"'Here's a health to every gentleman
Who follows in our train!
Here's a health to every lass who waits
Till we return again!
Here's confusion to the German horde,
Until their knavish work
Is stopped by the sight of the blue and the buff
Of the Regiment of Burke!
"'All Spain and France and Italy
Have echoed to our name!
The burning suns of Africa
Have set our arms aflame!
But to-night we toast the morn that broke
And wakened us to fame!
The day we beat the Germans at Cremona!
"'THE DAY WE BEAT THE GERMANS AT CREMONA!'"
In the little inn at Narni, in company with six young gentlemen volunteers who had been enjoying a furlough in Rome, I sate and roared out the chorus as I picked up the words. To me they were glorious, and the air divine. At all events, the song was an improvement on many that went before and followed after.
I was prepared, in a measure, to meet with much looseness among military gentlemen, whose many vicissitudes and harassing calls on their temper and endurance may excuse a heat and vivacity of language that would not be fitting in an ordinary man. Indeed, my Uncle Scottos swore whenever his fancy pleased him. and no one ever thought the worse of him for that. But here were boys, none of them much older than myself, using oaths that fairly made my blood curdle, with all the assurance of a Field-Marshal at the least; and besides this, they did their best to make out they were practised in the blackest vices. Indeed, so ribald did they grow, that I felt it did not become me to sit quiet and listen to such wickedness.
"Gentlemen," I said, "my Uncle Scottos served in this regiment when it was part of the Irish Brigade, led by Colonel Walter Burke himself, and it was then held that no officer under the rank of Lieutenant had the privilege of swearing or using loose language; and I make bold to say it was a wise regulation, and one which I would like to see in force now."
These very fitting observations were greeted with a roar of laughter, at the end of which Mr. Fitzgerald, an ensign, said, with a mighty air of gravity: "Your Reverence is perfectly right; the same rule is still in force, and most strictly observed; but the truth is, that, like his Sacred Majesty, James III., our rightful positions are not fully recognized—de facto, as you Collegioners say, we are only Ensigns and Cadets, but de jure, we are Captains and Lieutenants in all the different degrees—just as Your Reverence is in the company of coarse, common soldiers, instead of hobnobbing with the heads of the Sacred College and other holy men." And his ribaldry was rewarded with a burst of laughter.
"Mr. Fitzgerald," I retorted, "you can spare your gibes on me. I neither understand nor like them. But if any of you think you can better me in a bout at single-stick, I'll shew you I can take a drubbing without grumbling from any of you who can give it me."