Talk:Monto (Take Her Up to Monto)

Phrasing vs Original Performance

The original version, as first publicly performed by The Dubliners at the Gate Theatre in 1966 differed in several details. In particular:

In the second stanza, "The dirty Duke of Gloucester" should be either "Have you heard of butcher Forster" or "Have you heard of Buckshot Forster" (the butcher phrasing was used first, the 'authorized' version uses buckshot). This is a reference to William Edward Forster a reviled administrator of the 19th century who introduced draconian laws for arbitrary arrest and detainment in Ireland. Both 'Buckshot' and 'butcher' were nicknames for him in Dublin. There was no holder of the title Duke of Gloucester in the period of Monto (late nineteenth to early twentieth centuries), and the reference to losing a woman in the Furry Glen (police headquarters) is clearly for Forster.

In the third stanza, "They went and got the childer" should be "De Wet'll kill the chiselers". This is a reference to Boer General Christiaan De Wet, who won several battles against the British during the second Boer War in South Africa, and continued guerilla actions against the British forces for some years afterwards. More than two hundred Irish Fusiliers died in these engagements, especially at the Siege of Ladysmith and the Battle of Colenso.

AliasMarlowe (talk) 19:21, 14 August 2008 (UTC)

Lyrics have been updated to match version sung in Dublin in 1970s, with embedded links. AliasMarlowe (talk) 06:54, 11 October 2009 (UTC)

Phrasing vs 'Authorized' Version

Additionally, there is an authorized version which employs more phonetic spelling of the Dublin working-class pronunciation ("Rooshia" instead of "Russia", and "Phaynix" instead of "Phoenix", for instance). While Hodnett apparently wrote the song in about 1958, it was not actually performed until 1966, and the 'authorized' version was related another decade later. It contains additional phrasing differences:

In the fourth stanza, "When Carey told on Skin-the-Goat" is given as "Oh .. did ya hear o' Skin-the-Goat?". The authorized words are nonsensical in the context of the next line, since James Carey betrayed James FitzHarris (1833-1910, nicknamed Skin the Goat) and others, several of whom were executed by the British as a result. Carey was in turn assassinated by Padraig O Domhnaill at sea off South Africa on the orders of the Irish National Invincibles, an offshoot of the Irish Republican Brotherhood. This explains the next line in the stanza "O'Donnell caught him on the boat".

In the last stanza, "The Queen she came to call on us" is given as "Queen Vic she came to call on us". However, every performance I ever heard (dating back to the late 1960s), whether formal or informal, used "The Queen", not "Queen Vic".

AliasMarlowe (talk) 19:17, 14 August 2008 (UTC)

References

Sources

• John Finegan, The Story of Monto, The Mercier Press 1978. ISBN: 0853435159

AliasMarlowe (talk) 21:54, 14 July 2008 (UTC)