Rocks of Bawn note
Jim Carroll
Rocks of Bawn – (Roud 3204) Tom Lenihan
For many of us coming to traditional song for the first time in the early 1960s, Joe Heaney's magnificent rendition of it played a major part in making us life-long adherents.
Ewan MacColl's introduction to Joe's singing sums of it up perfectly, these, and all song of the hardships of manual labour.
"The early 19th-century seamen working on the packet ships, clippers and East-India tea-wagons did not see themselves as jolly jack tars- that is a landsman's concept.    For them, it was hard-tack and bluenosed mates, long voyages and short rations.    In the same way, songs made up by farm labourers often reflect the countryman's love-hate relationship with the land.    This is particularly true of the West of Ireland songs. To the hired farm-labourer working the submarginal lands of the west coast where they had learned to subsist on rocks, bogs, salt-water and sea-weed, the .land was an enemy compared with which even the British army appeared as a refuge. "The Rocks of Bawn", expresses this attitude perfectly."
The BBC recorded this from Liam Clancy's mother 'Mamo' Clancy Ballinafad, Co. Galway in 1954; she said she had heard it as a young woman, but had been prompted to re-learn it from the singing of Seamus Ennis. Tom Lenihan learned it from local ballad seller, 'Bully' Nevin, and Willie Clancy's aunt, Mary Haren of Clooneyogan; several people have told us that they recall Bully bawling out the song at Miltown cattle fairs. Tom strongly disapproved of the line, "I wish the Queen of England" and said he much preferred Bully's "Patrick Sarsfield", but the comparison of the British army being preferable to ploughing rocks stands as a powerful indictment of the hardships of West of Ireland life in the 19th century. Dominic Behan claimed the 'Bawn' referred to was in Cavan, the home of Martin Swiney, to whom he attributed the song. Tom Munnely said there were eleven townlands in Ireland bearing the name 'Bawn' and that he had been frequently told that the rocky field referred to was on the outskirts of Granard in County Longford.