"Take it Down from the Mast" is the common name of an Irish republican song written in 1923 by James Ryan. Entitled "Lines Written by a Republican Soldier in 1923", it was first published in 1936 in Good-Bye Twilight: Songs of Struggle in Ireland, a collection of songs by Leslie Daiken.[1]
Its lyrics refer to the Irish Civil War (1922–23), while the flag in question is the Irish tricolour. The song tells supporters of the Anglo-Irish Treaty and the Irish Free State to take down and cease using it, as it is also the flag of the Irish Republic, which the "Free Staters" betrayed. At the time, the Anti-Treaty IRA regarded their Civil War opponents as traitors and therefore unworthy to use the Irish tricolour.
In 1959, a version written by Dominic Behan[2] was published. It told of the execution of four members of the IRA Executive on 8 December 1922: Dubliner Rory O'Connor, who was spokesman for the Four Courts garrison at the outbreak of the Civil War; Galway man Liam Mellows; Cork volunteer Dick Barrett; and IRA chief-of-staff Joe McKelvey from Tyrone. Their shooting in captivity was a reprisal for the IRA's assassination, the previous day, of TD Seán Hales.
Behan's also accused the Free State of abandoning the province of Ulster, much of which became the state of Northern Ireland after partition in 1921.
- ^ Leslie H. Daiken, Good-bye Twilight: Songs of the Struggle in Ireland (Lawrence & Wishart, London, 1936), pp. 90–91
- ^ Nick Guida. "the Dominic Behan discography (1957-1961) at theBalladeers". Theballadeers.com. Archived from the original on 6 December 2013. Retrieved 27 March 2014.