War song

The most famous Haka was composed by Te Rauparaha, the chief of Ngāti Toa, a tribe based in the lower North Island.

Te Rauparaha was known to Māori and early Europeans as "The Maori Napoleon," and his Haka, Ka Mate, was a dance and ode to both the living and the dead.

In England songs about military and naval subjects were a major part of the output of ballad writers from the 16th century onwards.

Most of these fell into two groups, those that lamented the cost of war for the participants, and which can therefore be seen as early protest songs and those that were generally patriotic in nature and often veered into propaganda.

[2] The English Civil War (1642–1653) produced a subgenre of "Cavalier ballads", including "When the King Home in Peace Again", while their parliamentarian opponents were generally happier singing metrical psalms.

[3] Many of these were adapted and reused by Jacobites in England and Scotland after the 'Glorious Revolution' of 1688, a tradition built on by Robert Burns and Sir Walter Scott.

[4] The Anglo-French Wars of the 17th and 18th centuries saw more descriptive works, usually couched in patriotic terms, but some, like 'Captain Death' (1757) dealt with loss and defeat.

[5] As regimental identities emerged songs were adopted for marching, like 'The British Grenadiers', based on a dance tune and with enthusiastic lyrics from at least the mid-18th century.

The same period saw numerous patriotic war songs, like 'Heart of Oak' and the emergence of a stereotype of the English seaman as 'Jolly Jack Tar', who appeared in many ballads.

[9] The Boer War saw a large number of songs, often aimed at praising the bravery of particular groups (such as Irish troops) or soldiers in general.

[12] "The Conscientious Objector's Lament" (1917) was intended to ridicule pacifists, but it ended up being sung by soldiers longing to go home (See "When This Bloody War is Over" by Max Arthur, page 42).