How on earth can you compare WW2 to Irish bandits?

Well, you can actually. Here's a song about an Irishman killed by German bombs in Birmingham while working over in England. But it struck me when I came across it that the verses could have applied as easily to the pub bombing. Whether dropped from planes or delivered by hand, bombs don't care who they kill:

My darling sleeps in England across the Irish Sea,
While I who loved him dearly shall mourn him bitterly,
Shall mourn him night and morning and miss him from my sight,
For in the town of Birmingham my husband Danny died.

The times came hard upon us, my children three and I,
My husband rose one morning with a teardrop in his eye.
He tied his poor belongings and kissed me tenderly,
Saying fare you well my darling wife for I'll cross the Irish Sea.

Each week from English cities a letter came to me
Saying Darling wife, how do you far, likewise your children three?
And when at night you're on your knees to say the rosary,
Remember then your loving Dan, who's across the Irish Sea.

I wrote him back a letter and I said My darling Dan
Young Pat is now a sturdy child and Tom is near a man,
And Flora looks into my eyes and whispers tenderly
God send my daddy safely back from across the Irish Sea.

One evening I was at my work and a knock came to the door;
My heart stood still for I knew that sound some evil to me bore,
And then the cruel tidings I hear most mournfully,
That the cruel bombs had murdered Dan far across the Irish Sea.

I found this printed in a great songbook edited by Karl Dallas, The Cruel Wars, published in 1972 two years before the pub bombing. He says it was collected from the singing of Mary Reynolds of Co Leitrim. The tune is given in the book - it's close enough to the one used for Boston Burglar to use that.