This is MacColl's introduction to the song as sung on series 'The Song Carriers' by Colm Keane of Glink, Connemara.
Jim Carroll

"When it comes to describing work and commenting, either directly or obliquely, on the labourer's attitude to it, folksong has no rivals.    Here, the realistic approach is a prime necessity and it would appear that the subject is the exclusive property of the people who actually do the work.
The early 19th-century seamen working on the packet ships, clippers and East-India tea-wagons did not see themselves as
jolly jack tars- that is a landsman's concept.    For them, it was hard-tack and bluenosed mates, long voyages and short rations.    In the same way, songs made up by farm labourers often reflect the countryman's love-hate relationship with the land.    This is particularly true of the West of Ireland songs.      To the hired farm-labourer working the submarginal lands of the west coast where they had learned to subsist on rocks, bogs, salt-water and sea-weed, the .land was an enemy compared with which even the British army appeared as a refuge. The following song expresses this attitude perfectly. "The Rocks of Bawn", sung by Colm Keane of Glinsk, Connemara."