The Minstrel Boy

Thomas Moore’s patriotic song, published in 1813 in volume 5 of his Irish Melodies, set to an air he identified as “The Moreen.” The lyric, with its image of the warrior-bard tearing the strings from his harp rather than let it sound in slavery, is widely understood as Moore’s memorial to friends lost in the 1798 rebellion. The song traveled hard: it was sung by Irish soldiers in the American Civil War, took on ceremonial use in World War I, and remains a fixture at police and fire department funerals in heavily Irish-American cities. As an instrumental it circulates as a 4/4 march in G major, and it was played at the opening of the World Trade Center Memorial in 2011.