By way of contribution to Irish History Month, here’s ‘The Dying Rebel’...

Some sources suggest that this ballad is set during the Easter Rising of 1916 and is a generalised lament, while others claim its origins lie in the Irish War of Independence (1919 – 21) and that the rebel in question was Seán Treacy (Ó Treasaigh). One of the leaders of the Third Tipperary Brigade of the IRA, Treacy was killed just off O’Connell Street, Dublin in a shootout with British troops during an aborted British Secret Service surveillance operation in October 1920.

What we do know for certain is that the ballad sheet found its way to New York where it came into the possession of Joseph Maguire, a Fermanagh man who contributed a series of articles - ‘Old Irish Ballads’ - to The Advocate newspaper. In June 1939, Maguire published three verses and a chorus of ‘The Dying Rebel’ under the alternate title ‘The Harp and Shamrock, Green, White and Gold’ in which Tipperary and Dublin are lyrically specified.

Depending on the version, you might hear that the dying man’s home was as far south as ‘dear Cork city’ or far north as ‘Belfast city’. Béal Feirste is home to the arguably definitive recording of this ballad. Released in December 1970, The Flying Column’s classic ‘Folk Music Time in Ireland’ is driven by the transcendent vocals of Kathleen (Largey) Thompson (née McCready). A committed - and by all accounts selfless - member of Cumann na mBan (The Irishwomen’s Council), the Green Cross and the National Graves, the foremost rebel chanteuse of her generation passed away in February 1979 after a protracted battle with cancer.

Wherever you may or may not stand on the complex political and spiritual spectra of Irish history, the universalist dictum of historian Charles C. Seifert (commonly misattributed to his mentee, Marcus Garvey) surely rings true: a song ‘without the knowledge of its history is like a tree without roots’.

Éirinn go Brách
Ireland Forever