The Birmingham age-herald., 1910-03-13

| TO all classes of the Irish race there is | no song more dear than .'The Wearing oi | the Green" On St. Patrick's Day, March | l7, the day of the shamrock, on the put | tonhole nearest the heart, IS carried the | rational emblem, and on the lips or all | true Irishmen, at some time during the | cav. are repeated the words of the song IS the late great Irish actor, Dlon Bou- l cicault arranged them from a song or Ltotably several generations earlier, the | author of the original of which no one has ever been able to learn.
 A song is the song of a nation only when 1t is a song men sing when they face death, or for the singing Of which they are willing to risk Imprisonment.
 There is no method in the musical mad ne ss of fighting men. This has been denl- cnstrated In the spirited French Mar aeillase'' in little quickstep, musicaily orthless and fitted with any woris such as "Yenkee Doodle and Dixie or in a solemn hymn such as "Ein Feste Burg. " In the trenches of the Crimea the song was Annie Laurie" In the trenches oi Cuba 1t was A Hot Time in the Old Town Tonight" There was more reason for the lads from Kent and forksnlre to choose a Scotch love song for their hymn tefore action'' than for Yankee boys to discard their atlonal airs ior ias'iN'e tune-but they did.
 So there can be no argument why irish- y,en from one end Of the world to the orher gre stirred by ..The Wearing or the Green.n as they are by no other earthly sounds. rich as their mother land IS Tn rival melodies
 If has a proud history-this old song ,,.bicb once brought forth a royal prescript aeainst it's being sung in the British do- minions. Long before that evcntful sing mo if sent men to the scaffold because if svn,bolized a patriotism that was the as surance of death Prison was the penal ty down almost to the present day' he, men never cease to sing II. ..
 The origin of "The Wearing or the csreen, is not easy to trace. The we'll ruown welsh chronicles of the Eistedd- rod furnish s clue to the genealogy or most of the old sorgs or England anu Scotland. as well as those of Wales. But tbe beginnings of Irish melodies are iost ii, inc raze of traditions that merge into folklore. ....
 Antiouarians are of the opinion that ,t s,st the tune was ''keen"-the heredi- tary funeral song of cne of the royal ' tonses of the island before the days or Cromwell. Certain it is that 1t was a song of the camp when James maoe ms hopeless stand. But the words are iost and 1t is not until i745 that IL IS iouno
 linked with stanzas that begin;
 The hikes must be toge ther
 when tbe moon is On the green
 The present words-the present song
 In faet-nay. however, be accredited to D,on Roucicault, the actor The words are his written to the ancient melody and
 Introduced by linn close to 50 years ago ir the popular Irish play, "Arrah ma posue." They are sung by shaun the ost. ~ ,-
 If was on the evening of March 22 lsco tbat ",rhe Wearing of the Green in it's ,nesent form was first sung. >The play was nroduced at the Princess theatre, London. soon after Clerkenwen prison was h,own up by the Fenians. There was . storm of indignation in London and Roucicault's English associates and ad- rn,rers advised him not to sing it, but sing it he would and did. and it almost caused a riot.
 It resulted in the cabinet ministers Of inc late Queen victoria issuing an edict rrohibiting the singing of the song in the British dominions. and for years, although if thrilled the heart of every 1rishman, it vas never heard in public in England.
 If Boucicault could have lived until the Queen made her last visit to the Emerald Isle. when she consented to the wearing or the shamrock he would have seen, al the royal party landed from her majesty's yacht. the dragons, fusileers and lanc- CTS drawn up in full uniform to salute