Luke Kelly The Foggy Dew (lyrics on screen)

The inspiration for The Foggy Dew came from parish priest Canon Charles O Neill who attended the first sitting of the new Dail Eireann in Dublin in 1919. As the names of the elected members were called out, he was moved by the number of times the names were answered by faoi ghlas ag na Gaill (locked up by the foreigners). O Neill composed the lyrics while the melody is from an old traditional Irish song called The Moorlough Shore. The Foggy Dew tells the story of the Easter Rising of 1916, 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 (about 210, 000) should have stayed home and fought for Irish independence instead. While many Irish people supported the war effort, many others questioned whether Irish soldiers should be employed fighting for Britain and felt that one of the moral justifications for the first world war, the freedom of small nations like Belgium and