Come out Ye Black and Tans

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Come out Ye Black and Tans is a folk song by the Irish songwriter and singer Dominic Behan . It is about the Irish-British conflict in Dublin in the 1920s.

background

The song refers to the Irish War of Independence and the IRA , which together with the Republican party Sinn Féin proclaimed an independent Irish republic.

The title refers to the Black and Tans , a British paramilitary group formed by the British government in the 1920s to combat the IRA. Their task was to suppress and combat the republican freedom movements in Ireland. With the help of British police forces, she was extremely brutal.

Behan himself comes from a very politically active family; his father was a member of the IRA and fought against British troops in the Irish War of Liberation. Dominic Behan was also a member of the IRA's youth organization and published several poems in their newspaper.

Content of the song

The song begins with the narrator, who was living at the time of the Irish-British conflict, singing about his father and how he “asked the neighbors to come out” after going to the pub in the evenings with the request to come out ye Black and Tans, come out and fight me like a man (German: Come out you Black and Tans and fight me like a man).

Furthermore, the phrase Show your wife how you won medals down in Flanders alludes to the fact that many members of the Black and Tans fought in Belgium in the First World War . At the same time they are asked to tell how they were chased from the streets of the village of Killeshandra by the IRA.

In the further course of the song reference is made to some earlier freedom struggles and fighters, such as the Easter Rising of 1916.

Further use

The song soon became a national anthem of the Irish independence movement and is one of Dominic Behan's best known pieces. The later generations of the IRA, although ideologically had little in common with the 1920s movement, also used the song as an anthem.

The daily "Irish Independent" reported in the context of the Old Firm Derby that it was a stereotype that supporters of Celtic Glasgow had Come out Ye Black and Tans as the ringtone of their cell phones and that "Undefeated Army" (one of the IRA's mottos) Would wear shirts.

The song group Oktoberklub used the melody for their song "Es geht die Söhne" about a young man who is apparently on his way to take up his service in the Soviet Army .

swell

See also