A fair point, Paul. Most of the songs that I'm aware of the touch on the famine aren't from the time. Could be that such trauma discourages expression, or maybe people were preoccupied with survival. Given the loss of population around the time in Ireland, it could just be that we lost a lot of songwriters (a similar effect to that suggested by the Great War on artistic and cultural life in europe in the early 20th century).

Ard Macha - I read Dave's wife's post to refer to regional variations in manners and customs rather than conflict. Thankfully, there are still some regional variations in conversation around the country. It's not all Greater Dublin yet :)