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Dominic Behan

Dominic Behan (22 October 1928-3 August 1989) was an Irish socialist, republican activist, and singer-songwriter.

Biography[]

Dominic Behan was born in Dublin, Ireland on 22 October 1928, the son of Irish Republican Army veteran Stephen Behan and the nephew of Peadar Kearney, the writer of "A Soldier's Song", which would become the Irish national anthem. Behan joined the youth wing of the Irish Republican Army after his family moved to Crumlin in 1937, and he took part in campaigns to promote the rights of the Irish working class, leading to his 1952 arrest for civil disobedience. Behan was also involved with Scottish nationalist groups while he was in Scotland, where he briefly lived after his arrest. Behan would become most famous as a singer-songwriter, however, writing "Come Out, Ye Black and Tans" as an IRA taunt against the trained British Army troops, and he also wrote "The Patriot Game", the middle lines of the folk song "Carrickfergus", "McAlpine's Fusiliers", "The Sea Around Us", and "Take it Down from the Mast". Behan died from pancreatic cancer in 1989 at the age of 60.

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