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Thanks for causing me to dig my Kavanagh book out

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Happy to have caused that! I have Van singing the version you mentioned on vinyl, but Luke Kelly's (Dubliners) interpretation is still the one that makes my scalp prickle. I've heard there's a Joan Osborne version that is great...have to go check YouTube for that...

Nope, not there. We'll have to imagine it. Mark Knopfler's version is good; i'll pass on Sinead and Mary Black doing it.

I saw Seamus Heaney at a reading at UM in Missoula and didn't wash my ears for weeks after. I have a copy of Liam Clancy (IIRC) doing his "Requiem for the Croppies", gut-powerful:

The pockets of our greatcoats full of barley...
No kitchens on the run, no striking camp...
We moved quick and sudden in our own country.
The priest lay behind ditches with the tramp.
A people hardly marching... on the hike...
We found new tactics happening each day:
We'd cut through reins and rider with the pike
And stampede cattle into infantry,
Then retreat through hedges where cavalry must be thrown.
Until... on Vinegar Hill... the final conclave.
Terraced thousands died, shaking scythes at cannon.
The hillside blushed, soaked in our broken wave.
They buried us without shroud or coffin
And in August... the barley grew up out of our grave.

(Interesting...i had always heard the word as "terrorist" instead of "terraced" before looking it up just now. It seemed odd, since the Irish were in their own country, but makes more sense now...in a 'terrible beauty' sort of way.)

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