Minstrel Boy suffers same fate as Moore’s friends What he lacks in experience, he makes for by his selfless devotion and his readiness to sacrifice everything for his country, Ireland – the land of song as Moore calls it.Īs the Minstrel Boy says: “though all the world betrays thee, one sword at least shall guard thy rights, one faithful harp shall praise thee”. He doesn’t even have his own sword, but has to borrow his father’s. The very fact that he is a minstrel alerts us straightaway to the fact that he is not a soldier. Moore uses The Minstrel Boy to represent these idealist young patriots. Minstrel Boy represents the devoted but amateur rebel It was largely well meaning but inexperienced idealists who had fought in the 1798 Rebellion, and again a few years later in the abortive Emmet Rebellion in 1803. This was true at the time of the 1867 Fenian Rising and1916 Easter Rising, and it was certainly true when Moore was young at the start of the 19th century. The men who were left behind to fight for Irish freedom were certainly brave and devoted, but they weren’t really soldiers. Remember, for most of the 19th century, most of Ireland’s military talent was absorbed into the British army and sent off to fight British wars. The Minstrel Boy, like the idealistic Irish rebels he represented, lacked experience of warfare. Minstrel Boy, like many rebels, lacked experience They were poets, academics and dreamers rather than soldiers. The patriots Moore associated with were often from well to do backgrounds. It was there that Moore met Robert Emmet, an idealistic patriot who led an unsuccessful rebellion in 1803. He would have come across several such people during his time as a student at Trinity College Dublin. Robert Emmet Moore wouldn’t have had to look far to find to find someone on whom to base The Minstrel Boy. Moore met many idealistic patriots at Trinity College The kind of person Moore had in mind was young, idealistic, probably naïve, certainly not well acquainted with warfare and yet, in spite of this, the kind of person who was passionately devoted to defending Ireland and achieving Irish nationalism. The Minstrel Boy was written by Thomas Moore who used the idea of the warrior musician to symbolise a kind of patriot that was to be found again and again in every Irish rebellion spanning more than a hundred years. The Minstrel Boy as the idealistic patriot However, the song works on a deeper level than the purely narrative. When he falls in battle, he tears the strings from his harp, preferring to destroy it than let it fall into the hands of the enemy – a fate he regards as tantamount to being subjected to slavery. His mission is to defend his country with his sword and sing its praises with his harp. On a simple narrative level, The Minstrel Boy is the story of a young man who goes off to fight for Irish freedom.
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