Grim's Hall

More Songs from Ireland:

Here is a piece of an old Orangeman song that speaks properly of certain fighters in Iraq:

United in blood to the country�s disgrace,
They secretly shoot those they dare not to face;
But whenever we catch the sly rogues in the field,
A handful of soldiers makes hundreds to yield;
The cowards collect but to raise our renown,
For as soon as we fire the croppies lie down.

The song is called "Croppies Lie Down," where a "croppie" is one of the United Irishmen of 1798, who wore their hair short, rather than long in the manner of the old aristocracy. This page is a friend to the United Irishmen, who advocated and upheld the principles of classical liberalism. Most of the founders were educated in Scotland, where David Hume and others had created the philosophical movement that gave us our American constitution. Rather than being a sectarian group, the United Irishmen were a group of Protestants from Ulster who united--thus the name--with Catholic Irishmen who also believed in the classical liberal principles of the Scottish Enlightenment.

"Croppies Lie Down" is thus not a song I've often sung, but I can't help reflect on how appropriate it is to the current moment. Why, there's even this line:

Should France e�er attempt, by fraud or by guile...