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Guitar: Wearin' o' the Green

2,046 views · Published 10 September 2009 · 3:12 · Indexed 1 November 2026

Channel: threelegsoman · 2009 · Music

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"The Wearing of the Green" is an anonymously-penned Irish street ballad dating to 1798. The context of the song is the repression around the time of the Irish Rebellion of 1798. Wearing a shamrock in the "caubeen" (hat) was a sign of rebellion and green was the colour of the Society of the United Irishmen, a republican revolutionary organisation. During the period, displaying revolutionary insignia was made punishable by hanging. Many versions of the lyrics exist.  The best-known version is by Dion Boucicault, adapted for his 1864 play Arragh na Pogue, or the Wicklow Wedding, set in County Wicklow during the 1798 rebellion. In the second verse, Boucicault's version recounts an encounter between the singer and Napper Tandy, an Irish rebel leader exiled in France. In earlier versions of the ballad, and the similar "Green Among the Cape", it is Napoleon Bonaparte who asks how Ireland is.
Boucicault's addition of the third and last verse is in notable contrast to the middle verse, in advocating emigration to America rather than staying in defiance. Boucicault himself fled to New York after leaving his wife for a young actress.

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