-Joe Offer-
Kevin Barry
DESCRIPTION: Eighteen year old Kevin Barry is hung, "another martyr for old Ireland, another murder for the crown." Despite torture, he will not betray his comrades. (Family and friends bid farewell.) (Barry asks to be shot as a soldier, but is hanged as a rebel)AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1927 (Sandburg)
KEYWORDS: rebellion execution Ireland
HISTORICAL REFERENCES:
Nov 1, 1920 - Execution of Kevin Barry
FOUND IN: Ireland US(MW)
REFERENCES (6 citations):
Sandburg, pp. 42-43, "Kevin Barry" (1 text, 1 tune)
Hodgart, p. 218, "Kevin Barry" (1 text)
PGalvin, pp. 67-68, "Kevin Barry" (1 text, 1 tune)
OLochlainn 49, "Kevin Barry" (1 text, 1 tune)
Silber-FSWB, p. 324, "Kevin Barry" (1 text)
DT, KEVBARRY*
Roud #3014
RECORDINGS:
The Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem, "Kevin Barry" (on IRClancyMakem03)
Pete Seeger, "Kevin Barry" (on PeteSeeger11) (on HootenannyCarnegie)
CROSS-REFERENCES:
cf. "Shall My Soul Pass Through Ireland" (tune)
cf. "Rolling Home" (tune)
NOTES: Patrick Galvin reports that "Kevin Barry, an eighteen-year-old student, [was] the first Irish patriot to be hanged in Ireland since Robert Emmet 117 years before. His death precipitated scores of his fellow-students into the I.R.A...."
Robert Kee's statement (in Ourselves Alone, being volume III of The Green Flag, pp. 122-123) gives him a slightly different distinction: "the first British execution of an Irishman in the post-war period."
Terry Golway, For the Cause of Liberty, has a photo of Barry (who looks like any other schoolkid) on page 258, and gives a less biased report than Galvin. Given a good education, he still tried to join a nationalist organization at the age of 13. At 17, he could no longer be restrained from joining the Voluneers.
On September 20, 1920, Barry -- now 18 and in his first year of studying medicine -- was called upon to take part in a hijacking. The rebels desperately needed weapons (a perennial problem in Ireland, dating back to the rebellions against the Tudors; G. A. Hayes-McCoy, Irish Battles, p. 111, reports that it then took six head of cattle to buy a single musket! Rifles were cheaper in the twentieth century, but they were also, according to Charles Townshend, Easter 1916: The Irish Rebellion, p. 45, a fetish item for Irish volunteers of the time). To gain arms, a band of Volunteers set out to stop a British army truck. The Irish had only one gun, but somehow one of the British soldiers ended up being shot and killed. Barry's comrades fled; he was captured.
Threatened with death, though apparently suffering nothing worse than arm-twisting, Barry refused to give any information about his comrades. He was subjected to a military trial on October 20, and executed November 1. We observe that, though Barry died as a rebel, he was, by modern legal standards, guilty of murder (though not premeditated murder).
Of course, if they'd hung everyone guilty of that sort of murder in 1920 Ireland, the country would have been depopulated.
Tim Pat Coogan, in Michael Collins, p. 154, notes that the British cabinet actually considered clemency but could find no grounds. There are said to have been five thousand people praying outside his prison at the end.
Kee makes the interesting point that Barry's death "made a considerable impact on public opinion. By contrast the fact the the soldier he had shot was as young as himself made virtually none" (p. 123)
There is at least one other Barry poem, "Kevin Barry" (by Terence Ward), for which see Kathleen Hoagland, editor, One Thousand Years of Irish Poetry (New York, 1947), pp. 751-752.
There is also a 1989 biography, Kevin Barry, by Donal O'Donovan. Which mostly shows the power of songs like this; if Barry had lived in America a century later, he would probably be considered a "gang member." - RBW
File: San042
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Digital Tradition Lyrics:
KEVIN BARRY
In Mountjoy jail one Monday morning
High upon the gallows tree
Kevin Barry gave his young life
For the cause of liberty
But a lad of eighteen summers
Yet no one can deny
As he walked to death that morning
He proudly held his head on high
Just before he faced the hangman
In his dreary prison cell
British soldiers tortured Barry
Just because he would not tell
The names of his brave companions
And other things they wished to know
"Turn informer or we'll kill you"
Kevin Barry answered, "no"
Calmly standing to attention
While he bade his last farewell
To his broken hearted mother
Whose grief no one can tell
For the cause he proudly cherished
This sad parting had to be
Then to death walked softly smiling
That old Ireland might be free
Another martyr for old Ireland
Another murder for the crown
Whose brutal laws may kill the Irish
But can't keep their spirit down
Lads like Barry are no cowards
From the foe they will not fly
Lads like Barry will free Ireland
For her sake they'll live and die
@Irish @rebel @death
printed in Cole
Kevin Barry was executed in 1920
filename[ KEVBARRY
TUNE FILE: KEVBARRY
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