Monday, March 8, 2010

THE WIND THAT SHAKES THE BARLEY IRELAND

I sat within a valley green
I sat me with my true love
My sad heart strove to choose between
The old love and the new love
The old for her, the new that made
Me think on Ireland dearly
While soft the wind blew down the glade
And shook the golden barley
Twas hard the woeful words to frame
To break the ties that bound us
But harder still to bear the shame
Of foreign chains around us
And so I said, "The mountain glen
I'll seek at morning early
And join the bold United Men
While soft winds shake the barley"
While sad I kissed away her tears
My fond arms 'round her flinging
The foeman's shot burst on our ears
From out the wildwood ringing
A bullet pierced my true love's side
In life's young spring so early
And on my breast in blood she died
While soft winds shook the barley
I bore her to some mountain stream
And many's the summer blossom
I placed with branches soft and green
About her gore-stained bosom
I wept and kissed her clay-cold corpse
Then rushed o'er vale and valley
My vengeance on the foe to wreak
While soft winds shook the barley
But blood for blood without remorse
I've taken at Oulart Hollow
And laid my true love's clay-cold corpse
Where I full soon may follow
As 'round her grave I wander drear
Noon, night and morning early
With breaking heart when e'er I hear
The wind that shakes the barley
The Wind That Shakes the Barley" is an Irish song written by Robert Dwyer-Joyce, an Irish poet and professor of English literature. The song was written about a young Irish rebel who sacrifices his relationship with his loved one for the 1798 rebellion of a United Ireland. Reference to barley derive from the fact that Irish rebels often carried barley oats in their pockets for eating when marching. This gave rise after the rebellion of barley growing and marking the "croppy-holes," mass unmarked graves which rebels were thrown into, it symbols the regenerative nature of Irish resistance to British rule as does the phoenix the bird that rises from the ashes..
The title of the song was borrowed for the 2006 film of the same name.
Paintings of Irish revolution and rebellion include; the wind that shakes the barley, men of the south, the birth of the Irish free state and others from Sean Keating's allergory.

The photos include; Hogans flying column in north Tipperary, the phoenix, still an unrepentant Fenian bastard, the Cairo gang od informers who were mostly assassinated and traditional wanted republican Dan Breen,


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