Kevin Barry
Channel: Stephen Griffith
Date: 2020-04-06

Day 21 of the American Songbag Stay-at-Home Series  (folksongindex.com)

Kevin Gerard Barry (20 January 1902 – 1 November 1920) was an Irish republican paramilitary who was executed by the British Government during the Irish War of Independence.He was sentenced to death for his part in an attack upon a British Army supply lorry which resulted in the deaths of three British soldiers.

His execution inflamed nationalist public opinion in Ireland, largely because of his age. The timing of the execution, only days after the death by hunger strike of Terence MacSwiney, the republican Lord Mayor of Cork, brought public opinion to a fever-pitch. His death attracted international attention, and attempts were made by U.S. and Vatican officials to secure a reprieve. His execution and MacSwiney's death precipitated an escalation in violence as the Irish War of Independence entered its bloodiest phase, and Barry became an Irish republican martyr. (From Wikipedia)

Carl Sandburg was the first to publish this ballad according to the Traditional Ballad Index. His comments in the Songbag:

 "Tongues of love and hate, breaths of passion and suffering, all mingled with a strange bittersweet, are in this song out of the violent events in Ireland. Probably all wars and revolutions produce figures like Kevin Barry, though seldom do they have such adequate songs as memorials. In Nashville, Tennessee, one rnay look at the statue of Sam Davis, who died refusing to turn informer and thus save his life. Davis has a statue in bronze; Kevin Barry has a song. These verses and their wistful, longing melody are from Irish boys and girls in Chicago who learned the ballad on the Ould Sod."