"That's what I believe stifles the living folk process and will prevent new songs from becoming folk songs."
Wish I'd said that - or maybe I did.

Some anonymous songs recorded in West Clare

The Bad Year, John Lyons, Newmarket-on-Fergus
Recorded 1978
Carroll Mackenzie Collection

As I stand on the land and I look at the sky,
And I watched the rain pour, I could lie down and die.
The meadow's a pool and the turf's gone to suds,
Sure I hadn't the heart to go digging the spuds.

The hens got the gapes they gave up laying eggs,
When the pig tried to grunt he got weak in the legs.
The back yard is a pool and the garden's a bog,
O the poor farmer's life isn't fit for a dog.

Well I got wrinkled and old and my hair it turned grey,
While the torrents of rain made manure of my hay.
The cows they went dry 'twould bring blood from a stone,
To watch the poor creatures go all skin and bone.

The child got the measles, me wife got upset,
Meself got the flu from me clothes getting wet.
Coughs and colds I contacted a crop of chill blains,
While me joints they swelled up with most terrible pains.

Ah but that's over now for this year is a gift,
I'm a rich man at last by good farming and thrift.
It can rain, it can snow, it can blow a monsoon,
For I'm all for the caper above in Lisdoon.

This is included in the published collection 'Ballads of the County Clare, edited by Seán Ó Cillin, privately published in 1976 and now, sadly, unavailable, it is credited as anonymous and the tune given is Mountains of Mourne, though this is not the tune John uses here.

Clare to the Front
Michael 'Straighty' Flanagan, Inagh
Carroll Mackenzie Collection

Clare to the front, I will sound your name.
Your well known, you're famous no doubt you are game.
Our sons and fair daughters, they were sent to jail,
For loving old Ireland and poor Granuaile.

Then, hurray for the men who when prison are bound,
Their names we won't mention their true hearts are sound.
For the boys of Miltown they are suffering to save
The children of Clare and the home for the brave.

There is Quin, Newmarket and Clare to a man,
And the loyal men of Ennis stood two hundred strong.
Ashford (?), asthore, 'tis there you'd see play,
For no man from Ennis did dare run away.
        
Then hurray for the men who when prison are bound,
Their names we won't mention their true hearts are sound.
For the boys of Miltown they are suffering to save,
The children of Clare and the home for the brave.

There is now Killadysart and Pound Street you see,
And throughout County Clare they long to be free.
The men of Bodyke are daring you know,
We will sound their praises wherever we go.

There is Scariff, Tuamgraney and the boys of Bodyke,
Kilkishen and Broadford they would you delight.
O'Callaghan's Mills and Tulla , you see,
And the loyal men of Feakle loves Erin machree.

Corofin, Ennistymon, Kilfenora you see,
And around Lisdoonvarna they long to be free.
There are too many heroes locked up in a cell,
For loving old Ireland and loving her well.

Miltown you're my darling I will sound your name
For miles and miles 'round you for freedom you gain.
The grand men of Mullagh will stand one and all               
And the boys of Kilkee, they will come to our call.

There is Quilty, Kilmurry and sweet Cooraclare,
And the boys of Kilrush very loudly will cheer.
Their hearts they are faithful and loyal you see,
For they long to see Home Rule in our country.

Hurray for the men who when prison are bound,
Their names we won't mention, their true hearts are sound.
For the boys of Miltown they are suffering to save,
The children of Clare and the home for the brave.

Then hurray for our mountains so towering and high,
Where fond hearts do beat and fond bosoms do lie.
Who were the men who came first in the fray,
To drive the landlords and the bailiffs away?

"Hardly surprising, this celebration of Clare's revolutionary spirit seems not to have been found anywhere else, probably indicating that it was a local composition – it speaks for itself without having to add anything other than – up Clare!!"

Dudley Lee the Blackleg*
Martin Howley, Fanore, northwest Clare, Recorded 1976
Carroll Mackenzie Collection

There's a spot in old Ireland by the name of Murrough,
Where the people lived happy with hearts loyal and true.
'Til a breeze from the ocean drew ? o'er the sea
'Til a blackleg appeared there named one Dudley Lee.

Now gentler readers, to explain the whole case:
A teacher came amongst us named Michael O'Shea.
His conduct was tested and his teaching supreme.
The people all liked him now it's plain to be seen.

Deprived of his rights by a manager's cruel laws,
To prove to the board, for an enquiry they called.
The charges against him were unfounded and low,
And O'Shea was evicted from his school in Fanore.

To replace this poor victim with a wife from the place,
A blackleg was appointed instead of O'Shea.
But before he got time for to call his first roll,
Seven stalwart young fellows threw him out on the road.

The police, they were present, took the names of those few,
And ransacked their law-heads to an act that would sue.
The fight was selected as we all know too well
And each was confined to a dark prison cell.

Now the teachers of Ireland now demand the truth,
And they laid down the laws that were made in Maynooth.
But the treaty was broken, O'Shea was disowned,
But now they are building a school of his own.

When the new school is finished we all shall agree,
We'll give a send-off to poor Dudley Lee.
He may grunt, he may grumble throwing weights with a stone
Or curse the first day that he left his foot in Fanore.

*This song is about the Fanore School Case (1914-1922) during which the principal of Fanore National School, Michael O'Shea was dismissed from his post by the school manager Fr Patrick Keran, allegedly for refusing to marry the assistant teacher in the school as he was engaged to another woman. O'Shea's post was eventually filled by Gerard Lee.
Not surprisingly, the song lays the bulk of the blame at the door of the replacement teacher rather than the priest who issued the order.

