Day 34 #100DaysOfOldDays

Irelands favourite folk song is The Green Fields of France. The song was originally called No Man’s Land and was written by Scottish-born Australian songwriter, Eric Bogle in 1976. It’s a story of a man stopping by the graveside of a young Irish WW1 soldier, Willie McBride, killed in his prime at the age of nineteen. The man sits by the grave to reflect on the waste of the life of the young soldier, and others like him.

The anti-war song was written to address the prejudice against the Irish in Britain, a year after the Birmingham and Guildford bombings. A reminder that many Irishmen died in the war while serving for the British Army.

The Furey Brothers and Davey Arthur’s version of the song, The Green Fields of France, was recorded in 1979 and it remained in the Irish charts for twenty eight weeks.

I think the most significant verse of this song is the last one.

Ah young Willie McBride, I can’t help wonder why

Do those that lie here know why did they die?

And did they believe when they answered the cause

Did they really believe that this war would end wars?

Well the sorrow, the suffering, the glory, the pain

The killing and dying, were all done in vain

For young Willie McBride, it all happened again

And again, and again, and again, and again.