"but the song doesn't have to have been written in 1814."
I have been tld that print is all and if it appeared i print that is probably where it originated - I never believed that but you argued for it
Now you appear to be claiming that it existed before it went into print
Somewhat inconsistent
The music halls were platforms for racism and prejudice - they dealy in stereotyping and distorting all who idn't fit from blacks, Turks, Country Bumkins.... cruel, Bernard Manneringish viciousness
Lighter's description of thinking the depiction of limbless blinded war veterans "hilarious", just about sums them up
Anybody who wishes to see how the Irish people people represented themselves in song needs to work their way through Terry Moyland magnificent doorstep of a study of Irish political songs, 'The Indignant Muse' - it leaves all the insulting stage Irish offensive nonsense in the shade
The size of Terry's collection and the fact that it represents only a part of his findings is an indication of the creative nature of Irish people on matters that concern them - from the point of view of people who were there

It really is about time that, rather than taking down and debunking the work of past and persent researchers, all the work be brought together as a pool to be dipped from
I have spent the last twenty years learning how song-making, local and national, has come to fill in a part of Irish history that has largely been overlooked or deliberately suppressed - from the effects of famine, emigration, mass evictions, enforced emigration... right through to national liberation wars, civil war and the rebuilding of an independant country
All this has been captured in verse - not just for entertainment and certainly not for commercial gain
I now find myself, along with an obviously knowledgeable Irishman, having to defend something that most Irish song enthusiasts know as being the case - with an english academic who obviously has no grasp of Irish history
Sorry Steve - I find that somewhat unreasonable
Jim Carroll