"Suggesting that the English hadn't the time to write songs while the Irish undergoing Famine wars of national liberation, mass enforced exile, struggles for land... used those hardships to produce thousands of their most important songs appears to add to your somewhat jaundiced view of the English rural dweller"

The "English" have written a vast number of songs, many now falsely claimed by the Irish purely because Luke Kelly on his numerous sabbaticals brought them them back and introduced them into the Dubliners repertoire.

The Irish, their claim to fame as the MOPE [Most Oppressed People Ever] is a bit of a joke. Under the rule of the British the people of Ireland suffered no more from Famine {See Scotland 1700 -1707 & 1847 -1851} Struggles for land [The enclosures] The population were treated no differently than anywhere else in the Kingdom. There were a number of factors that mitigated certain events throughout the British Isles and they were largely down to the resilience and common sense of the people. Nowhere at all in any discussion of the Famine in Ireland do I ever hear that 40 years before it happened land owners and tenant farmers in Ireland were warned and told that they had to alter their ways and that all such advice was studiously ignored - always easiest to blame someone else.