Yes, it's the well known Rising of the moon I'm talking about and there have been so many threads about this song that instead of adding the note to one of them I start a new thread.

I found the note in Terry Moylan's book The age of revolution in the Irish song tradition, 1776-1815, a thoroughly enjoyable book and, at least as far as I can tell at my restricted level of knowledge, reliable.

The lyrics for verse 4, All along (or: there beside) the shining (or: singing) river one black mass of men was seen.... were originally as follows: There beside the Inny river.... But: "(John Keegan Casey) changed it to avoid attracting the attention of the authorities to his neighbourhood".

Songwriters in those times had to consider more possibilities than today...

Wolfgang