What can you do as an Irish rebel if there's an increasing demand for new rebel songs and you don't have enough spare time between hide, bomb, and run to write one of the real good ones (the last bit is serious: some of them, even of the recent ones, are great songs)? You take a well known song with a well known tune and change the absolute minimum of words. Here's a recent example (from a CD: 50 complete Irish rebel songs):

PROVO’S LULLABY
(Tune: obvious)
(Original: obvious)

Go to sleep, my weary provo
Let the time go drifting by;
can’t you hear those bullets humming
That's a provo's lullaby.

Well, they say, your clothes are torn and ragged
and your hair is turning grey.
Some day you’ll die and go to heaven
and you’ll find peace up there some day.

Well, they say, the peelers gave you trouble
, oh they cause trouble everywhere;
some day you’ll die and go to heaven,
and you will find no peelers there.

Just in case you really didn't recognise (or know??) the original go to DT's version of Hobo's lullaby . The Hobo's lullaby I found in my Woody Guthrie songbook was even closer to Provo's lullaby. Less than 10% of the words were changed.

Wolfgang