Here's a thing that catches people off guard. You'll hear The Wearing of the Green at a Paddy's Day session, everybody in their green jumpers and their plastic shamrock hats, grand craic all round — and the actual SONG they're half-humming is a furious little ballad about a time when wearing that very shamrock could get you hanged. Not metaphorically hanged. Hanged hanged.
I love that. I love that a song this angry survived by being beautiful. Because it IS beautiful — that opening line, "O Paddy dear, and did ye hear the news that's goin' round" — it sounds like a fella leaning in to tell you something over a pint, and what he tells you is grim as the grave.
A Bit of History
Right, history. And I have to be honest with you the way I always am about this stuff, because folk origins are murky and I'd rather say "we're not sure" than make something up.
The song comes out of the 1798 rebellion — the United Irishmen rising — and the green of the title is the green of that movement, the shamrock and the green ribbon worn as a sign of where your loyalties lay. The early street-ballad versions, the anonymous ones sung in the years after, carry that raw "they're hangin' men and women for the wearin' o' the green" line, which refers to the very real repression of the period. The song was passed mouth to mouth, printed on cheap broadsheets, and like most street ballads nobody put their name to it. That's the traditional core, and that's the public-domain version I'm giving you below.
Now — and this is where I have to be careful — the version a lot of people half-remember was reworked decades later by Dion Boucicault for one of his stage plays in the 1860s, where he added new verses and gave it a fresh ending. Boucicault's an interesting fella but his additions are a separate, later layer. The traditional 1798 street-ballad text is the old, anonymous, public-domain one, and that's what I'm sticking to here.
So when did it get FIXED in print? Murky. Street ballads of this kind were circulating from the early 1800s onward. I'm not going to give you a confident date because I haven't got one, and I'd sooner trust you with the uncertainty than dress it up.
The shamrock detail at the heart of it — that's the bit that stops people. Green wasn't always just festive. For a long stretch it was the colour you could be punished for. Worth a thought next March.
Lyrics
O Paddy dear, and did ye hear the news that's goin' round? The shamrock is by law forbid to grow on Irish ground! No more Saint Patrick's Day we'll keep, his colour can't be seen, For there's a cruel law against the wearin' o' the green.
I met with Napper Tandy, and he took me by the hand, And he said, "How's poor old Ireland, and how does she stand?" She's the most distressful country that ever yet was seen, For they're hangin' men and women there for wearin' o' the green.
Then since the colour we must wear is England's cruel red, Sure Ireland's sons will ne'er forget the blood that they have shed. You may take the shamrock from your hat and cast it on the sod, But 'twill take root and flourish still, though under foot 'tis trod.
When the law can stop the blades of grass from growin' as they grow, And when the leaves in summer time their colour dare not show, Then I will change the colour, too, I wear in my caubeen, But till that day, please God, I'll stick to wearin' o' the green.
How to Sing It
This one isn't a roof-raiser, and you mustn't sing it like one. It's slow, it's level, it carries weight. Don't belt it. Lean in like the fella in the first line who's telling you the news.
The trick is the steadiness — let "they're hangin' men and women there" land plain and quiet, no theatrics, and it'll go through the room like a draught. A bodhrán, soft, suits it. So does nothing at all but a voice.
It pairs well later in an evening with The Foggy Dew if you want to keep that thread of history going, or you can lift the mood straight after with The Wild Rover — a session needs light and shade both. And of course you'll find the full lyrics of our own dear Rattlin' Bog whenever you fancy something to lift the heart again.
Sing it honest. That's all it asks.
Slán go fóill, BogLord2002
P.S. — Rattlin (the cat) is a tabby, not a scrap of green on him, but he sat on my knee the whole time I typed this out. He's a fierce one for the sad songs.