"Are you saying that it would have been preferrable to partition off 9 counties instead of just 6??"
No; I am saying that no country should have domain over another.
The internal politics of a country are its own concern and should be decided by its own people, not by (self-interested) outsiders.
Every bomb exploded and every shot fired since 1922 in Ireland is directly linked to the fact that, in practical terms, part of that countries policies are decided elsewhere other than Ireland.
Why should any Irish person be asked or be allowed to 'vote' that part of their country remain British any more than any Brit be asked to vote to be American, or German, or Russian? The day of Empire is over, and good riddance.
As far as the songs are concerned, it is not necessarily what songs are sung, but rather how, why and where they are sung.
I was an apprentice electrician on the docks in Liverpool up to the early sixties and I can still remember the fear that mobs of marching Orangemen inspired in me every twelfth of July singing 'Ee aye, Paddy is a bastard' or 'We are the sons of Billy and to hell with Popery'.
Songs are songs and can entertain, inspire, inform, move... and a whole host of other things; the problems arise when they are deliberately used to incite; ('Land of Hope and Glory' sung at the Proms in the middle of the Falklands War springs to mind - as do many of the football chants).
As an atheist I hold no brief for either Catholicism or Protestantism and as an Internationalist I find national barriers, at the very least, an inconvenience, but I have come to realise that, as Conolly wrote, "no people can ever be free while it holds sway over another".
Jim Carroll