It's a long, long way to Tipperary,
But my heart's right there!
It's a' there!
Paddy wrote a letter to his Irish Molly O',
Saying, "Should you not receive it, write and let me know!
If I make mistakes in spelling, Molly dear," said he,
"Remember it's the pen that's bad, don't lay the blame on me."
(_Chorus_)
Molly wrote a neat reply to Irish Paddy O',
Saying, "Mike Maloney wants to marry me, and so
Leave the Strand and Piccadilly, or you'll be to blame,
For love has fairly drove me silly--hoping you're the same!"
(_Chorus_)
It may seem odd that the soldier should care so little for martial
songs, or the songs that are ostensibly written for him; but that is not
the fault of Tommy Atkins. Lyric poets don't give him what he calls "the
stuff." He doesn't get it even from Kipling; Thomas Hardy's "Song of
the Soldiers" leaves him cold. He wants no epic stanzas, no heroic
periods. What he asks for is something simple and romantic, something
about a girl, and home, and the lights of London--that goes with a swing
in the march and awakens tender memories when the lilt of it is wafted
at night along the trenches.
And so "Tipperary" has gone with the troops into the great European
battlefields, and has echoed along the white roads and over the green
fields of France and Belgium.
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