“Foggy Dew” (or “The Foggy Dew”) is the name of several ballads.
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The first song of this title was of English origin, sometimes called “Foggy, Foggy Dew”, and is a lamentful ballad of a young lover. It was published on a broadside around 1815, though there are very many versions: Cecil Sharp collected eight versions.[1] Burl Ives, who popularized the song in the United States in the 1940s, claimed that a version dated to colonial America. Ives was once jailed in Mona, Utah, for singing it in public, when authorities deemed it a bawdy song.[2] BBC Radio likewise restricted broadcast of the song to programmes covering folk tunes or the works of Benjamin Britten.[3] The tune is a late 18th or early 19th century revision of "When I First Came To Court", licensed in 1689.
When I was a bachelor, I liv'd all alone
I worked at the weaver's trade
And the only, only thing that I ever did wrong
Was to woo a fair young maid.
I wooed her in the wintertime
And in the summer, too
And the only, only thing that I did that was wrong
Was to keep her from the foggy, foggy dew.
One night she came to my bedside
When I was fast asleep.
She laid her head upon my bed
And she began to weep.
She sighed, she cried, she damn near died
She said what shall I do?
So I hauled her into bed and covered up her head
Just to keep her from the foggy foggy dew.
So, I am a bachelor, I live with my son
and we work at the weaver's trade.
And every single time that I look into his eyes
He reminds me of that fair young maid.
He reminds me of the wintertime
And of the summer, too,
And of the many, many times that I held her in my arms
Just to keep her from the foggy, foggy, dew.[4]
An Irish version of the same song starts :
When I was a bachelor, airy and young, I followed the roving trade,
And the only harm that ever I did was courting a servant maid.
I courted her all summer long, and part of the winter, too
And many's the time I rolled my love all over the foggy dew.''
There are several other versions of the song as well, some of which differ in minor ways.[5][6] The implication of this version is that the woman is pregnant, but this is unclear, as is the reason why, by the time of the last verse, she no longer lives with the narrator and their son. In the most popular versions of the song, however, the story is fragmented.
The song has some of the elements of the common rake archetype that is repeated throughout many English and Irish folk songs, in which a young man (often a soldier) comes to a young maid in the middle of the night, leaving her “in the family way”, and, in fact, leaving her for good. A significantly different version of the same song treats the encounter as a successful seduction by the young man of the maid, and does not mention the child. This dates from a broadside of 1689: A fright'ned Yorkshire damosel, or Fears dispers'd by pleasure set to the tune of, 'I met with a country lass', &c. [...]. A modern version was sung by The Spinners.[1] Various explanations have been put forward for the thing frightening the maid: foggy, foggy dew as a symbol of chastity, it really means bugaboo (an explanation favoured by Ewan MacColl, who recorded this song), or Robert Graves proposed that it might be a transliteration of an Irish word for Black Death.[1]
Popular conceptions of the meaning of this song are that the gentleman bachelor talked his servant, a fair young maid, into staying overnight rather than walk home in order to protect her from "the foggy, foggy dew." This ultimately resulted in an unplanned pregnancy. After giving birth, the woman either died or went away. The gentleman raised his illegitimate son on his own and did not marry, since he is still a bachelor at the end of the song.
Axel Schiøtz, tenor Herman D. Koppel piano acc. recorded it in Copenhagen on May 7, 1951. The song was released on the 78 rpm record His Master's Voice X 8009. It was arranged by Benjamin Britten.
A recording of the song by A. L. Lloyd can be found on 'English Drinking Songs' (Riverside Records (USA) LP, 1961. CD Reissue: Topic records) In 1958 a recording of the song was made by countertenor Alfred Deller, to be found on his album 'Western Wind'.
This tune and the lyrics are from the second edition of The Home and Community Songbook (1931).
Oh, a wan cloud was drawn o'er the dim weeping dawn
As to Shannon's side I return'd at last,
And the heart in my breast for the girl I lov'd best
Was beating, ah, beating, how loud and fast!
While the doubts and the fears of the long aching years
Seem'd mingling their voices with the moaning flood:
Till full in my path, like a wild water wraith,
My true love's shadow lamenting stood.
But the sudden sun kiss'd the cold, cruel mist
Into dancing show'rs of diamond dew,
And the dark flowing stream laugh'd back to his beam,
And the lark soared aloft in the blue;
While no phantom of night but a form of delight
Ran with arms outspread to her darling boy,
And the girl I love best on my wild throbbing breast
Hid her thousand treasures with cry of joy.
A version of this with different lyrics (by L.F. Milligan) was recorded by John McCormack for RCA Victor records 3 January 1913 in their Camden, New Jersey facility.[7] He was accompanied by pianist Spenser Clay.
Another song called “Foggy Dew” was written by Canon Charles O’Neill, a parish priest of Kilcoo and later Newcastle, County Down, in 1919.[8]
The music is from a manuscript that was in possession of Kathleen Dallat of Ballycastle. That manuscript gives Carl Hardebeck as the arranger.[9]
This song chronicles the Easter Uprising of 1916, and encourages Irishmen to fight for the cause of Ireland, rather than for the British, as so many young men were doing in World War I.
