"The Wind That Shakes the Barley" is an Irish ballad written by Robert Dwyer Joyce (1836–1883), a Limerick-born poet and professor of English literature.
The song is written from the perspective of a doomed young Wexford rebel who is about to sacrifice his relationship with his loved one and plunge into the cauldron of violence associated with the 1798 rebellion in Ireland.
This gave rise to the post-rebellion phenomenon of barley growing and marking the "croppy-holes," unmarked mass graves into which rebel casualties were thrown.
The song has been covered by many artists, including Declan Hunt, Finvarra, Loreena McKennitt, The Dubliners, Dolores Keane, Dead Can Dance (sung by Lisa Gerrard), Altan, Solas, The Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem, Dick Gaughan, Orthodox Celts, Amanda Palmer, Fire + Ice, The Irish Rovers (as "The Wind That Shakes the Corn"), Sarah Jezebel Deva, Martin Carthy, Declan de Barra, Belfast Food, Poets of the Fall, Glow, Yanisovsky, and Lumiere.
A short section of the song is heard being sung by Micheál Ó Súilleabháin's grandmother Peggy at his wake in the 2006 film of the same name.