Quilty Burning, The

DESCRIPTION: "Oh the burning of Quilty, you all know it well; When the barracks took fire Where the peelers did dwell." Everyone scurries to save what can be saved. "This old barracks is no harm to be gone, For many a poor fellow was shoved in there wrong"
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1977 (IRClare01)
KEYWORDS: prison fire moniker police
HISTORICAL REFERENCES:
1920-1921 - The Black and Tan War
FOUND IN: Ireland
Roud #18471
RECORDINGS:
Mikey Kelleher, "The Quilty Burning" (on IRClare01)
CROSS-REFERENCES:
cf. "Cod Liver Oil" (tune) and references there
cf. "The Burning of Rosslea" (subject)
NOTES [71 words]: Notes to IRClare01: "The incident that gave rise to this song ... took place around 1920, when the Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC) barracks at Quilty, a fishing village a few miles south of Miltown Malbay, was set alight by the Republicans."
"Peelers" are police. Apparently, the barracks served also as a jail. (For more on "peelers" in general, and the RIC in the context of the Black and Tan War, see "The Rineen Ambush") - BS
File: RcQuiBur

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