What I meant was that the McSwiney song, as we've got it definitely dates from 1920 - ie, it's not significantly later. And it can't very well be earlier.

The tune of course, as I said has been around a good bit - it's the same as Rolling home to Dear Old England/ Ireland/Scotland/St Helena.

Whether the McSwiney song is a rewrite of an earlier one about Irish prisoners in general, I couldn't say, though I'd have thought that if it had been the earlier one would have survived. The idea of a song about someone dying in hospital is about all it takes from "Binghen inthe Rhine", and since that was actually what happened in McSwiney's case, there's no need to assume that's where the idea came from.Apart from the situation, they are not very similar.

There seem to be two Confederate songs here - one is the one in the DT as "Soldier from Missouri", which does seem to be from the time of the Civil War, or soonish afterwards, and could be a rewrite from "Bingen on the Rhione"(I don't like the word parody in this context). And the other is the "Legend of the Rebel Soldier" song, which is extremely close to "Shall my Soul Pass Through Old Ireland". Clearly one is a rewrite of the other.

What I'd guess has happened is that the "Soldier from Missouri" was written by someone who knew "Bingen on the Rhine". "Shall my Soul pass through Old Ireland" was written, possibly drawing on some earlier song which could have been linked to "Bingen on the Rhine", but not necessarily. And "The Legend of the Rebel Soldier" was rewritten from "Shall my Soul pass through Old Ireland", by someone who may well have known the "Soldier from Missouri." Which is esentially what I suggested in my earlier post.

Of course this is speculative, and it could have happened the other way round, with the "Legend" being rewritten from the "Missouri Soldier", and "Shall my Soul" rewritten from that. But if that had happened, I think the "Legend" would have turned up a lot sooner. The only real way to be sure about that is finding out where the songs were collected from.

The strange thing is that "Kevin Barry" and "Shall my Soul" seems to have been written and passed instantly into the repertoire of singers with the same tune, more or less simultaneously, with no indication that either is in any way a rewrite of the other.