My latest novel And the Women Watch and Wait is set in Coburg, a northern suburb of Melbourne, during the Great War and its immediate aftermath. The characters are, mainly, from the Australian-Irish community and, as with my other novels, music plays a part in their lives. Over the next few months I’ll post some of the music mentioned.

Early in the novel Kate Burke, the main character, and her aunt visit the Broadmeadows Military Camp one Sunday. In 1914, tens of thousands visited the camp on Sundays to see family who had enlisted or to have a look at the camp and its surroundings. Military bands provided a musical background to the afternoons.
‘The brass band played through the afternoon and catered for all tastes. At one time The Wearing of the Green could be heard, at another the Hallelujah Chorus.’ Kerang Observer, Wed 9 Sep 1914, p. 2

The Wearing of the Green is a lament against the repression that followed the 1798 rebellion in Ireland against the British Crown and establishment. As Kate’s Aunty Mary says, ‘Strange for them to be playing a song about the English hanging Irishmen when a good number of the soldiers here are sons of Irishmen.’
But it was the music, not the words, that was played. For most it would simply be a catchy tune.

Here it is played by the the Band of the 1st Battalion Irish Guards.

This is The Wearing of the Green as a march and, to my ear, so fast I can barely recognise it.

And finally, The Wearing of the Green, in its more usual form, sung by John McCormack, a hugely popular Irish singer of the first part of the twentieth century.