"My beef is with people at sessions in US bars singing overtly political Irish songs. Irish politics is not part of the experience of anyone outside Ireland and I don't feel I or any other American has any business singing about it. We can sing about lost love, no matter whether the song comes from Ireland or Mississippi, but we should leave the immortalization of Irish heroes to the Irish."

I think it is a fair point Bee-dubya, but my experience was of hearing these songs as a child amongst Irish family. Admittedly I'm older now and I am English-born myself - though with Irish parentage. Do you feel that it would be inappropriate for me to sing those same songs I heard as a child amongst Irish family - in memory of them and their experiences? There were those amongst them, those whom I loved and recall with great feeling.

For I'm not quite sure where I stand on this. Apart from feeling that I cannot because of my English birth. Yet, now that I have begun singing for myself, I am asking myself whether those Irish rebel songs, might not be sung in memory of those who I once heard sing them, and to whom they meant a great deal.