THE WIND THAT SHAKES THE BARLEY

       I sat within a valley green

I sat me with my true love

My sad heart strove to choose between

The old love and the new love

The old for her, the new that made

Me think on Ireland dearly

While soft the wind blew down the glade

And shook the golden barley

Twas hard the woeful words to frame

To break the ties that bound us

But harder still to bear the shame

Of foreign chains around us

And so I said, "The mountain glen

I'll seek at morning early

And join the bold United Men

While soft winds shake the barley"

While sad I kissed away her tears

My fond arms 'round her flinging

The foeman's shot burst on our ears

From out the wildwood ringing

A bullet pierced my true love's side

In life's young spring so early

And on my breast in blood she died

While soft winds shook the barley

I bore her to some mountain stream

And many's the summer blossom

I placed with branches soft and green

About her gore-stained bosom

I wept and kissed her clay-cold corpse

Then rushed o'er vale and valley

My vengeance on the foe to wreak

While soft winds shook the barley

But blood for blood without remorse

I've taken at Oulart Hollow

And laid my true love's clay-cold corpse

Where I full soon may follow

As 'round her grave I wander drear

Noon, night and morning early

With breaking heart when e'er I hear

The wind that shakes the barley

The Wind That Shakes the Barley" is an Irish song written by Robert Dwyer-Joyce, an Irish poet and professor of English literature. The song was written about a young Irish rebel who sacrifices his relationship with his loved one for the 1798 rebellion of a United Ireland. Reference to barley derive from the fact that Irish rebels often carried barley oats in their pockets for eating when marching. This gave rise after the rebellion of barley growing and marking the "croppy-holes," mass unmarked graves which rebels were thrown into, it symbols the regenerative nature of Irish resistance to British rule as does the phoenix the bird that rises from the ashes..

The title of the song was borrowed for the 2006 film of the same name.

Paintings of Irish revolution and rebellion include; the wind that shakes the barley, men of the south, the birth of the Irish free state and others from Sean Keating's allergory.

The photos include; Hogans flying column in north Tipperary, the phoenix, still an unrepentant Fenian bastard, the Cairo gang od informers who were mostly assassinated and traditional wanted republican Dan Breen,

Link to Film sequence on YouTube; The Wind that Shakes the Barley