I think there is rather more to this from a longer historical perspective.

Patrick Galvin's 'Irish Songs of Resistance' Oak Publications, 1962, starts with the introductory paragraph:

"The Irish are famed as a nation of singers: not choral singers like the Welsh, but soloists - for folk-memories are long, and there was a time when for Irishmen to meet together, and to attract attention to themselves by singing their national songs in chorus, was to court imprisonment or death. For that matter, solo singing, or even whistling, of certain Irish airs has been a punishable offence within living memory."

Tantalisingly, he makes no specific reference to songs or laws, except to lyrics being presented in court as evidence of sedition. For example in 1844

(Daniel) "O'Connell, Gavan Duffy and others were arrested and charged with forty-seven different seditious acts, six of which were publications in The Nation, one of these being John Kells Ingram's poem The Memory of the Dead (''Who Fears to Speak of Ninety-Eight'). All were fined and sentenced to six months imprisonment, but the sentences were quashed by the House of Lords."

These are then high profile events with discoverable historical documentation. The Memory of the Dead is also sung, as are many of the poems first so published: "Above all, it (The Nation) published innumerable poems, all of which could be and were sung."

Patrick Galvin's book certainly appears to be detailed and scholarly, setting the songs in the historical context - it is in effect a history of political conflict in Ireland illustrated by the songs of the period.

Less directly he refers to the practice of disguising nationalistic songs as love-songs to a 'woman' (Dark Rosaleen etc) who is code for Ireland. He also refers generally to the wholesale banning in Ireland of virtually everything Irish under the Penal Laws, it is hard to imagine that song would have been excluded.

The first body of songs I sang at 12 or 13 was from that Clancy Brothers' early album referred to at the start of this thread, then just bought by a schoolfriend's parents. The first song I sang in public performance was The Rising of the Moon, at a folk concert in Skopje Macedonia televised across the Balkans (it's a long story!). They loved it.

The only songs I have ever been asked not to sing, ("We're not having those songs sung here") were Irish rebel songs, once in a pub in Manchester, and once in a private home. Who fears to hear of the Ninety-Eight?

Cheers,
Chris