The Famine Battalion

The Chieftains ( irish music's long famed heroes ) have brought out an album of Irish and Mexican music. It's based on the story of "Los Patricios". I had never heard of them before. There were an irish ( and other ethnic) battalion that fought for Mexico against the US in the Mexican American War.

Many of those who fought in Texas were recruited as they stepped off the Famine ships that had had brought them from Ireland to America - from hunger to horror. Some of them eventually decided that the Mexican army suited them better. 30 of them were hanged at Chatapulpec as the us flag was raised above the town.

Their story is quite simply a tragedy - see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_Patrick's_Battalion  .Apparently,The Mexican Government commemorate los patricios with a piped lament every year.

The Famine Battalion.

   Behind the guns,
   In Monterey
   You stood
   Beside Your brother
   In gunsmoke and noise
   Beneath a flag of green
   You stood
   Beside Your brother.

The soil smelt sweet
The weather warm
As you crushed it in your hand
Blighted, black
and rotten
You cursed ill-favoured land.

And the ships that sailed
To life and Texas
Meant you survived the famine
But waitin' on
The other shore
Was a war for that famine batallion.

It's a long way from Leitrim
To the shores of Mexico.
It's a long way from one side to the other,
A uniform's a uniform
And guns can point both ways,
But a brother will always be a brother.

And now the pipes
Seem out of place
As they lament your slaughter
As the spangled banner rose
Above Chapultepec
And the Churubusco river