The revolutionary Society of United Irishmen adopted green as its colour, and supporters wore green-coloured garments, ribbons, or cockades.
[1][8] In the second verse, Boucicault's version recounts an encounter between the singer and Napper Tandy, an Irish rebel leader exiled in France.
In the 1937 Hopalong Cassidy film, North of the Rio Grande, actor Walter Long's Irish character, Bull O'Hara, leads the singing of another version of the song.
Gerald O'Hara sings this tune while escorting his daughters to the barbecue at Twelve Oaks in Chapter 5 of Margaret Mitchell's Gone with the Wind.
Several 19th-century composers wrote piano arrangements of the tune,[15] including Thomas Brown (1866), William Henry Goodban (1866), Fred Beyer (1875), and Willie Pape (1875).
[16] Other songs which refer to "The Wearing of the Green" include "Monto", popularised by the Dubliners; and "Each Dollar A Bullet", by Stiff Little Fingers.
"The Wearing of the Grey", a lament for the Confederate States Army, was published to the same tune in 1865, at the end of the American Civil War.