I love this. I have been regularly singing it for over 20 years. To me it is not sob at all. My mother's ancestors for several generations were Anglo Irish landowners and I do worry just how much pain they may have caused in the Great Hunger. I believe it essential to not just sweep over the horrors that the British inflicted particularly on the Irish. Throughout my English education I was never taught all this. Never taught what Oliver Cromwell did in Ireland. Never taught that the first slaves over here in North America were Irish.
I have camped in Glen Veigh. I wanted to feel it. My mother's mother Dr Ella Webb was a doctor in Dublin during the Irish uprising and her family supported the Irish. As children I and my siblings could anger my mother just by saying black and tans.She grew up sleeping under windows because of snipers. One of my brothers spent his life in Kerry and Cork.

@rogerbenham My paternal grandfather was born in Galway so I’m one quarter Irish, and I intimately know Glenveigh and it’s surrounding area in Donegal, as well as most of the rest of Ireland north and south. Perhaps I’ve just heard too much of this melancholic music and the rallying call some people made it into for paramilitary recruitment in the 70’s and beyond when people like me and my friends were regarded as legitimate targets for murder and bombings for 30 years just because we were Brits. My sympathies are with your mother and grandmother because I had close friends, relatives and work colleagues who were killed over these years of “the troubles“, so it cuts in both directions. I think the past should be regretted on all sides, but the time has come to stop reopening the old divisions and wounds and move forward, as we have since the signing of the Belfast Agreement. The time is coming when a majority will want a reunification of Ireland, but it will never happen down the barrel of a gun, that is certain.

@Marionville True enough. But you see I heard the song. I happened to drive through Glen Veigh. I looked up the story and it is very true. Black John Adair really existed and all that the song talks about happened. I also sing mining disaster songs. A friend calls me the master of doleful songs.Many of the songs I sing at some point brought tears to my eyes. My brother living certainly 40 years in Gaelic speaking areas made me love the music. Sure it started with the Dubliners and I sang some of their songs as I hitch-hiked around Eire when I was 16. Just being in the North freaked me out seeing British military checkpoints. Other than visiting the Causeway and Derry, I just ran through NI as quick as I could. I've known Dingle, Tralee and Brandon all my life. My brother sold whole food snacks all around the ring of Kerry most of his business career as Munster Whole Foods.
I guess I'm the enemy in that I think NI should stop being UK and should become part of Eire. I have thought that since watching the troubles on TV in the late sixties. I found those Northern Irish people like Paisley and Craig totally obnoxious.

@rogerbenham I find the extreme Prods obnoxious too...but having lived through the bombing campaign and coming here as a complete outsider as far as not being Catholic or Protestant or Nationalist or Loyalist...I believe I can see it from both points of view. The truth of the matter is you cannot correct the wrongs of history by imposing further wrongs on today’s generation. It is now enshrined into the Belfast Agreement, an internationally binding accord, that there will be reunification when a majority wishes it. All right minded people North and South agree with that, any other method of reunification, by force or coercion will never work and will perpetuate the divisions for ever. “The past is a foreign country...they do things differently there”... favourite quote of mine by L.P. Hartley (The Go-Between) is one we should take heed of and move on.

@Marionville I loved that book and the Julie Christie movie "Having a nice time?".