who comes to the young man's bed, "for fear of the foggy dew", and it is she that leaves him and marries another man (who is blissfully unaware that his wife had a child with another man). Ewan MacColl, who recorded this song, states that the original words had it as the "bugaboo" that the maid feared.
The other song called "Foggy Dew" was written by Peadar Kearney, who also wrote "Amhrán na bhFiann" ("Soldier's Song"), the national anthem of the Republic of Ireland. This song chronicles the Easter Uprising of 1916, and encourages Irishmen to fight for the cause of Ireland, rather than of England, as so many young men were doing in World War I.
- 'Twas England bade out wild geese go
- That small nations might be free;
- Their lonely graves are by Suvla's waves
- On the fringe of the great North Sea.
- But had they died by Pearse's side
- Or fought with Valera true,
- Their graves we'd keep where the Fenians sleep,
- 'Neath the hills of the foggy dew.
This song (also sometimes known as "Down the Glen") has been performed and recorded by most well-known Irish folk groups, including The Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem and The Dubliners.
|
