In the music of Ireland, Irish rebel songs refer to folk songs which are primarily about the various rebellions against English Crown rule. Songs about prior rebellions are a popular topic of choice among musicians which supported Irish nationalism and republicanism. In the 20th and 21st centuries, Irish rebel songs focus on physical force Irish republicanism in the context of the Troubles in Northern Ireland.
"The Black Velvet Band" is a traditional folk song collected from singers in Ireland, Australia, England, Canada and the United States describing how a young man is tricked and then sentenced to transportation to Australia, a common punishment in the British Empire during the 19th century. Versions were also published on broadsides.
John Kelly lived in the town of Killanne in the parish of Rathnure, west of Enniscorthy, in County Wexford in Ireland, and was a United Irish leader who fought in the Irish Rebellion of 1798. Kelly was obviously well known to rebel and loyalist alike during the short duration of the Wexford Rebellion but almost nothing is known of him outside this time. He was one of the leaders of the rebel victory at the Battle of Three Rocks which led to the capture of Wexford town but was later seriously wounded while leading a rebel column at the Battle of New Ross.
Croppy was a nickname given to United Irishmen rebels during the Irish Rebellion of 1798 against British rule in Ireland.
"Streets of Laredo", also known as "The Dying Cowboy", is a famous American cowboy ballad in which a dying ranger tells his story to another cowboy. Members of the Western Writers of America chose it as one of the Top 100 Western songs of all time.
"The Wearing of the Green" is an Irish street ballad lamenting the repression of supporters of the Irish Rebellion of 1798. It is to an old Irish air, and many versions of the lyric exist, the best-known being by Dion Boucicault. The song proclaims that "they are hanging men and women for the wearing of the green".
"The Wild Colonial Boy" is a traditional anonymously penned Irish-Australian folk ballad which tells the story of a bushranger in early colonial Australia who dies during a gunfight with local police. Versions of the ballad give different names for the bushranger involved: some based on real individuals and some apparently fictional. A common theme is romanticisation of the bushranger's battle against colonial authority. According to a report in The Argus in November 1880, Ann Jones, the innkeeper of the Glenrowan Hotel, had asked her son to sing the ballad when the Kelly gang were at her hotel in June that year.
"Geordie" is an English language folk song concerning the trial of the eponymous hero whose lover pleads for his life. It is listed as Child ballad 209 and Number 90 in the Roud Folk Song Index. The ballad was traditionally sung across the English speaking world, particularly in England, Scotland and North America, and was performed with many different melodies and lyrics. In recent times, popular versions have been performed and recorded by numerous artists and groups in different languages, mostly inspired by Joan Baez's 1962 recording based on a traditional version from Somerset, England.
"The Wind That Shakes the Barley" is an Irish ballad written by Robert Dwyer Joyce (1836–1883), a Limerick-born poet and professor of English literature. The song is written from the perspective of a doomed young Wexford rebel who is about to sacrifice his relationship with his loved one and plunge into the cauldron of violence associated with the 1798 rebellion in Ireland. The references to barley in the song derive from the fact that the rebels frequently carried barley or oats in their pockets as provisions for when on the march. This gave rise to the post-rebellion phenomenon of barley growing and marking the "croppy-holes," unmarked mass graves into which rebel casualties were thrown in. To many Irish nationalists, these "croppy-holes" symbolised the regenerative nature of resistance to British rule in Ireland. Barley growing every spring was said by nationalists authors to symbolize continuous Irish resistance to British rule, particularly in nationalist literature and poetry written about the rebellion.
"Lady Franklin's Lament" is a traditional folk ballad indexed by George Malcolm Laws and Steve Roud. The song recounts the story of a sailor who dreams about Lady Franklin speaking of the loss of her husband, Sir John Franklin, who disappeared in Baffin Bay during his 1845 expedition through the Arctic Ocean in search of the Northwest Passage sea route to the Pacific Ocean. The song first appeared as a Broadside ballad around 1850 and has since been recorded with the melody of the Irish traditional air "Cailín Óg a Stór" by numerous artists. It has been found in Ireland, in Scotland, and in some regions of Canada.
The Wexford Rebellion refers to the outbreak in County Wexford, Ireland in May 1798 of the Society of United Irishmen's rebellion against the British rule. It was the most successful and most destructive of all the uprisings that occurred throughout Ireland during the 1798 Rising, lasting from 27 May 1798 until about 21 June 1798. The Wexford Rebellion saw much success despite County Wexford not being thought of as an immediate threat by the government, because of the spontaneous risings that occurred both before and after the significant rebel victories in Oulart, Enniscorthy, and Wexford town.
"Come All You Warriors" is a ballad concerning the 1798 Rising. The narrative focuses on the predominant figure in the Wexford Rising, Father John Murphy of the parish of Boulavogue.
"Kevin Barry" is a popular Irish rebel song recounting the death of Kevin Barry, a member of the Irish Republican Army (IRA) who was hanged on 1 November 1920. He was 18 years old at the time. He is one of a group of IRA members executed in 1920–21 collectively known as The Forgotten Ten.
"McCafferty" is an Irish ballad which originated as a street-ballad about British Army Private Patrick McCaffrey, executed in 1862 for the "fragging" of two officers. It is particularly popular in Ireland, where Pvt. McCaffrey came from, and was recorded by The Dubliners. In the British Army it was allegedly a court martial offence to sing the song, but that is a legend.
William B. McBurney was an Irish poet who used the pseudonym Carroll Malone. He was the author of The Croppy Boy, a poem commemorating the Irish Rebellion of 1798, and “The Good Ship Castle Down” . He immigrated to the United States, where he continued to write poetry in Boston, Massachusetts. He died in 1892.
Charlotte Mount Brock Schreiber was an English-Canadian painter and illustrator, among the first of Canada's notable female painters.
"Foggy Dew" is the name of several Irish ballads, and of an Irish lament. The song chronicles the Easter Rising of 1916, and encourages Irishmen to fight for the cause of Ireland, rather than for the British Empire, as so many young men were doing in World War I.
Transportation ballads are a genre of broadside ballad some of which became an important part of the folk song traditions of Britain and Ireland. They concern the transportation of convicted criminals firstly to the American colonies and then to penal colonies in Australia. Transportation ballads were published as broadsides,. Many have passed into the folk tradition and have been collected subsequently from traditional singers.
