The number of Irish "rebel" songs is enormous, and they range from the god-awfull to the wonderful. The "Felons of our Land" belongs, I think, to the second category. The line,"a felon's cap is the noblest crown an Irish head can wear", breathes the true spirit of revolutionary politics - and not alone of Irish republican but of revolutionary socialist politics too.`
The Irish Republican, Robert Emmet, wrote these Lines, about the graves of insurgents killed in the uprisings of 1798. In 1803 he himself at the age of 25 was" hanged, drawn and quartered" - hanged, cut down alive and disembowelled.
Bartolomeo Vanzetti and Nicolo Sacco, socialist-anarchists, were killed by the US state in August 1927 on trumped-up murder charges, after a long campaign to save their lives. This is Vanzetti's last speech.
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