The lyrics to The Foggy Dew were written by Charles O’Neill (1887 – 1963), a priest from Portleglone in Northern Ireland. The melody comes from the love song The Moorlough Shore. Gerard Harrison wrote this arrangement for guitar.
The Foggy Dew is about the Éirí Amach na Cásca, the Irish Easter Rising in 1916. After the Gallipoli debacle in World War I, in which many Irish soldiers died due to a stupid strategy against the Turks, the attitude of the Irish towards the British rule changed dramatically. The Easter Rising was violently suppressed, but the events eventually led to the Republic of Ireland and the years of strife in Northern Ireland.