Foot and Mouth Disease, The

DESCRIPTION: An Englishman plunders a girl's father's land, leaving only the sheep he thinks have "foot and mouth" disease. If the singer marries her they can "save the herds and my father's life." The diseases "from England Were the cloven hoof and the dirty tongue"
AUTHOR: Joseph Plunkett (1887-1916) (per OLochlainn-IrishStreetBallads)
EARLIEST DATE: 1939 (OLochlainn-IrishStreetBallads)
KEYWORDS: marriage farming hardtimes England Ireland patriotic sheep father disease
FOUND IN: Ireland
REFERENCES (1 citation):
OLochlainn-IrishStreetBallads 8A, "The Foot and Mouth Disease" (1 text, 1 tune)
Roud #3069
CROSS-REFERENCES:
cf. "Youghal Harbour" (tune)
NOTES [88 words]: O Lochlainn does not explicitly identify the Joseph Plunkett who wrote this, but it appears that it was the Irish revolutionary who was one of the leaders of the 1916 Rising. According to Ruth Dudley Edwards, The Seven: The Lives and Legacies of the Founding Fathers of the Irish Republic, Oneworld Books, 2016, p. 173, he was a poet, if not a very successful one, and obviously he had a very low opinion of English rule! And p. 186 says he was a fiddler, so it would be no surprise to find him setting his poems to music. - RBW
Last updated in version 4.0
File: OLoc008A

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