Come on declan, you can't expect people not to have a little chuckle finding "Any old iron" or the"lish young buy a broom" described as Irish. "Foksongs and Ballads Popular in Ireland" is thevery fair title of the little Ossian books, and that is a wonderful non-controversialway of putting it.
The English, Welsh, scottish and Irish have been sharing songs and tunes for untold centuries with enormous mutual pleasure. It is only a few rabid chauvinist cultural historians on all sides who stir things up occasionally by refusing to recognise this mutually beneficial borrowing, and adopt the line of "if it's sung in X it must have originated in X". And those sort of claims, believed by credulous people, do need jumping on, because they can feed feelings of ethnic superiority in inadequate people and we all know only too well where that can lead.
My own position is I love English songs and I love Irish songs, and most of the time I havent a bloody clue which are which. But just sometimes I do have a clue, and will take a humorous dig at any Englishman who claims "Spancil Hill" is an old Norfolk folksong.

PS Can we have St Patrick back?