O Paddy dear, an’ did ye hear the news that’s goin’ round?
The shamrock is by law forbid to grow on Irish ground!
No more St. Patrick’s Day we’ll keep, his color can’t be seen,
For there’s a cruel law agin the wearin’ o’ the Green!

These lines are the opening stanza of the Irish nationalist ballad commonly known as “The Wearing of the Green.” The song laments British repression of Irish symbols—especially the shamrock and the color green—after the 1798 United Irishmen rebellion, when authorities sought to curb displays of Irish political identity. Sung and circulated widely in the 19th century (in Ireland and among emigrant communities), it became a staple of St. Patrick’s Day and nationalist gatherings, using the language of “law” and “forbid” to dramatize how cultural emblems could be treated as subversive. Authorship is often listed as anonymous or traditional in popular transmission.

The stanza frames Irish identity as something so threatening to the state that even harmless, natural, and festive symbols—the shamrock, St. Patrick’s Day colors—are imagined as outlawed. The speaker’s address (“O Paddy dear”) gives the lyric a communal, conversational tone, as if news of repression travels by word of mouth. The “cruel law” functions less as a literal statute than as a poetic shorthand for political domination: banning the “green” becomes a metaphor for suppressing national feeling. The song’s power lies in turning a simple act of wearing a color into an act of resistance and solidarity.

1) “The shamrock is forbid by law to grow on Irish ground.”
2) “No more Saint Patrick’s Day we’ll keep, his colours can’t be seen.”
3) “For there’s a bloody law against the wearing of the green.”