Sleeve notes:
Since they came together in 1969 - the Dawn of Ireland's present
Troubles - the members of the Barleycorn have been. the minstrels of
Hope amid Oppression. Their music, dealing with injustice and struggle,
evokes the defiance of their Belfast tradition.
Songs such as The Men Behind the Wire, the Boys of the Old brigade and
others of their successes, have become the rally m sound of hope in the
ghettoes of the Six Counties.
But it is a long struggle as this album reminds us.
Here, On the Fields of Athenry in the 1840s. Irishmen and women faced
starvation at worst, eviction or at best passage on a coffin ship to a
New World.
But from the Fields of Athenry. just as from the ghettos of Belfast, the
music of the people harbours a hope for a better life - far from the
degradations of the present.
Through the music of the Barleycorn, we share in
that hope. We feel the present but we shout our defiance and
future free from oppression.
Darach Mac Donald
(Sunday Tribune)
