[1973:] (Original: The Merry Ploughboy
Hurrah for the scarlet and the blue, and the blue
Helmets glittering in the sun
And the horses gallop like lightning
With a 15-pounder gun
And no more will I go harvesting
Or gathering the golden corn
For I've been and took the shilling
And I'm off tomorrow morn
Oh I once was a merry ploughboy I was a-ploughing of the fields all day
Till a very funny thought came to me that I should roam away
For I'm sick and tired of country life since the day that I was born
So I've been and joined the RHA and I'm off tomorrow morn
I've laid aside my pick and spade and I've laid aside my plough
And I've laid aside my two-tined fork, I shall not want it now
For there's little sport in England up in the Yorkshire dales so high
And beneath the king's own standard, aye, we'll conquer or we'll die
But there's one thing I must tell you of the girl I leave behind
And I hope she will prove true to me and I'll prove true in kind
And when I do return again a sergeant's wife she'll be
With three gold stripes across my arm in the Royal Horse Artillery)
These days the parody, supposedly written by Dominic Behan when he was but twelve years old, is better known than this untypically patriotic song of the joys of military life. It is easy to see how RHA became IRA in the Irish rebel version. The song is believed to have been composed originally by John J. Blockley in the 1870ies [...]. (Dallas, Wars 18)