Thank you Pauline and Pat! I love it when folks post something I never heard about. A little history lesson. Barb =================== From: Pat Lewis via [email protected] I REMEMBER HEARING AND SINGING IT DURING WWII, DIDN'T KNOW WHY OR WHAT IT ALL MEANT, I JUST THOUGHT IT WAS A SONG I WOULD HEAR EVERY ONCE IN AWHILE SOMEONE SINGING IT. ======================== Pauline Salmon wrote: Dear Listers: During WWII people did not have much in neutral Ireland. Tea, food, everything seemed to be rationed. My husband who grew up in Dublin remembered the song with DeValera and McEntee in the words but could not recall the remainder. I found it on wikipedia today. When he saw the "black flour" he remembered about 1944 the rain was terrible and they had to get the wheat in early before it would spoil. Volunteers were called for and they gathered the unripen wheat made the bread with soggy kernels of wheat. When you ate it the inside tasted of dough and the exterior was black. Awful is the word he used. Hard times and they had to blame someone, so DeValera the first president of the Irish Free State and Sean McEntee was an old Sein Fein man in the govenment. > > Irish version[edit] > A satirical version of the song became very popular in Ireland during the Second World War (known in neutral Ireland as the Emergency). The song was a reaction to the widespread rationing of tea, sugar, tobacco and other goods due to the drastic drop in imports, particularly from Britain.[4] It poked fun at Ireland's TaoiseachEamon de Valera and Minister Seán McEntee who were blamed for the shortages and rationing. The line "the long and the short and the tall" had particular sarcastic resonance because De Valera was tall while McEntee was very short. > The Irish version of the song included the lines: > Bless 'em all, > Bless 'em all. > The long and the short and the tall, > Bless De Valera and Seán McEntee, > They gave us the black flour, > And the half-ounce of tea. > They rationed the cocoa and all, > But rationed themselves not at all. > They're bringing starvation > To our little nation, > So cheer up St Vincent de Paul.’ > http://puesoccurrences.com/2010/01/05/de-valera-black-flour-and-the-emergency-or-tings-i-lernt-over-de-christmas > > Pauline Salmon > San Diego