The Sons of Granuaile
Michael 'Straighty' Flanagan
Inagh

You loyal-hearted Irishmen that do intend to roam,
To reap the English harvest so far away from home
I'm sure you will provide with us both comrades loyal and true
Or you have to fight both day and night with John Bull and his crew.

When we left our homes from Ireland the weather was calm and clear,
And when we got on board the ship we gave a hearty cheer.
We gave three loud cheers for Paddy's land, the place we do adore,
May the heavens smile on every child that loves the shamrock shore.

We sailed away all from the quay and ne'er received a shock
Till we landed safe in Liverpool one side of Clare and stock
Where hundreds of our Irishmen they met us in the town
Then 'Hurrah for Paddy's lovely land', it was the word went round.

With one consent away we went to drink strong ale and wine,
Each man he drank a favourite toast to the friends he left behind.
We sang and drank till the ale house rang dispraising Erin's foes,
Or any man that hates the land where St Patrick's shamrock grows.

For three long days we marched away, high wages for to find.
Till on the following morning we came to a railway line.
Those navies they came up to us, and loudly they did rail,
They cursed and damned for Paddy's lands and the sons of Granuaile.

Up stands one of our Irish boys and says, 'What do you mean?
While us, we'll work as well as you, and hate a coward's name.
So leave our way without delay or some of you will fall,
Here stands the sons of Irishmen that never feared a ball.'

Those navies then, they cursed and swore they'd kill us every man.
Make us remember ninety-eight, Ballinamuck and Slievenamon.
Blessed Father Murphy they cursed his blessed revenge,
And our Irish heroes said they'd have revenge then for the same.

Up stands Barney Reilly and he knocked the ganger down.
'Twas then the sticks and stones they came, like showers to the ground.
We fought from half past four until the sun was going to set,
When O'Reilly said, 'My Irish boys, I think we will be bet.'

But come with me my comrade boys, we'll renew the fight once more.
We'll set our foes on every side more desperate than before.
We will let them know before we go we'd rather fight than fly,
For at the worst of times you'll know what can we do, but die.

Here's a health then to the McCormicks too, O'Donnell and O'Neill
And also the O'Donoghues that never were afraid
Also every Irish man who fought and gained the day
And may those cowardly English men in crowds they ran away.

Irish immigrants fleeing the Famine and the mass evictions were met with prejudice and violence in many of the places they chose as their new homes.
This account, from Terry Coleman's 'Railway Navvies', gives a vivid description of the reception many of them received when they landed in Britain.
It describes the plight of the men who took work as railway navvies in the English/Scots border country.

"Throughout the previous year the railways had been extending through the English border country and into Scotland. A third of the navvies were Irish, a third Scots, and a third English: that was the beginning of the trouble - easy-going Roman Catholic Irish, Presbyterian Scots, and impartially belligerent English. The Irish did not look for a fight. As the Scottish Herald reported, they camped, with their women and children, in some of the most secluded glades, and although most of the huts showed an amazing disregard of comfort, the hereditary glee of their occupants seemed not a whit impaired'. This glee enraged the Scots, who then added to their one genuine grievance (the fact that the Irishmen would work for less pay and so tended to bring down wages) their sanctified outrage that the Irish should regard the Sabbath as a holiday, a day of recreation on which they sang and lazed about. As for the Scots, all they did on a Sunday was drink often and pray occasionally, and it needed only an odd quart of whisky and a small prayer to make them half daft with Presbyterian fervour. They then beat up the godless Irish. The Irish defended themselves and this further annoyed the Scots, so that by the middle of 1845 there was near civil war among the railway labourers. The English, mainly from Yorkshire and Lancashire, would fight anyone, but they preferred to attack the Irish. The contractors tried to keep the men, particularly the Irish and Scots, apart, employing them on different parts of the line, but the Scots were not so easily turned from their religious purposes. At Kinghorn, near Dunfermline, these posters were put up around the town:

'NOTICE IS GIVEN
that all the Irish men on the line of railway in Fife Share must be off the grownd and owt of the countey on Monday th nth of this month or els we must by the strenth of our armes and a good pick shaft put them off
Your humbel servants, Schots men.'

Letters were also sent to the contractors and sub-con¬tractors. One read:

'Sir, - You must warn all your Irish men to be of the grownd on Monday the 11th of this month at 12 o'cloack or els we must put them by forse
FOR WE ARE DETERMINED TO DOW IT.'

The sheriff turned up and warned the Scots against doing anything of the sort. Two hundred navvies met on the beach, but in the face of a warning from the sheriff they proved not so determined to do it, and the Irish were left in peace for a while.
But in other places the riots were savage. Seven thousand men were working on the Caledonian line, and 1,100 of these were paid monthly at a village called Locherby, in Dum¬friesshire. Their conduct was a great scandal to the inhabitants of a quiet Scottish village. John Baird, Deputy Clerk of the Peace for the county, lamented that the local little boys got completely into the habits of the men - 'drinking, swearing, fighting, and smoking tobacco and all those sorts of things'. Mr Baird thought that on a pay day, with constant drunken¬ness and disturbance, the village was quite uninhabitable.
A minority of the navvies were Irish, and they were attacked now and again, as was the custom. After one pay day a mob of 300 or 400, armed with pitchforks and scythes, marched on the Irish, who were saved only because the magistrates intervened and kept both sides talking until a force of militia came up from Carlisle, twenty-three miles away."

The writer goes in to explain that the worst of the riots were to follow.
This song describes the situation in Britain, specifically in Liverpool; we have never come across it before and can find no trace of it.
A similar song 'Seven of our Irishmen' (Roud 3104), sung by Straighty and by Pat MacNamara, deals with those who landed in America and were targeted as possible recruits for the U.S. army.
Ref:
The Railway Navvies;   Terry Coleman 1965