For All Their Wars Are Merry

QUESTION: We’d like to know which poem contains lines about the Irish and “their wars are all (merry?) and their songs are sad.”

ANSWER: It’s from Chesterton’s epic poem, “The Ballad of the White Horse”:

For the Great Gaels of Ireland

Are the men that God made mad,

For all their wars are merry

And all their songs are sad.