An Irishman's Diary

IT SEEMS like only last week I attended the opening, whereas in fact it was in late 2006. So it’s rather sobering to be reminded by an e-mail from the National Museum that “Soldiers and Chiefs”, the epic military exhibition at Collins Barracks, has now lasted longer than the first World War.

Not that the show is especially concerned with that war, or any other conflict in particular. It’s an overview of 400 years of Irish military history. Which, considering the number of battles fought on this island in that period, combined with the Irish propensity for getting involved in other people’s struggles – and often fighting on both sides – is a very broad canvas. The exhibition’s keynote, arguably, is the tale of Myles Keogh, a 19th-century Carlow man who claimed to have fought in the French foreign legion. He might have made that bit of his life story up. But he certainly did fight for the Vatican army against Garibaldi’s forces in 1860, and then crossed the Atlantic to distinguish himself on the Union side of the American civil war, a conflict in which the older version of Irish neutrality – having combatants on both sides, killing each other – reached its apogee.

Keogh only ran out of luck in 1876, at a place called Little Bighorn. Where, poignant as his last stand was, it at least has the consolation for Irish readers that there were no fellow Paddies (that we know of) shooting at him, alongside Crazy Horse and his men.

But back to the first World War. And as it happens, the Collins Barracks exhibition – having garnered awards and a million visitors since it opened – will mark its fifth anniversary next week (November 12th) with a day of talks related to that conflict. Among them, I see, is one by Oliver Fallon of the Connaught Rangers Association on the theme: “Snow and mosquitoes – the Connaught Rangers on the Salonika Front 1915-1917”.

I ONLYmention that talk in particular because the name "Salonika" immediately set me singing a certain bawdy Cork ballad made famous by Jimmy Crowley. You're probably singing it now too, reader; although, if you're like me, you may have noticed that, famous as it is, you can't remember the words.

So after reading the National Museum’s e-mail, I looked up both the lyrics and the song’s history, insofar as it has one. And I realised that part of the difficulty in memorising it is that the ballad is itself is a theatre of conflict. Maybe this was deliberate, because it could be seen as a debate between two Cork women on different sides of the war effort.

But it’s also likely that, whatever the politics of the original author, there were verses added by others. In any case, the version popularised by Jimmy Crowley juxtaposes competing views about the war. I should explain that, decades before it became a lifestyle choice in 1990s America, being a “slacker” was a pejorative term for men who refused to enlist.

Hence the verse “Now when the war is over/What will the slackers do?/They’ll be all around the soldiers/For the loan of a bob or two” is immediately followed by the riposte: “But when the war is over?What will the soldiers do?/They’ll be walking around with a leg-and-a-half/And the slackers will have two.” And so it continues, although it’s not always clear which side is talking.

Having seized the initiative with that last verse, the anti-war narrator pushes home the advantage with an extended rant about government taxation: “And they tax their pound o’ butter/They tax their halfpenny bun/But still with all their taxes/They can’t beat the bloody Hun./And they tax th’ould Coliseum/They tax St Mary’s Hall/Why don’t they tax the bobbies/Wi’ their backs ag’in’ the wall?”

Then the pro-war lobby retaliates by opening up yet another front – Cork people’s implied propensity, when not busy fighting foreign wars, to breed: “But when the war is over/What will the slackers do?/For every kid in Amerikay/In Cork there will be two/For they takes us out to Blarney/They lays us on the grass/They puts us in the family way/And leaves us on our arse.”

After that, the scene switches to a comfortable domestic setting, presumably the house of a soldier’s wife, benefiting as she does both from remittances of her husband’s pay and the government’s “separation allowance”, viz: “There’s lino in the parlour/And in the kitchen too/A glass-backed chevonier/That we got from Dicky Glue.” (No I have no idea what a chevonier is, nor do any of my dictionaries. Dickie Glue, apparently, was a Cork pawnbroker.) But the last word, at least in Jimmy Crowley’s version, goes to the anti-war side: “And never marry a soldier/A sailor or a Marine/But keep your eye on the Sinn Féin boy/With his yellow, white and green.”

Whether that was the intention of the original author is questionable, although maybe Cork readers will be able to provide enlightenment. Either way, it strikes me that Soldiers and Chiefs could do with adding yet another room to the exhibition, dealing with how Ireland’s wars were fought in song. In “Soldiers and Slackers”, there’s a ready-made subtitle.