I was born on a dublin street where the royal drums did beat,
and those loving english feet they tramped all over us,
and each and every night when me father came home tight
he'd invite the neighbors outside with this chorus:
Come out ye black and tans, come out and fight me like a man,
show your wife how you won medals down in flanders,
tell them how the ira made you run like hell away
from the green and lovely lanes of killashandra.
Come tell us how you slew them poor arabs two by two,
like the zulus they had spears and bows and arrows,
how you bravely faced each one with your 16-pounder gun,
and you frightened them poor natives to their marrow.
Come out ye black and tans, come out and fight me like a man,
show your wife how you won medals down in flanders,
tell them how the ira made you run like hell away
from the green and lovely lanes of killashandra.
Come let us hear you tell how you slandered great parnell,
when you thought him well and truly persecuted,
where are the sneers and jeers that you bravely let us hear
when our heroes of '16 were executed?
Come out ye black and tans, come out and fight me like a man,
show your wife how you won medals down in flanders,
tell them how the ira made you run like hell away
from the green and lovely lanes of killashandra.
Well the day is coming fast and the time is here at last,
when each yeoman will be cut aside before us,
and if there be a need, sure me kids would sing, "godspeed,"
with a verse or two of stephen behan's chorus:
Come out ye black and tans, come out and fight me like a man,
show your wife how you won medals down in flanders,
tell them how the ira made you run like hell away
from the green and lovely lanes of killashandra.