Am I the only one around here who is starting to get a little bored with the fact that almost every song origin thread ends up with a list of songs that "the Irish" (whoever they are) have stolen.

For example a German American wrote a song about someone who he chose to name Kathleen (an irish name). This was then sung and recorded by a number of 'Irish Tenors' and lo and behold some people thought it was Irish. Is this a surprize. I suspect the author had an eye to the market in choosing the name. If he'd written "I'll take you home again Grunhilde (sorry about the spelling) it might not have sold so many copies.

Also a lot of Irish bands (both Irish and internationally based) have recorded songs that weren't written in Ireland. These may or may not have been properly accredited at the time, but not everybody studies the liner notes on albums, and some people may think they are Irish when they are not. The same is true of 'Irish' song books, not all of which are compiled by Irish people, who wrongly attribute songs as being Irish.

There are cases where people have changed the words to Irish place names to make them more meaningful to their audience. Some may have done so to avoid copyright, in which case they are guilty of theft to some degree, but this is surely part of the folk process. Were Woody Guthrie and Bob Dylan thieves ? or did they just adapt songs to suit their circumstances.

I'd just ask people out there to think twice before they start generalising about "the" anything. If these threads were written about other ethnic groups they would rightly be the subject of messages condemning racism for what it is.

Or is it always only a joke ?

Rant over.