Beneath a grey, forbidding sky,
as all the Saints looked on,
Kevin Barry climbed the scaffold,
by the order of the Crown.
He would not betray his fellows
to the agents of the State.
By Courts martial, they condemned him
to a common villains fate.
This morn at Mount joy jail
as the World looked on, aghast,
the hangman’s rope snapped Kevin’s neck
and Barry breathed his last.
Denied a soldier’s bullet,
Kevin hung upon a tree,
Just eighteen, but a martyr
for the cause of Liberty.
Let him never be forgotten;
As long as we have voice to sing.
He is past all trial and suffering
at the hands of Earthly Kings.