MP that Goes Shilly Shally, The

DESCRIPTION: An MP says he's a good Protestant but does not speak out or vote on critical issues. He won't insist on letting the Bible into school. "He hates the name of 'Orangeman,' 'They go it far too strong; They hit too hard at Popery, And that is very wrong!'"
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1987 (Smyth/Bush/Long-OrangeLark)
KEYWORDS: Ireland humorous nonballad political religious
FOUND IN:
REFERENCES (1 citation):
Smyth/Bush/Long-OrangeLark 30, "The MP that Goes Shilly Shally" (1 text)
CROSS-REFERENCES:
cf. "Lucy Long" (tune, according to Smyth/Bush/Long-OrangeLark)
NOTES [144 words]: Smyth/Bush/Long-OrangeLark: "An attack on a Parliamentarian who was a Mister Looking-Both-Ways." - BS
This sort of behavior was apparently a significant issue in Ulster. Robert Kee, in The Bold Fenian Men (being volume II of The Green Flag), Penguin, 1972, p. 102, talks of the response of William Johnston [for whom see "William Johnston of Ballykilbeg"] to such people: "At [a meeting in 1868] the resentment felt by rank and file Orangemen for the upper-class conservatives was particularly marked. Such conservatives, said Johnston, liked their votes very much but they disliked the name of Orangemen. They had used the Orangemen for thirty years and it was 'now time to put their members of Parliament through their catechism.'" Johnston in fact did so, running for Parliament himself and taking the seat even though neither major party supported him. - RBW
File: OrLa030

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