Stalker, as far as I know the song 'The Rising of the Moon' refers to the Rebellion of 1798 by the group called the 'United Irishmen'. They were a group of revolutionaries influenced by the Republican philosophy of the recent French Revolution as well as the American Revolution and sought to forma n Irish Republic on non-sectarian lines. Unfortunately for them their ideals were lost in a welter of reprisals which touched off the very hatreds they had wanted to supersede. The song of course, deals with events on a more 'grass-roots' level, where the "revolutionary spirit' hardly penetrated. Bob Bolton, I doubt that any reasonable Irish person would take umbrage a your claim that the tune in question was 'borrowed' from the Scots. We all know that so many of these old tunes were recycled time and time again . Lets just accept that many tunes have crossed (and probably re-crossed) the Irish Sea several times and will continue to do so. Like it or not Scots, Irish, Welsh, Manx and even English have much more cultural integration than is evident on the surface of things.