The Foggy Dew needs to be seen against the political background in Ireland in the aftermath of the Easter Rising and World War I.
As Keith Jeffery, Professor of Modern History at the University of Ulster, pointed out,[10] approximately 210,000 Irishmen joined up and served in the British forces during the war.
This created mixed feelings for many Irish people, particularly for those with nationalist sympathies. While they broadly supported the British war effort, they also felt that one of the moral justifications for the war, "the freedom of small nations" like Belgium and Serbia, should also be applied to Ireland, which at that time was under British rule.
In 1916, a radical group of Irish separatists led by James Connolly and Patrick Pearse decided to take advantage of the fact that Britain was pre-occupied by the war and stage a rebellion. In what became known as the Easter Rising, the rebels seized some of the major buildings in Dublin including the General Post Office.
The rebellion was quickly put down by British forces but the rebellion and, perhaps more importantly, the execution of the leaders that followed, marked a turning point for many Irish people.
Some had opposed the action of the rebels but, as Prof Jeffery points out,[11] the public revulsion at the executions added to the growing sense of alienation from the British Government.
Canon O'Neill was reflecting this sense of alienation when he wrote The Foggy Dew. In 1919, he[12] attended the first sitting of the new Irish Parliament, known as the Dail. The names of the elected members were called out, but many were absent. Their names were answered by the reply "faoi ghlas ag na Gaill" which means "locked up by the foreigner".
It had a profound effect on O'Neill and he went home and wrote the Foggy Dew. The song tells the story of the Easter Rising but more importantly, it tries to reflect the thoughts of many Irish nationalists at the time who had come to believe that the Irishmen who fought for Britain during the war should have stayed home and fought for Irish independence instead.
O'Neill sums up this feeling in the lines: ‘Twas far better to die ‘neath an Irish sky,Than at Suvla or Sud el Bar."
As down the glen one Easter morn to a city fair rode I
There Armed lines of marching men in squadrons passed me by
No pipe did hum, no battle drum did sound its dread tattoo
But the Angelus Bell o'er the Liffey's swell rang out through the foggy dew
Right proudly high over Dublin Town they hung out the flag of war
'Twas better to die 'neath an Irish sky than at Suvla or Sud-El-Bar
And from the plains of Royal Meath strong men came hurrying through
While Britannia's Huns, with their long range guns sailed in through the foggy dew
Oh the night fell black, and the rifles' crack made perfidious Albion reel
In the leaden rain, seven tongues of flame did shine o'er the lines of steel
By each shining blade a prayer was said, that to Ireland her sons be true
But when morning broke, still the war flag shook out its folds in the foggy dew
'Twas England bade our wild geese go, that "small nations might be free";
Their lonely graves are by Suvla's waves or the fringe of the great North Sea.
Oh, had they died by Pearse's side or fought with Cathal Brugha*
Their graves we'd keep where the Fenians sleep, 'neath the shroud of the foggy dew.
Oh the bravest fell, and the Requiem bell rang mournfully and clear
For those who died that Eastertide in the spring time of the year
And the world did gaze, in deep amaze, at those fearless men, but few,
Who bore the fight that freedom's light might shine through the foggy dew
As back through the glen I rode again and my heart with grief was sore
For I parted then with valiant men whom I never shall see more
But to and fro in my dreams I go and I kneel and pray for you,
For slavery fled, O glorious dead, when you fell in the foggy dew.
*One version mentions "Valera true", another leader in 1916 and later Taoiseach and, subsequently, President of Ireland.
The song (also sometimes known as “Down the Glen”) has been performed and recorded by most well-known Irish folk groups, including The Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem, The Dubliners, The Chieftains with Sinéad O'Connor, Shane MacGowan, and the Wolfe Tones. The song is also played before every set by the Dropkick Murphys and an Irish rock band known as the Young Dubliners have also done a cover. Sinéad O'Connor provided the vocals for a mournful version of the song on the Chieftains' 1995 collaboration album The Long Black Veil.
It was also performed by the Italian Epic Metal band Wotan in their second studio album Epos.
Another famous version of Foggy Dew has been recorded in Alan Stivell best-seller "Olympia" live album (1972), and his 1993 "Again" album (including Shane MacGowan's backing vocals).
The song "Livin' in America" by the Celtic rock band Black 47 is played and sung to the tune of the Foggy Dew.
The Chieftains and Sinéad O'Connor version of "The Foggy Dew" was voted "Best Duet" by BBC 6 Music, largely due to an organized effort by fans.
Serbian band Orthodox Celts recorded their version of the song, and released it on their second album The Celts Strike Again.
Croatian band Belfast Food have put their version of the song on the album Live in Rijeka.
German Celtic metal band Suidakra have put their version of the song on the album "Lays From Afar" (1999) as the album closer. It features only the first verse.