Mermaid

[H2O Man]

5. Thanks for

a very interesting response.

European "war songs" can be fascinating to study. A lot of scholars believe that up until around the industrial revolution, it was the female elders who taught them to the children in their groups (although that does not imply that they wrote them).

While Ireland has a reputation for "glorious" songs of battle (happy in war, sad in love), plenty of other European cultures did, too. In fact, it seems that it really wasn't until that industrial revolution that there came to be "unhappy" songs of war -- perhaps they were written, but didn't become "best-sellers"? Then those songs came to reflect the pain that war brings, and to both ask serious questions, and make moral arguments against war.

The old Irish lyrics to the song we know call "When Johnny Comes Marching Home," for example, aren't anything one would burst into "hurrah! hurrah!" about. Rather, it was among the most haunting lines ever authored.