18th of June - Battle of Waterloo

18th of June

Today is the 191st Anniversary of the Battle of Waterloo. I have been meaning to learn the song - the Eighteenth of June - but only ever get as far as the chorus:

"And what a sad heart had poor Boney, for to take up instead of his crown
and to canter from Brussels to Paris, lamenting the eighteenth of June." This song is on Frank Harte's 'My Name is Napoleon Bonaparte' CD - which is one of my all time favourites of Frank's

In 1814, twenty five years of war finally came to an end with the surrender of the Emperor Napoleon and his banishment to the Mediterranean island of Elba. The European powers began the task of restoring their continent to normality and peace.
On 1st March 1815 Napoleon escaped from Elba and landed in France. Nineteen days later he was in Paris and resumed his title as Emperor. His army rallied to him. The soldiers who had been captured during the years of fighting had been released enabling Napoleon to reform his Grande Armée.The European allies reassembled their armies and prepared to resume the war to overthrow the Emperor yet again. After a whole day of battle, in which Napoleon lost, Waterloo decisively saw the end of 26 years of fighting between the European powers and France.




The Goilin singers club was lovely last Friday, Bloomsday - so there were lots of songs relating to Joyce - and even the word 'bloom' - as in 'the blooming meadows' or the 'flowers in bloom'. Of course, plenty of songs about Napoleon and Waterloo, including Jim McFarland's wonderful version of the aforementioned song, 18th of June. One very interesting thing happened in the club. We have a population of something like 130,000 Polish people now living in Ireland, the second most commonly spoken language in the country, and one young Polish man sang a sea shanty song in his native language - I recognised and he told me it was a traditional song, but had been translated from England sometime in the last century - they have many of these songs in Poland. It was just lovely to see this young man feeling perfectly at home in the singers club. www.goilin.com