Incidentally, Michael Dwyer, who harried the British and the loyalists from 1798 until 1803 from his base in West Wicklow, was referred to as a rapparee.

It always seems a little pointless for 21st-century people to get all expert about what things should have looked like at the time of earlier ballads.

Believe me, boys, 19th-century people knew what military guns looked like. Irish farmers are familiar with the appearance of the grass growing on the weir, and don't mix it up with waterweed. If people in an 18th-century ballad refer to a 'rock' and 'reel', they don't mean stones, they mean parts of spinning wheels.