THE WILD COLONIAL BOY
As you can hear, I sure can’t sing so well, but last week being in Pat Cohan’s Pub in the County Mayo village of Cong where the beloved John Wayne-Maureen O’Hara move The Quiet Man was filmed… well, after a pint or two of Guinness, I was persuaded by your fellow TTPers with me to give the movie’s theme song a try.
The Wild Colonial Boy is a ballad of an Irish lad from Castlemaine in County Kerry who sailed off to colonial Australia in the 1820s to become a “bushranger” or outlaw fighting the oppressive local authorities. It’s been sung by famous artists from Burl Ives to Mick Jagger because it’s the same romantic-heroic saga as Robin Hood and Jesse James.
It’s particularly poignant now, for now we Americans are being called upon to fight against tyranny and oppression.
For all our lives, the tyranny we had to fight hot or cold was foreign, from Nazi Germany to Communist Russia. Today is different – the enemy is domestic, inside our gates.
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