Fascinating to see so many variations in the words. I think I can assert with reasonable confidence that the only opening verse you'll hear sung in Ireland (certainly as a "folk" song) is "In Mountjoy gaol, one Monday morning".

The episode is surrounded by propaganda, counterpropaganda and Irish revisionism, the last-named process being necessary but sometimes just as biased as the original propaganda. The catering corps working party would indeed have been unarmed, but as far as I know they had an armed escort. The only place that Kevin Barry could find to hide was under a British army truck, and it was one of the civilians standing by who pointed him out to the British soldiers.

Suffet, you provide some very useful additional information, but the argument which led to the Civil War was not about partition (the exclusion of the six counties of Northern Ireland) but rather over the constitutional status of the Free State, which was less than a fully independent republic and which required elected public representatives to swear an oath of allegiance to the British Crown.