[1967]
Lyrics & Music by Jonathan Harflett & John Perkins
Album: Dawnwind - Looking Back On The Future [1975]

"Song from the Vietnam era, sadly still relevant to now!... "

Album : "By The Hush" (1982)

This song depicts England as a caring mother who looked after her rebellious children. Regardless of their misbehaviour, she was always around to comfort and guide her impetuous bunch of kids. Eventually the juveniles reach adulthood and they surprise their mother with civilised behaviour.

On the face of it Whack Fol The Diddle is just a rather sarcastic song, but we have to wonder whether Peadar Kearney, the writer who also wrote A Soldiers Song, would agree with this assessment.
Self-mockery, sarcasm and a sense for understatement was not uncommon for Peadar Kearney. In the song The Row In The Town for example he compares the Easter Rising, in which he had participated, with a row in the town indeed. Nevertheless the storyline of Whack Fol The Diddle is surprising, because Kearney followed his personal friend Michael Collins in the Civil War and joined the Free Staters. Their opponents,... (Continues)

During the Civil War 77 men were executed by former comrades. This song, The Drumboe Martyrs, relates to four of them.
Together with six other men Charlie Daly, Sean Larkin, Timothy O'Sullivan and Daniel Enright formed an unit of Republicans in County Donegal. Initially they manage to hold up against the Free State forces, but soon the Republicans were forced to withdraw and hide in the mountains. Following a tip from an informer Free Staters found them and on 2 November 1922 the ten were arrested and transferred to Drumboe Castle. In January the three Kerrymen Charlie Daly, Timothy O'Sullivan and Daniel Enright, and Sean Larkin from Derry, were sentenced to death by firing squad. The sentence was carried out on 14 March 1923, thus not on the feast of Saint Patrick as mentioned in the text, on an improvised firing range and their bodies were buried at Drumboe.
The remains of the Drumboe... (Continues)

[1994]
Home of the Brave

On 6 December 1921 Michael Collins (also known as The Big Fellow) and the British signed the Anglo-Irish Treaty. Sinn Fein leader Eamonn de Valera and other republicans, who were not consulted by Collins, did not agree and considered Collins as a traitor. This treaty ended the War of Independence and started the Civil War.

www.triskelle.eu

[1976]
Nel disco intitolato “Ireland Boys Hurrah!”
Ripresa nel 1978 dai Dublin City Ramblers nel loro disco intitolato “Irish Republican Jail Songs”


The Crumlin Road Jail in Belfast, locally better known as The Crum, which is closed at the moment, has been notorious during The Troubles by British soldiers and Republicans in Northern Ireland alike.

It was also a prison with some spectacular escapes and the song Over The Wall tells the story of the so-called Kangaroo Escape which occurred in November 1971 when nine prisoners, Bernard Elliman, Eugene Fanning, Seamus Storey, Terence Clarke, Danny Mulan,Christopher Keenan, Peter Hennesey, Thomas Kane and Thomas Fox, simply climbed over the wall while the wardens watched a football match.
The wardens and Department of Justice were left embarrassed because the escape was done with such ease and, what's more, the Kangaroo Escape occurred just... (Continues)

El gran poeta Celso Emilio Ferreiro, como reconocimiento a los seis poemas gallegos que Federico García Lorca escribió, a parte de la injusticia de su muerte y de lo que ésta significaba, escribió este bello homenaje jugando con los tópicos favoritos de la poesía social de los años 50 y 60: la noche y el amanecer. Cuando Federico García Lorca fue asesinado antes de la llegada del alba, comenzó lo que Celso Emilio llamó en su poema más celebrado, la “larga noche de piedra” (Longa noite de pedra): desde el asesinato del inmortal poeta granadino no había vuelto a venir el alba. En 1979, Suso Vaamonde, acompañado del grupo Verbas Xeitosas, hizo una versión cantada memorable de este poema, que apareció en su disco homenaje a Celso Emilio Ferreiro y en el recopilatorio ¡Abolición! Poemas y textos contra la pena de muerte

*

Il grande poeta galiziano Celso Emilio Ferreiro in segno di riconoscenza... (Continues)

The Fields of Athenry is probably the best-known song about the Great Famine which raged over Ireland from 1845 until 1849.
The main character is awaiting transportation to the penal colony Botany Bay for stealing corn from a food depot. Whilst imprisoned his thoughts wander off to the abandoned fields of Athenry, a village just east of Galway Town.
Charles Trevelyan, the Permanent Secretary at the Treasury during most of the Famine years, was reluctant to hand out his corn and when the corn depots opened they mainly contained maize, or Indian corn. Due to its hard kernel the Irish were unable to process the maize.

When The Fields of Athenry was published in 1979 by Pete St. John the rumour was spread that the words already had been published in the 1880's. Evidence supporting this rumour however is never produced and St. John's claim is widely acknowledged.
Once published Paddy Reilly... (Continues)

The Devlin family, to which Anne Devlin was born in 1780, maintained close relations with noted nationalists such as Michael Dwyer, who was Anne's uncle, and the O'Tooles and the O'Byrnes. Due to this relations the military drew a bead on the Devlin's after the Rebellion of 1798. Anne's father, even though his involvement in the rising has yet to be established, was imprisoned in Wicklow Gaol and his family was frequently raided on account of Dwyer and O'Byrne.

After being released after two years imprisonment Devlin decided to leave their small farmstead in Cronbeg near Rathdrum, County Wicklow, to take up resident at Butterfield Lane in Rathfarnham in County Dublin.
Early 1803 their neighbourhood welcomed a new resident who introduced himself as Mr Ellis. In fact Mr Ellis was the alias Robert Emmet. A close friendship emerged between the Devlin's and Robert Emmet and when Emmet asked... (Continues)

[1992]
Album : Ciulandari

The song was written by a visitor to my Irish rebel Songs website.The lyrics are set to the song "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down".

In contrast with the overall impression the prison protests for political status in the late 1970's and early 1980's weren't limited to the H-Blocks of Her Majesty's Prison Maze, also known as the Long Kesh Detention Centre. The Armagh Women are often mistakenly forgotten.

The path for Internment was paved by activating the Special Powers Act in August 1971. The slightest suspicion was enough to put about every male behind barbed wire without too much judicial fuss, such as judges or juries. In all several thousand, mainly Catholic, men were taken from their families and workplaces in the course of the Internment.
In the early 1970's the division of roles between men and women was still very traditional in Northern Ireland, and especially in the Catholic community. By removing the men the women suddenly had to tackle issues traditionally belonging to male territory and in addition they... (Continues)

This song was written by a republican from England and given to Christy Moore just after Bobby Sands' death

Album: The Spirit of Freedom - 1987

Another song by Christy Moore, this time in memory of one of Ireland's most fearless and dedicated soldiers who died on hungerstrike in the H-Blocks of Long Kesh, 12th May 1981, with nine of his comrades.