The Boys of Wexford: A Song History

← Back to Browse By Song

In 1798 the United Irishmen, a society founded in 1791 to seek parliamentary reform (including Catholic emancipation) and an end to British rule, rose in arms; County Wexford was one of only two regions where the rising became widespread, and there it took on a sectarian character in which many Protestants were killed or driven out.[1] The Wexford rebels were defeated by government forces at Vinegar Hill on 21 June 1798.[1] "The Boys of Wexford" looks back on that rising; its words were printed by the Limerick-born poet and doctor Robert Dwyer Joyce in his first book, Ballads, Romances, and Songs, published by James Duffy in Dublin in 1861.[2][3] Joyce set them to an air of the same name, with a footnote calling the piece "The fragments of an old song."[2]

Aquatint of ruined abbey walls and a tower in a green landscape

Jonathan Fisher, Remains of the abbey etc. at Ferns Co. Wexford, aquatint, 1795, from Scenery of Ireland. A County Wexford view, shown for its place; it has no connection to the song.

Joyce's verses begin with the daughter of a yeomanry captain offering to join a United Irishman and fight beside him, then recount the rebels' battles, blaming drink rather than courage for their defeats.[2][4] The song claims a victory at Ross, although the rebel attack on New Ross on 5 June 1798 was in fact repelled.[1][4] Robert's brother, P. W. Joyce, printed the air as "We Are the Boys of Wexford" in Ancient Irish Music (1873), noting that he had picked it up from their father when young and that it had once been sung to English words from 1798, with a chorus unlike Robert's refrain.[2][3][5] The tune appears in O'Neill's Music of Ireland (1903), and the Traditional Tune Archive lists it as an air or march in G.[6] The Traditional Ballad Index, citing Zimmermann, reports that Parnell's followers took it up as a rallying song in the 1890s.[4] The Index also notes a revision by Edmund Leamy, published in 1922, and gives the song's Roud number as 3015.[4]

President John F. Kennedy spoke on the quay at New Ross on 27 June 1963, in the town his great-grandfather had left for East Boston.[7] One of about 600 children chosen to sing for him at the GAA park in New Ross recalled that, once his helicopter had landed, the choir sang "The Boys of Wexford," and that Kennedy took a copy of the words and joined in.[8] Shelley Stevens includes it in Baker's Dozen #1: Celtic Music, thirteen well-known Celtic melodies arranged for solo mountain dulcimer in DAD tuning, with standard notation and tablature, published by Fingers Of Steel.[9]

Our book that contains the song "The Boys of Wexford"

Sources

  1. Britannica: "Irish Rebellion".
  2. Internet Archive: "Ballads, Romances, and Songs" by Robert Dwyer Joyce (Dublin: James Duffy, 1861).
  3. Library Ireland: "Robert Dwyer Joyce" (from The Cabinet of Irish Literature).
  4. The Traditional Ballad Index: "The Boys of Wexford".
  5. Internet Archive: "Ancient Irish Music" by P. W. Joyce (Dublin: McGlashan and Gill, 1873).
  6. The Traditional Tune Archive: "Boys of Wexford (The)".
  7. The American Presidency Project: "Remarks at the Quay in New Ross" (John F. Kennedy, June 27, 1963).
  8. The Irish Times: "He sang 'Boys of Wexford' with us".
  9. Fingers Of Steel: "Shelley Stevens, Baker's Dozen #1: Celtic Music".
  10. Image: Jonathan Fisher, Remains of the abbey etc. at Ferns Co. Wexford, aquatint, 1795, from Scenery of Ireland. Library of Congress.

← Back to Browse By Song