A number of points: Is the Bantry Girls Lament set in Bantry, North Wexford NOT Bantry, Cork? I think so, "the girls of the Bawnogue in sorrow may retire", Bawnogue (a townand?) is in Wexford. Is the song set during the Peninsula War?

The Brookeborough raid was led by Sean Garland, not Sean South. Garland was wounded but escaped. He was again wounded in a republican feud in Dublin in 1975. This is in the public domain. Is he still alive?

In many respects Sean South was a fine young man: a writer, artist, musician, orator. However he was also a McCarthyite bigot, railing aginst "Reds, atheists and Judaeo-Masonic controlled sources" in letters to his local newspaper in 1949, age 21. He was the product of the Ireland of his time, conservative, insular, ignorant(ish). I, born 20 years later and raised in rural Donegal, once had very similar views but lived long enough, and with the help of a decent general education, to outgrow them.

The RUC sergeant who "spied them throught the door" was Kenneth Cordner. There is a monument to SS and FO'H at the spot where they died, though the barn where they were left is gone "blown up about 15 years ago" I was told in Brookeborough one Sunday morning.

Is the Patriot Game ambivalent? "The love of one's country is a TERRIBLE thing", in some repub versions this is changed to "wonderful". However Dom Behan wrote so many other rebel songs that "terrible" has probably simply been misinterpreted.

Any more biog info on Feargal O'Hanlon? All I know is that he was age 19, was reared, "weaned", on Pearse, and played senior football for Monaghan. There is another song about him, "Feargal O'Hanlon", first verse,

Oh hark to the tale of young Feargal O'Hanlon, who died in Brookeborough to make Ireland free,for his heart he had pledged to the love of his country, and he took to the hills like a bold "rapparee" [outlaw].