Black and Tans

Black and Tans
Author: Dominic Behan

I was born on a Dublin street where the Royal drums do beat
And the loving English feet they tramped all over us,
And each and every night when me father’d come home tight
He’d invite the neighbors outside with this chorus:

CHORUS
So come out you black and tans,
Come out and fight me like a man
Show your wife how you won medals fown in Flanders
Tell them how the IRA
Made you run like hell away,
From the green and lovely lanes in Killashandra.

Come let me hear you tell
How you slandered brave Pernell,
How you fought him well and truly persecuted,
Where are the snears and jeers
That that give out a little cheer
When our leaders of sixteen were executed.

Come tell us how you slew
Them old Arabs two by two
Like the Zulus they had spears and bows and arrows,
How you bravely faced each one
With your sixteen pound of gun
And you frightened them poor natives to the marrow. CHORUS

Allen, Larkin, and O’Brien–
How you bravely called them swine!
Robert Emmett who you hung and drew and quartered!
High upon that scaffold high,
How you murdered Henry Joy!
And our Croppy Boys from Wexford you did slaughter! CHORUS

The day is coming fast
And the time is here at last,
When each yeoman will be cast aside before us,
And if there be a need
Sure my kids wil sing, “Godspeed!”
To a verse or two of Steven Beehan’s chorus. CHORUS

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