Garryowen (II)

DESCRIPTION: "Let Bacchus's sons be not dismayed"; "booze and sing" ;"take delight in smashing the Limerick lamps" and fighting in the streets. Doctors can fix our bruises. Break windows and doors. Beat bailiffs. "Where'er we go they dread the name Of Garryowen"
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1839 (Croker-PopularSongsOfIreland)
KEYWORDS: bragging violence drink nonballad doctor
FOUND IN:
REFERENCES (6 citations):
Croker-PopularSongsOfIreland, pp. 230-237, "Garryowen" (1 text)
Winstock-SongsAndMusicOfTheRedcoats, pp. 103-105, "Garryowen" (1 text, 1 tune)
Hylands-Mammoth-Hibernian-Songster, p. 144, "Garryowen" (1 text)
ADDITIONAL: Kathleen Hoagland, editor, One Thousand Years of Irish Poetry (New York, 1947), p. 264, "Garryowen"
H. Halliday Sparling, Irish Minstrelsy (London, 1888), pp. 478-479, 511, "Garryowen"
Thomas J. Craughwell, _The Greatest Brigade: How the Irish Brigade Cleared the Way to Victory in the American Civil War_, 2011(I use the 2013 Crestline illustrated paperback), p. 85, "(Garryowen)"
NOTES [297 words]: Croker-PopularSongsOfIreland: "Garryowen, in English, 'Owen's Garden,' is a suburb of Limerick."
Digital Tradition: "Official marching tune of Custer's Seventh Cavalry."
Croker-PopularSongsOfIreland quoting a letter of 1833: Two of the characters in the song [Johnny Connell and Darby O'Brien] "were two squireens in Limerick, and about the time the song was written, between the years 1770 and 1780, devil-may-care sort of fellows, who defied all authority." The Digital Tradition version omits four of the seven verses from Croker, and adds none, and the verses mentioning Connell and O'Brien are among the missing: Connell went to Cork and O'Brien leapt over the dock, apparently at sentencing.
Croker-PopularSongsOfIreland: "Speaking of the enjoyments of the people of Limerick at fair time or on festival days, Fitzgerald and MacGregor notice in their history, a fondness for music of the fiddle or bagpipe. 'Amongst the airs selected upon these occasions, 'Patrick's Day,' and 'Garryowen,' always hold a distinguished place.'"
The only obvious connection between "Garryowen (I)" and "Garryowen (II)" is the last line of the chorus: "From Garryowen in glory!"/"For Garryowen na glora" - BS
Regarding the Seventh Cavalry, Thomas J. Craughwell, The Greatest Brigade: How the Irish Brigade Cleared the Way to Victory in the American Civil War, 2011(I use the 2013 Crestline illustrated paperback), p. 85, reports that Colonel Custer heard an Irish soldier sing "Garryowen" and adopted it for the Seventh Cavalry, and that it was said to have played at the battle of the Little Bighorn -- but I don't trust the sources on that. More definite is the statement on p. 84 of Craughwell that it was the marching song of the Irish Brigade of the Army of the Potomac in the Civil War. - RBW
Last updated in version 6.1
File: CrPS230

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